At the Money: The Date Behind America's Wealthy

Wealth in America is significantly more concentrated among private business owners than public perception suggests. While the Forbes 400 dominates media coverage, its members hold only 3% of total household wealth, whereas Main Street millionaires—a group including 65,000 centa-millionaires—account for 40%. Princeton professor Owen Zidar and University of Chicago professor Eric Zwick, authors of *The Everywhere Millionaire*, demonstrate that for every wealthy public CEO, there are over 1,000 private business owners with at least $25 million in net worth. This wealth concentration extends to political influence, where individuals worth over $100 million are 62 times more likely to serve in Congress than the general population. Furthermore, widespread use of non-compete agreements and loopholes in the estate tax system exacerbate economic inequality, effectively shielding massive wealth transfers from taxation and limiting labor mobility for workers.