The image of the world’s most powerful CEOs attending Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20 is seared by now in our collective memories. Power attracts money, of course—especially if tax cuts and deregulation are on the table. But is the increasing salience of billionaires in public life making the United States more corrupt? And is this the new global norm, or is America an outlier?
Those are some of the questions we set out to explore in our Spring 2025 cover package, “Billionaire Rule.” I don’t buy the argument that there’s something intrinsically wrong with the existence of billionaires. But a few trend lines are worth noting. The rich are getting far richer: According to Forbes, the 400 richest Americans were worth $5.4 trillion in 2024, up by nearly a quarter from the previous year. Meanwhile, the American Dream is fading. A team of researchers at Harvard University found that while 90 percent of children born in the 1940s grew up to make more money than their parents, only half of Americans entering their 40s hit that benchmark today. There is likely a correlation here with data suggesting that the United States is becoming less fair. A World Bank corruption index showed that the United States dropped from the 90th percentile of countries in 2016 to the 83rd percentile in 2023.
The image of the world’s most powerful CEOs attending Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20 is seared by now in our collective memories. Power attracts money, of course—especially if tax cuts and deregulation are on the table. But is the increasing salience of billionaires in public life making the United States more corrupt? And is this the new global norm, or is America an outlier?
Those are some of the questions we set out to explore in our Spring 2025 cover package, “Billionaire Rule.” I don’t buy the argument that there’s something intrinsically wrong with the existence of billionaires. But a few trend lines are worth noting. The rich are getting far richer: According to Forbes, the 400 richest Americans were worth $5.4 trillion in 2024, up by nearly a quarter from the previous year. Meanwhile, the American Dream is fading. A team of researchers at Harvard University found that while 90 percent of children born in the 1940s grew up to make more money than their parents, only half of Americans entering their 40s hit that benchmark today. There is likely a correlation here with data suggesting that the United States is becoming less fair. A World Bank corruption index showed that the United States dropped from the 90th percentile of countries in 2016 to the 83rd percentile in 2023.
If graft was already on the rise in the United States, much worse may be on the horizon, Jodi Vittori writes in our cover essay. Vittori is one of the world’s leading experts on the links between corruption and state fragility and finds signs that America may be paving the way for kleptocracy—a “rule of thieves” that goes well beyond everyday bribery. If this sounds hard to believe, Vittori brings receipts, from the recent dismantling of anti-corruption safeguards to the twin use of tariffs and tax cuts, which typically favor the rich and hurt the poor.
In any discussion of billionaires, one man has become a category unto himself: Elon Musk. The world’s richest man—and now Trump’s senior advisor tasked with slashing the federal bureaucracy—wields more power than any unelected official. FP economics columnist Adam Tooze examines Musk’s fascination with physics as the basis for predicting how his stint in government might go. Suffice to say, there will be a lot of moving fast and breaking things.
And how does the United States manage its billionaires differently from other large economies? India’s example is an interesting one, as New Delhi increasingly deploys industrial policy through its biggest conglomerates. There’s no one better to explain this than FP columnist James Crabtree, the author of the 2018 book Billionaire Raj. India is adopting more rules, but Crabtree sees the United States headed in the opposite direction. A season of scams may be imminent.
There is another model that countries could follow, with its own set of pros and cons. Chinese billionaires are acutely aware that their wealth exists at the whims of the Communist Party, FP’s James Palmer writes. While that may sound egalitarian, Palmer reminds us that the tools of party power are deployed most frequently against the powerless.
Can the past shed light on our current moment? Private enterprise has always been intertwined with government, historian Priya Satia notes. Weaving through the story of the British East India Company to the present day, Satia writes that oligarchy “has always been an innate tendency of the modern state, one requiring stiffer resistance than Americans have yet offered.” The answer, she concludes, is sustained collective action. After all, democracy isn’t just about voting.
There’s lots more in this issue, including a collection of our signature arguments from around the world. And don’t miss out on Nils Gilman’s terrific reevaluation of the idea of a “clash of civilizations,” a phrase coined by this magazine’s co-founder and former editor Samuel Huntington.
As ever,
Ravi Agrawal
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