Since 1947, the government has tracked how much of the economy goes to the people who actually do the work. This year it hit 52.8 percent — the lowest number in the entire dataset. Not during Reagan. Not during the 2008 crash. Not during COVID. Right now, with corporate pre-tax profits at $4.8 trillion in a single quarter. The economy is doing fine. Your cut of it isn’t.
Elon Musk’s Tesla compensation last year came out to $158 billion — 2.5 million times what the median Tesla employee made. Two and a half million times. The S&P 500 has gained 600 percent since 2000. Worker wages, adjusted for inflation, gained 12.5 percent. That gap has a golf course on one side and a food bank on the other. CEOs averaged $22.8 million in 2025 — 312 times their median worker, up from 285 the year before. The ratio doesn’t plateau. It accelerates.
The line they sell is that the pie is getting bigger, so everyone benefits. The pie is getting bigger. It hit $4.8 trillion. And the people baking it are taking home a smaller piece than any American worker in recorded history. That’s a heist with a quarterly earnings call.