Episode summary
Forget Billionaires - America Runs on Millionaires | Bloomberg Businessweek
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily
· · 17 min · Hosts: Carol Massar, Tim Stenovec · Guests: Owen Zidar, Eric Zwick
Summary
The guests argue that America’s wealth story is being distorted by an overfocus on billionaires and coastal tech fortunes. Their book, The Everywhere Millionaire: Who is Really Rich in America and How They Got There, looks instead at the far larger class of “Main Street millionaires” who build wealth through ordinary businesses such as car dealerships, beer distribution, contractors, dentists, and other local monopolies.
They say the data show a much broader and more distributed pattern of wealth than the public conversation suggests. While Silicon Valley has created many new millionaires, they argue that most wealth still sits outside the coasts, and that millions of homes and businesses across the country make up a hidden upper crust. They also describe how they assembled the research by linking tax records, business ownership data, private-jet and yacht records, and property registries.
A major theme is that many of these fortunes are built by owning businesses, not simply earning wages, and that private equity has become a powerful buyer of these firms when founders need an exit. The guests also warn that these owners are unusually influential in politics and regulation, shaping tax policy, market rules, and consumer prices in housing, health care, and cars.
Key takeaways
- The guests say the real wealth story in America is not just billionaires, but a much larger class of private-business owners spread across the country.
- They argue that pass-through businesses became a major force after the 1986 tax reform and now account for more than half of business income.
- Private equity is a key exit path for many founders, especially in industries like home security, pest control, fast casual dining, and specialty contracting.
- The guests say business owners are overrepresented in elected office and help shape tax and market rules to their advantage.
- They argue consumers often pay more in sectors like housing, health care, and cars because of the influence of these local wealth holders.
Notable quotes
“there's this legion of billionaires who are ordinary Americans running pretty mundane businesses who are extraordinarily wealthy”
“we're interested in Main Street and Metro Parkway”
“there are 8 million homes worth more than a million dollars before this demand surge in San Francisco”
“most businesses are passroughs even today. Um they account for more than half of the rise of the top 1% income share business income coming from those passroughs”
“the way you often get rich is by owning and not earning”
How the episode opens
Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts, radio, news. — You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenc on Bloomberg Radio. We've got with us Eric Zwick, associate professor of finance at the University of Chicago School of Business, and Owen Zedar, professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University. They're the authors of the brand new book, The Everywhere Millionaire: Who is Really Rich in America and How They Got There. Welcome, guys. Welcome. Congratulations on the new book. Thanks for having us.
This is really interesting because we do talk about the rich all the time, as you know. Um, and we track them pretty closely. Do we have it wrong in terms of who is rich in America? — You know, if you look at the data, it's really amazing. I mean, there's this legion of billionaires who are ordinary Americans running pretty mundane businesses who are extraordinarily wealthy. And collectively, if you add up all of their wealth, it's 10 times that of the people you just named, the top the richest 400 people.
Yeah. You guys have like a chart at the beginning of the book that shows like here's the Forbes 400 and here are the other people we're focused on. And it's a remarkable delta. — That's right. You went down that list and it was tech, tech, tech, a little bit of finance, tech. And so we're told kind of the path to prosperity, path to the top is Silicon Valley, Sand Hill Road, Wall Street, and we're interested in Main Street and Metro Parkway.
The car do dealerships. — Exactly. Hold on. Before we get to the car dealerships and the plumbers and the HVAC folks, which you guys write about, — There is something to be said about what is happening and what has happened in technology.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- billionaires
- main street millionaires
- wealth inequality
- ai algorithms
- election campaigns
Watch the episode
Watch “Forget Billionaires - America Runs on Millionaires | Bloomberg Businessweek” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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