America’s wealth story is often told through billionaires, technology founders and Wall Street investors. But Main Street millionaires represent a far larger and less visible concentration of wealth, according to economists Eric Zwick and Owen Zidar, authors of The Everywhere Millionaire. Their research points to millions of wealthy private-business owners whose fortunes have been built through ordinary-looking companies, from car dealerships and medical practices to restaurants, consulting firms and specialized manufacturers.
The picture that emerges challenges the idea that the rise of inequality is driven primarily by a handful of spectacular fortunes. Many wealthy Americans live outside the traditional centers of elite wealth and built their businesses through industries that rarely attract national attention.
Zidar and Zwick estimate that roughly three million private-business owners in the United States are worth, on average, about $25 million. Collectively, the group controls substantially more wealth than the 400 richest Americans tracked by Forbes.
The economists describe these people as the “stealthy wealthy” because their economic influence is easy to overlook. Unlike technology billionaires whose fortunes and political activities regularly dominate headlines, many private-business owners remain embedded in local communities.
They may own dealerships, professional practices, restaurant franchises, manufacturing companies or service businesses. Some have accumulated enough wealth to purchase luxury homes, yachts and other expensive assets, yet their businesses can appear relatively ordinary from the outside.
The research behind The Everywhere Millionaire emerged from a decade-long effort to understand how these fortunes were created. The work ultimately connected more than 11 million businesses with more than 22 million owners, giving researchers a much broader view of wealth than traditional surveys or lists of the richest Americans.
How Main Street Millionaires became visible in the data
Before the economists assembled their large administrative dataset, researchers had limited ways to determine exactly how wealthy Americans generated their income.
One important source of information was the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, which is conducted every three years and gathers detailed information from thousands of American families. The survey remains valuable, but wealthy households can be particularly difficult to reach, and respondents decide how much financial information they are willing to disclose. The Federal Reserve explains the methodology and participation process in its <a href=”https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/aboutscf.htm” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Survey of Consumer Finances</a>.
The Forbes 400 offered another window into American wealth, but its focus is the extreme upper end of the distribution. It does not provide a comprehensive picture of the millions of wealthy people who own private companies across the country.
Research by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez also transformed the understanding of income inequality by using individual tax returns to track the growing share of income received by the top 1 percent. However, individual tax records did not fully reveal which businesses were producing that income.
That gap mattered because private businesses can distribute profits directly to their owners. The researchers therefore needed to connect businesses with the individuals behind them.
Their work focused heavily on so-called pass-through businesses. These include sole proprietorships, partnerships and S corporations, where business income generally passes through to the owners and is reported on their individual tax returns rather than being taxed first as corporate income.
The scale of that sector changed dramatically over several decades. In 1980, pass-through businesses generated about one-fifth of U.S. business income. By 2011, they generated more than half.
That transformation also changed the way economists understood the rise of top incomes. Zwick says pass-through businesses accounted for more than half of the increase in the share of income going to the top 1 percent since the 1980s. The same broad pattern applied to the top 0.1 percent.
The findings were particularly important because the owners of these businesses were often not simply passive investors. Their personal expertise could be central to the value and profitability of the company.
Consider a surgeon who owns a medical practice. The practice has physical assets, equipment and financial capital, but much of its value can also depend on the surgeon’s training, reputation, relationships and ability to provide specialized services. Economists refer to those qualities as human capital.
Research by Zidar, Zwick and U.S. Treasury economist Matthew Smith found a striking relationship between owners and their businesses. When an owner retired or died, profits at their pass-through business tended to fall by about three-quarters. The result suggested that the owner’s skills and knowledge were often a major component of the business’s earning power.
That helps distinguish many Main Street millionaires from the traditional image of a capitalist whose fortune primarily comes from financial assets. In numerous cases, the business and the individual are closely connected.
Why tax policy helped reshape America’s private businesses
Human capital explains part of the story, but it does not fully explain why incomes from pass-through businesses expanded so rapidly.
Globalization and advances in computing increased the productivity of many highly skilled workers. Professionals could reach larger markets, while rising prosperity increased demand for expensive services such as corporate law, management consulting and specialized medical care.
Tax policy provided another important factor.
Zidar and Zwick trace much of the expansion of pass-through businesses to the Tax Reform Act of 1986. One important change lowered individual tax rates below the corporate tax rate. That created a strong incentive for some business owners to structure their companies as pass-through entities, allowing profits to be taxed through individual returns rather than at the higher corporate rate.
Their research found that by 2011, pass-through business income faced an average federal income tax rate of roughly 20 percent, compared with nearly 32 percent for traditional corporations.
The difference helped make the organizational structure of a business an important consideration for wealthy owners. The economists argue that the resulting tax advantages can create significant differences between people performing similar work.
A physician who owns a private practice, for example, can face a different tax treatment from a physician employed directly by a hospital, even though both may perform essentially the same professional work.
The distinction between business income and wages therefore became increasingly important as pass-through businesses expanded.
That tax structure also helps explain why Main Street millionaires became such an important part of the inequality story. Their growing wealth was not simply the result of stock-market gains or ownership of giant corporations. It was tied to the expansion and profitability of privately owned businesses operating throughout the economy.
The businesses themselves can be surprisingly large. Politicians sometimes describe pass-through companies as “small businesses,” but the category includes substantial enterprises whose owners earn incomes placing them among the richest Americans.
The resulting wealth is also geographically dispersed. Billionaires tend to be concentrated in major metropolitan areas such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami. Main Street millionaires, by contrast, can be found in hundreds of communities across the country.
That geographic reach gives the group a distinctive form of influence. A wealthy local business owner can be an employer, donor, customer, community sponsor and political constituent at the same time.
From private businesses to political power
The influence of Main Street millionaires extends beyond their companies.
Zidar and Zwick argue that wealthy business owners are significantly overrepresented in American politics. People worth at least $10 million are more than ten times as likely to serve in Congress as their share of the population would suggest, while those worth at least $100 million are 62 times as likely.
The pattern is even more pronounced in state government. The economists estimate that 40 percent of legislators in state legislatures during 2023–24 came from business backgrounds, a figure that rises when lawyers and doctors who own their own practices are included. Twenty-one state legislators were auto dealers during that period.
Wealth alone does not establish corruption or wrongdoing. Business owners can bring valuable experience to public office, and many are elected because voters trust them.
The potential conflict arises when political responsibilities overlap with private economic interests.
The book examines cases involving wealthy politicians whose business interests intersected with legislation affecting taxes, professional regulation or particular industries. One example is former Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, a real estate developer and one of the wealthiest members of Congress. Zidar and Zwick describe his role in the 2017 tax legislation and a provision critics later called the “Corker kickback.” Corker denied the allegations.
Another case involves Michael J. Madigan, the former Illinois House speaker and wealthy lawyer who maintained a private legal practice while holding political power. Madigan was convicted in 2025 on federal corruption charges involving schemes to use his political influence to steer business toward his law firm. The U.S. Department of Justice documented the case in its <a href=”https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndil/pr/former-illinois-speaker-house-michael-j-madigan-sentenced-seven-and-half-years-prison” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>case announcement</a>.
Car dealerships offer another illustration of how economic and political power can reinforce one another.
Dealerships provide services to manufacturers and consumers, including vehicle demonstrations and warranty support. At the same time, many states maintain franchise laws that restrict direct sales by automakers and protect established dealer networks.
Those rules can make dealerships particularly valuable businesses. The economists identify auto dealers as one of the leading categories of pass-through businesses generating income for people in the top 1 percent.
Dealers also possess an unusual political advantage. They are spread across congressional and state legislative districts, employ large numbers of people and often maintain deep relationships within their communities. Their businesses may sponsor youth sports, community events and other local activities.
That combination of wealth, employment and geographic distribution can translate into substantial political clout.
The book describes this phenomenon as a counterweight to the conventional focus on billionaire “oligarchs.” Zwick jokingly refers to these politically influential business owners as “middle-garchs.”
The comparison is not meant to suggest that every wealthy private-business owner behaves the same way. Zidar and Zwick emphasize the diversity of the group, from entrepreneurs who built successful companies through specialized skills and consumer demand to owners whose industries benefit from regulations that limit competition.
What unites them is the scale and breadth of their economic presence.
The economists write that Main Street millionaires collectively possess more than 13 times the wealth of the Forbes 400. For every person on that famous list of multibillionaires, they estimate there are more than 4,000 private-business owners with at least $10 million in net worth.
Their stories can be remarkably different. Dick Portillo built his restaurant business after starting with a modest hot dog stand, eventually creating a company that became a major restaurant empire. Karen Bentlage began by spending $3,000 on a tanning booth and renting it out, later building a large tanning-bed distribution business before moving into waxing salons as consumer preferences changed. Her story is presented in the book as an example of how entrepreneurial opportunity can develop from a relatively small initial investment.
Other fortunes are more closely connected to government-created barriers or professional restrictions. The book discusses medical licensing, alcohol distribution, real estate brokerage and automobile dealerships as industries where regulation can influence competition and profitability.
The result is a more complicated picture of American inequality than one centered exclusively on billionaires. The wealthiest Americans include technology founders and financial investors, but also doctors, dentists, lawyers, consultants, accountants, restaurant owners, manufacturers and dealership operators.
That broader group is difficult to see because its members rarely attract the same attention as celebrity billionaires. Yet their combined wealth, business ownership and political participation make them a significant force in the American economy.
