Billionaire Strings
41”x14” copper wire, harp tuning pins, barn board - $800
Seventeen Americans with the greatest household wealth are pulling the strings of commerce and government. On this piece, the length of each musical string represents the wealth of each as of 4Q 2025.
- Elon Musk $342B
- Mark Zuckerberg $216B
- Jeff Bezos $215B
- Larry Ellison $192B
- Warren Buffett $154B
- Larry Page $144B
- Sergey Brin $138B
- Steve Ballmer $118B
- Rob Walton $110B
- Jim Walton $109B
- Bill Gates $108B
- Michael Bloomberg $105B
- Alice Walton $101B
- Jensen Huang $987B
- Michael Dell $977B
- Julia Koch $742B
- Charles Koch $675
One Trillion
24”x36” Acrylic on canvas, framed - $1,200
The Americans with the greatest household wealth are painted here (right to left):
- Elon Musk $367B
- Larry Ellison $287B
- Mark Zuckerberg $263B
- Jeff Bezos $245B
- Larry Page $179B
- Steve Ballmer $174B
- Sergey Brin $167B
- Jensen Huang $153B
- Warren Buffett $147B
- Michael Dell $136B
- Jim Walton $126B
- Rob Walton $124B
- Alice Walton $123B
- Bill Gates $122B
Approximately 134,787,000+ households — effectively ~99.9%+ of all U.S. households have less than $1 billion. The diameter (height) of the 16 ga. wire along the bottom axis represents this group.
Source: Forbes 400 3Q 2024
One Billion
24”x24” Acrylic on canvas, framed - $1,000
This painting shows the wealth of four contemporary entertainers (right to left):
- Taylor Swift – $1B
- Selena Gomez – $700 M
- Reece Witherspoon – $400M
- Meryl Streep – $100M
The diameter (height) of the 22 ga. wire along the baseline represents, to scale, $1 million.
One Million
24”x24” Acrylic on foam panel, framed - $1,200
Starting with a household wealth of $1M, the data on this painting display (left to right):
- $1 million
- $750,000
- $500,000
- $250,000
- $125,000
- $0
- -$50,000
- -$100,000
The diameter (height) of the wire along the baseline represents $1,000 bucks.
Roughly 10–15% of U.S. households — or about 13–20 million households — have less than $1,000 in net wealth.
Five Wealthy Men
10”x12” Mixed Media on panel - $400
As of 3Q 2025 five men are poised to attain $1 trillion in wealth.
(top to bottom)
-
- Elon Musk $367B
- Larry Ellison $287B
- Mark Zuckerberg $263B
- Jeff Bezos $245B
- Larry Page $179B
The 32 ga. wire along the baseline represents those who have $1 billion or less in wealth.
Sharing 50-50
10”x12” Mixed Media on panel - $400
Imagine this:
20 people are in a liferaft out at sea. Everyone’s hungry. 20 flying fish fly into the liferaft. Yea, sashimi! But wait, one jerk grabs 10 fish and says “fifty fifty”. WTF!
I posed this question to Claude:
According to Fed data, 3Q 2025, the total us household wealth is $181.6 trillion. What percentage of households holds half of this?
After a lot of hemming and hawing (see my full discussion with Claude) it showed a range of ~4-6%
In this painting, the top 5% hold half – the bottom 95% hold the other half.