Middlegarchs are the new Oligarchs
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Who are the “stealthy wealthy” and why are they called Main‑Street millionaires?
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Billionaires, man. Am I right?
They're having a moment.
They're launching rockets into space. They're controlling algorithms that influence what we see and how we shop.
Funding elections. And there is this feeling among some, many, that the billionaires have too much power over the US right now.
Some people are calling them the oligarchs.
Yeah, but there is another influential group in America, a bigger group that sometimes has more power than the flashy billionaires. The
stealthy wealthy. The
stealthy wealthy.
We call
them the stealthy wealthy because they fly under the radar. Eric Zwick is an economist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He says, Many of us have a distorted picture of wealth and power in America. It's not just the so-called oligarchs.
So the oligarchs, we're giving them too much credit for, you know, controlling things. And we're not giving enough credit to the middle garks.
The middle garks.
I mean middle garky. Middle garky is fun. It's fun.
Eric has spent more than a decade researching who is rich in America and how they got rich. And he has a new book out about what he calls the middle garky or the stealthy wealthy. It is about this specific group of three million multimillionaires in the US who together make the billionaires look like small potatoes.
Because this group collectively holds more than 13 times the wealth of the Forbes 400 Richest Billionaires.
They're way wealthier. But unlike the billionaires, who mainly live in the big superstar cities with the tech industries and the finance industries, the stealthy wealthy are not just in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street.
We call them Main Street Millionaires because they're on every Main Street. Erica's another
name for them. The Everywhere Millionaire. It's actually the title of his new book.
You're you're into nicknames, it seems like. We can go
through the appliances in my kitchen and I can tell you what they're all called.
What's your toaster called?
Angus MacGyver.
No hesitation there. Okay, but to be fair to Eric, there is a meaning behind each of these nicknames.
Yeah, Main Street Millionaire, Everywhere Millionaire. This has to do with where these people are, and also the kind of like mundane industries that made them millionaires.
Yeah, like one made their fortune on hamburger buns, another, steel garage doors.
And then the nicknames middle garky or stealthy wealthy, those have to do with this group's political power and how people aren't paying enough attention.
At the center of this group's story is a quiet revolution in the American economy, the rise of a particular kind of private business.
Yeah, these millionaires, they are all the owners of what is called a pass-through business.
These pass-throughs, they are raking in more dough than all traditional corporations combined. Move over corporate America. Hello and welcome to Pass Through America. I'm Greg Rosalski.
And I'm Sarah Gonzalez. The US has had a giant blind spot when it comes to wealth in America. But Eric and his colleagues got their hands on a gold mine of data.
And they uncovered an epic story of wealth and power in America.
Today on the show, how 40 years of preferential tax policies have helped propel a stealthy, wealthy class of private business owners into the 1%.
How did Eric Zwick and his team uncover the hidden wealth of pass‑through business owners?
And how today those middle garks are wielding their power to shape how we buy cars. Who gets to whiten our teeth? Where we get our beer, whether a nurse can diagnose us or it has to be a doctor. And how the middle garks
Also shaped who pays what in taxes.
Are they the protagonists of this story? Are they antagonists who are these people?
They are the protagonists, but some of them are protagonists in the same way Tony Soprano is a protagonist of a show.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who are the “stealthy wealthy” and why are they called Main‑Street millionaires?
0:01–3:48
2
How did Eric Zwick and his team uncover the hidden wealth of pass‑through business owners?
3:48–8:02
3
What are pass‑through businesses and why do they pay lower taxes than corporations?
8:02–11:11
4
How did the 1986 tax reform create a boom in pass‑through ownership?
11:11–14:51
5
Which everyday industries (car dealers, dentists, quiche makers) dominate the top‑1 %?
14:51–18:12
6
How do middle‑gark (stealthy wealthy) owners influence tax policy and legislation?
18:12–21:15
7
Why are car‑dealer lobbyists blocking direct‑to‑consumer sales like Tesla’s?
21:15–26:53
8
What are the broader economic consequences of the pass‑through tax deduction?
26:53–31:48