S&P 500 profits are set to surge more than 30% this quarter, but nearly two-thirds of that growth comes from a handful of AI giants — and working Americans won't see a dime of it.
The stock market isn't the economy. While Wall Street celebrates record highs, the gains are concentrated in tech behemoths like Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta Platforms, according to International Business Times. Outside of tech and energy — where oil profits spiked 115% thanks to sharply higher crude prices during the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran — the picture is grim. Consumer staples and real estate are posting some of the weakest earnings growth, the sectors where ordinary Americans spend their paychecks and build equity.
Samana, an analyst cited by IB Times, pointed to those lagging sectors as proof the boom is anything but broad: "Almost as telling is if you look at the sectors that are not related to AI at all."
Here's the twist: the same tech titans raking in historic profits are simultaneously demanding more regulation — the kind that would lock in their dominance and box out competitors. Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder whose company stands to gain enormously from AI infrastructure, took to CNN to warn that artificial intelligence is "more dangerous than cars or planes or drugs" and called for unprecedented global governance frameworks.
"This unprecedented technology demands an unprecedented global response," Gates wrote in an August essay, as reported by the Daily Caller. Translation: the people who built the machine now want to decide who gets to use it.
Follow the money. S&P 500 earnings surged nearly 54% in the second quarter — the strongest growth since 2021, per LSEG data cited by IB Times. But strip out mark-to-market gains on AI investments recorded by Alphabet and Amazon, and real earnings growth drops to roughly 35%. Part of the boom is an accounting trick.
Meanwhile, the sectors that employ most Americans are flat or falling. Consumer staples — groceries, household goods, the things families buy every week — are barely growing. Real estate is struggling under the weight of the Federal Reserve's high interest rates, imposed to fight the very inflation eating away at take-home pay.
Gates told CNN's Jake Tapper the immediate danger isn't AI running wild but "bad people using AI" with safeguards removed. He warned of cyberattacks and market manipulation within the next year. But notice what he's really arguing: the technology his peers created is too dangerous for anyone but themselves to control. The call for safety doubles as a call for consolidation.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has already penned a letter calling for a development slowdown so oversight can catch up. OpenAI's Sam Altman shares the concern. When the biggest players in an industry agree the government needs to step in, it's worth asking who gets regulated and who gets the exemption.
For small businesses drowning in inflation and supply chain costs, the AI boom might as well be on another planet. They don't have the capital to build AI infrastructure or the lobbying budgets to shape the regulatory moats being constructed around Big Tech. The 30% profit surge belongs to a narrow few — and they intend to keep it that way.
The question isn't whether AI will reshape the economy. It's whether that reshaping will serve the country — or just the handful of companies writing the rules.
