Forbes’ 25th annual ranking of the highest-paid dead celebrities once again underscores how America’s culture and its markets reward talent long after the curtain falls, with Michael Jackson sitting atop the list. The annual roundup — compiled from sales, streaming, licensing and estate deals — reads like a roll call of cultural powerhouses whose work still moves markets and minds.
According to the reporting on the list, Jackson’s estate pulled in roughly $105 million in 2025 and his lifetime catalog is valued at around $3.5 billion, a staggering reminder that ownership of intellectual property is one of the last great wealth-building engines. Those are not small numbers; they’re the payoff of control over creative assets that keep giving.
The lineup around Jackson reads like a music-industry who’s-who: The Notorious B.I.G. logged about $80 million, Miles Davis about $21 million, and Jimmy Buffett roughly $14 million, showing that musicians — not movie stars or influencers — dominate this market. American cultural exports continue to rake in dollars globally, and the Forbes list proves that even in death the marketplace still knows how to value hits and brands.
Let’s be blunt: it looks absurd to watch estates and catalog managers mint millions while working families struggle to keep up with inflation and rising costs. That contrast should anger every patriot who believes in fair rewards for honest labor and sensible economic policy rather than adulation for celebrity for its own sake. If our nation truly values hard work, we should celebrate business models that let ordinary Americans build and protect wealth, not just glorify the lucky few who become posthumous cash machines.
Part of why Jackson and others remain cash cows is smart, unapologetic ownership: Jackson purchased the ATV catalog in 1985 and the pieces of that publishing legacy were later monetized in blockbuster deals, including stakes sold to major companies in recent years that shifted billions around the marketplace. These transactions are textbook capitalist moves — buy assets, manage them, and unlock value — and conservatives ought to study, admire, and emulate that discipline.
There’s a lesson here for Americans tired of political theater and virtue-signaling elites: property rights and free markets create enduring value. While the lawyers and managers who handle these estates certainly take their cuts, the real takeaway should be that control over your work and investments outlives buzzwords and headlines — and that’s an argument for economic policies that protect ownership and reward creators.
So to the hard-working men and women who get up before dawn and keep this country running: build, protect, and pass on your own legacies. The headlines about dead celebrities earning huge sums are flashy, but the quiet victories—owning a business, buying property, registering a trademark—are the conservative blueprint for generational prosperity.
