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Michael Jackson once again leads Forbes’ 2025 ranking of the highest-paid dead celebrities, pulling in an eye-popping $105 million in estate earnings this year and presiding over roughly $3.5 billion in lifetime estate value. That a man who died in 2009 still tops these charts says less about mysticism and more about the brutal, unapologetic power of intellectual property in a capitalist market. Americans should be proud that our entertainment industry builds global brands that keep working long after their creators are gone, even if the legacy-media left refuses to celebrate success.
The list is overwhelmingly musical — ten of the top thirteen spots belong to musicians — and this year brought heavyweight names like The Notorious B.I.G., Miles Davis and Jimmy Buffett into the spotlight for the afterlife economy. These estates keep cash flowing through catalog sales, licensing deals, and perpetual touring machines like Vegas residencies and themed productions, proving that culture is commerce. For every virtue-signaling attack on celebrity, there’s a sober market reality: a great song or brand generates real dollars for real people, long after the artists are gone.
How did Michael Jackson build that posthumous fortune? He was a shrewd buyer of catalogs and a relentless monetizer of his catalog rights, including historic deals that saw stakes in publishing and masters sold to major companies; a reported 2024 sale moved a 50 percent stake for roughly $600 million, according to reporting based on Forbes’ accounting. That isn’t sleight of hand — it’s property management, estate planning, and the fruits of decades of intellectual property ownership. Conservatives should applaud that kind of foresight and the legal framework that allows heirs to benefit from decades of hard work.
Let’s be blunt: the spectacle of dead celebrities earning tens of millions makes some elites squeamish, but the alternative — government or activist confiscation of creative rights — would be a disaster for every songwriter, author, and small business owner who depends on the rule of law to protect their future. Property rights aren’t a liberal or conservative perk; they are the backbone of a free society and the reason families can pass on prosperity. If we want more prosperous American families, we should defend the institutions that let creative people convert talent into lasting wealth.
The newcomers on the 2025 list underscore how catalog sales and savvy executors can vault estates back into the headlines: The Notorious B.I.G. is credited with about $80 million in annual estate earnings, Miles Davis with roughly $21 million, and Jimmy Buffett posthumously earning in the mid-teens. Those figures reflect real transactions and licensing deals that feed accountants, venue workers, and countless service businesses — the ripple effects of creative capitalism. Americans who work for a living ought to recognize that when cultural products succeed, it’s not just stars who benefit; whole supply chains do.
Of course, there’s a lesson in all this for modern artists: own your masters, think long-term, and don’t hand away the keys to your work because a tweetstorm or a PR consultant tells you to. The left’s cultural purge and cancel campaigns love to pretend success is illegitimate unless it serves their agenda, but the market doesn’t care about virtue signaling — it rewards value. That stubborn truth is what keeps estates thriving and what conservatives should trumpet: creativity, stewardship, and entrepreneurship still win in America.
At the end of the day this Forbes-driven tally is a patriotic reminder that American culture exports remain among our most valuable assets, and that the free market converts creativity into multigenerational wealth. If the elites want to critique who makes money after they’re gone, they should at least be honest enough to admit their attacks are about envy, not principle. Hardworking Americans understand that defending property, contracts, and markets means protecting opportunities for the next generation to build fortunes of their own.
