The Real Stories Billionaires Tell Themselves to Justify Their Wealth

A Yale professor interviewed the ultra-wealthy in Teton County, WY to find out what it’s like to be really, really rich

Teton County, Wyoming — home to Jackson Hole, Yellowstone National Park, and Grand Teton National Park — is the most unequal county in America. Over the past two decades, the ultra-wealthy have flocked here, an area of extreme natural beauty and nonexistent personal and corporate income tax. The median salary for locals is only $41,000 a year, and housing is nearly impossible to find, starkly dividing the area between those who have wealth and those who serve them.

In his new book, Billionaire Wilderness, Justin Farrell, an associate professor of sociology at Yale, interviewed more than 155 multimillionaires and billionaires who spend at least part of their year living in the mountaintop towns of Teton County. Farrell pursued the region’s ultra-wealthy as a sociological study, giving his subjects the option of anonymity to speak freely. They responded eagerly, ready to dispel myths about what it’s like to be really, really rich in America today.

GEN: How did you approach the superrich about interviewing them for your book?