Currently, there are more than 3,000 billionaires in the world, and nearly one third of them are in the U.S. In the years between President Trump’s first and second inaugurations, 2016 to 2024, the wealth held by America’s billionaires more than doubled.

And yet, these ultra-high-net-worth individuals are something of a mystery to most of us. Average people could probably name a handful of them, such as Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, or Warren Buffet, but their habits, their spending, or their values are something of an enigma.

So during those eight years, Evan Osnos, a staff writer for The New Yorker, was studying that population. The essays he wrote in that time have come together in his new book, “The Haves and the Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich.”

Osnos joined “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal to talk about the moment that the country is in and what he learned while writing this field guide of sorts. An edited transcript of their conversation is below.

Kai Ryssdal: You write in the introduction, in the preface this book, “As I worked on this book,” you write, “it was sometimes tempting to wonder if America was approaching the point of untenable imbalance.” Kind of seems like we are.

Evan Osnos: It does feel that way. I have to say, the disparities today are really historic. And, in fact, if you talk to scholars who study inequality way back, I mean, back to the neolithic period, they said to me, as one archeologist did, he said, “I think the people who built the pyramids were living in a less unequal society.” And he said, “This wealth has accumulated so fast that we haven't really had time for our law and our institutions and our minds really to adapt to it.”

Ryssdal: All right. So look, if the rich in this society today are as rich as any people have been ever, why are they so afraid? Or, to put a more exacting point on it, and obviously this springs from the tech oligarchs in this economy and their interactions with the President the United States, what is the point of having go to heck money, if I could compromise without actually telling people to go to heck? You know, I mean, they're just afraid, and that seems incongruous.

Osnos: I think that's a really important point. There's a way in which, as the divide in a society gets so large, people begin to feel as if they can't afford not to end up on the winning side. And so they often will take steps to, in effect, ensure that the winners keep winning, rather than figure out, is there a way that I can take this accumulated advantage and maybe actually defuse some of the tension? And you know, the history on this is important. There was a time in America, about 100 years ago, in fact, when some of the most powerful capitalists in the country began to look around and said, “You know, the disparities have gotten so large that if we don't figure out a way to begin to ensure that some of the winnings are more evenly distributed, that we could actually lose the whole operation. Capitalism itself could be in doubt.” And that really was a crucial turning point. You had people, first like Teddy Roosevelt, and then ultimately like Franklin Roosevelt, who said, “Our goal here is to make the country sustainable,” and that was part of a process of avoiding the worst consequences, which would be the unraveling.

Ryssdal: And yet, here we are having just had the richest man in the world defenestrate the federal government in the space of, like, four months, wreaking untold havoc on literally tens of thousands of people's lives, and the people with actual political power, and, I say this to you as a — I know we're a show on business and the economy, but you're an observer of the political process. The people with actual political power are sitting on their hands watching it happen. What are you supposed to make of that?

Osnos: Yeah, we've watched something really unprecedented in American history. I mean, even at the height of their powers, when the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts were able to buy and sell members of Congress, you know, none of them had an office in the White House complex. So what we've got today is a culmination of a generation of the accumulation of financial power in our politics. That means that members of Congress, and, look, you just have to call it what it is, the Republican Party today is flat on its back. It's supine in the face of what Trump and Musk did over the course of this joint venture. Nobody was objecting. But this is where you're also beginning to see that the public, on a deep level, is registering the fact that it is offended by this. I mean, the fact that Elon Musk's sales of Tesla dropped 71%, that is a sign of this underlying discomfort that Americans have with this kind of wholesale control of politics by the richest man in the world.

Ryssdal: So, having spent years now on this, as you say, field guide to the ultra rich, and having obviously thought it through as you assembled these dispatches into a book, are you left hopeful or wanting about the future of the — well, the wealth gap is too easy, but about the dichotomy in this economy between those who have so much and the very larger part that have substantially less, and then what that means for the future of our political experiment?

Osnos: I'll tell you I am concerned, but I'm also optimistic, and there's a really specific reason why, which is that you're beginning to see that Americans are noticing this reality. And I think what's becoming clear to people is that it's not about giving up on the aspiration to prosper and succeed in this country, it's about clearly recognizing who and what is standing in the way of actually succeeding. And I think some of the civil society outpouring of concern that we've seen just over the last four or five months during the Musk era in Washington, if we can call it that, the protests, for instance, in Washington that were five times what the projections were beforehand, that is a sign that America historically has a way of finding its way back to a more sustainable path. But it takes a time, and it takes sustained commitment on the part of the public.