JACKSON, Wyo. — A new book by a Yale University professor has been garnering rave reviews and opening eyes to the economic realities of tony Teton County, slave to blue-jean billionaires and their money even as that relationship threatens to tear apart the very fabric of the valley’s soul.
Justin Farrell’s Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West on Princeton University Press is a penetrating “lifestyles of the rich and toxic” account of the ultra-wealthy’s effect on communities of the West like Jackson Hole as they buy up land and leverage one of the most pristine ecosystems in the world to climb even higher on the socioeconomic ladder.
Farrell was born in Wyoming. He spent five years in Teton County so he gets it. He’s seen firsthand how billionaires are pushing out the millionaires who are leaning on a vanishing middle class and a serfdom population of Latinos.
“Billionaire Wilderness takes you inside the exclusive world of the ultra-wealthy,” writes Nathan Deuel in his recent book review for the Los Angeles Times. “[These] wealth-hoarders of Wyoming hide in exclusive gated communities and dress up like the rugged ranch workers they admire and envy. Outside their sprawling mansions, the millionaires and billionaires brag about being authentic and having so many friends among the nonwealthy, but it turns out that these friends are actually servants, workers who are too busy supporting their families to overthrow their masters.”
In his book, Farrell says he ran across a few constants when interviewing the uber-rich who’ve made Teton County their second or third home away from home. One was a feeling they were blending in with and aiding the locals of Jackson Hole.
“[T]he titans of Teton County insist they are actually quite generous, pointing out to Farrell all the nonprofits they’ve founded and the galas they attend. But as our guide elaborately documents, almost all of this generosity goes toward local arts programming and land conservancy — self-serving points of interest for the donors — and rarely if ever to benefit any of the actual human beings who struggle to feed themselves on the two or even three jobs necessary to afford dwindling housing and overpriced food in this corner of paradise,” Deuel observed.
Farrell told High Country News the same, “It’s pretty astounding how much money has flowed into this area and how little social services groups have received. That says it all,” the author said.
