Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West

by Justin Farrell

The average income for the top 1 percent in Teton County is $28.2 million. This is by far the highest for all counties in the United States.

In 2005, the club trademarked the words “Private Powder.”

a conservation easement donor can enjoy significant income and estate tax savings, which can help offset the acquisition costs of a new property.… Conservation easement donations can have four potential tax advantages: (a) the value of the easement may be considered a charitable gift and be deductible from your federal income tax, (b) the easement may reduce estate tax, (c) the easement may reduce your property tax, and (d) some expenses related to a conservation easement donation may be deductible.4

“What’s the definition of an environmentalist? [pause] The guy who bought his place last year!”

First, conservation has directly and indirectly intensified wealth inequality by making the area uniquely attractive to the ultra-wealthy, creating intense housing demand and land scarcity that has dramatically reshaped who lives in the community, and how people make their money.

But the better person in them knows that they can, and should, revitalize themselves in natural and purer quests, guided by a romanticized view that nature possesses the power to offset all the unnatural ills of civilization.

For people like Duane, the solution is contained within the problem. Even though some have sacrificed time with their families, their health, their moral character, or their religious ideals, they now have plenty of money and time to recapture what was sacrificed along the way. In the face of this economic dilemma, it is the union of money with nature that provides the solution.

I think here in Jackson, the conspicuous consumption, where you really see it is when you land at the airport and you look out the window and then you see all these private jets, but once you get past that, there’s not a lot of it going on.”

Or consider Laurence Wafford, who wonders if his guilt is actually just self-serving sanctimony—a way for him to merely feel good about himself despite his role in perpetuating the inequality all around him. Expressing guilt was just a way to prove to himself that he had some semblance of character.

Sitting on the couch in a gorgeous home near downtown Jackson, one woman expressed similar determinism and hopelessness because the billionaires are in control, and the millionaires are left helpless to change things. “How do you change anything?

It is estimated that about 30 to 40 percent of the Hispanic population in Teton County is living in federally qualified poverty, compared to just 7 percent of white non-Hispanics.

“He made all of his money running oil … or initially made his first batch of money running oil past the South African oil embargo in the ’80s … [yet] he’d come back down to the office sometimes and he would say, ‘Here let’s use this again. Turn this page over, use the back side; we’re going to recycle all of our paper.’ ” The hypocrisy was almost too much for him to take, he says, continuing, “I’m like, ‘You just flew in here in a Gulf Stream. Why do you care?’ [Recycling] just doesn’t matter, you know, you’re keeping this 15,000-square-foot mansion heated year round, and empty, and you’re worried about that? But you know, I guess it made him feel better.”