American capitalism is run by millionaires, not billionaires
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Business | Schumpeter<br>American capitalism is run by millionaires, not billionaires<br>They hide in plain sight—and wield enormous power<br>Share
Illustration: Brett Ryder
Jun 10th 2026|5 min read
Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley want to change the world. The ones profiled in “The Everywhere Millionaire”, a forthcoming book by Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick, are different. They find something boring, often catatonically so, then pursue it with star-spangled doggedness until they become rich. A typical character sells gutters in Texas. Another distributes toilet paper in New Jersey. One woman in California began baking quiches for her own parties and simply did not stop. Two decades later she was making more than a million quiches a day and owned a yacht.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Gilded obscurity”
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