The people, companies and trends shaping the global economy. Watch Carol and Tim LIVE every day on YouTube: http://bit.ly/3vTiACF

Billionaires are difficult to ignore these days — flying into space, funding election campaigns, promoting AI, warning about AI and generally making a racket on social media. One billionaire sits in the Oval Office, while others control the world’s large language models and internet algorithms, including the choice of just how addictive our devices should be.

A new book, The Everywhere Millionaire: Who Is Really Rich in America and How They Got There, tries to uncover much more about this somewhat hidden slice of America’s upper crust. Sifting through the available evidence, economists Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick argue we’re getting distracted by the loudest and richest billionaires and missing the much more numerous “Main Street millionaires” who are the real sources of wealth and power in America.

We speak with the book's authors Owen Zidar, Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, and Eric Zwick, Associate Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago School of Business.