The Aspen Elite: Wealth, Power, and the Lives of the Super-wealthy

The mountain resort town of Aspen, Colorado, is an ultra-exclusive power elite ’enclave’ and ’hub’ where both the US and global power elite own property, vacation, and meet together. Over fifty billionaires have homes or real estate investments in Aspen; more than 90% of the world’s billionaires at some point have docked their private aircraft at ＂Sardy Field,＂ the town’s airport. Aspen is defined by exclusivity, where the average home price hovers in the multiple millions.

Based on years of in-depth ethnographic field research, this rare look into the lives of the super-wealthy sheds new light on how the 1% lives, thinks, and wields extraordinary power in America and internationally. The book’s vivid prose makes the book an ideal reading for courses in social class, inequality, and social stratification, and power in American society.

In Aspen, Veblen’s notion of conspicuous consumption has morphed into colossal consumption, Marx’s observations of ＂mammon＂ or ＂avarice＂ of the capitalist ownership class has transformed into hyper-gluttony and warp-greed that Marx would have difficulty comprehending. Moreover, Aspen is site of the intersections of politics, money, and war, where one witnesses the elites’ control over states, economies, and militaries that Mills and Domhoff identify.

Sean Elias studies racial group divisions and epistemological color lines in social science, black cultural-intellectual traditions, particularly black social thought and Louisiana Creole culture, and perspectives and practices of elites. He has taught at Prairie View A&M University (an HBCU) and Southern Methodist University (an HWCU) and now teaches at Colorado Mountain College while completing fieldwork on the Aspen elite.