Why has America suddenly allowed billionaires to run our country?

Last week while out running, I found myself thinking about places like Jackson, Bozeman and Missoula.

Not the postcard versions. Not the magazine photos with perfect fly fishermen standing knee deep in rivers while somebody in a $900 flannel shirt drinks coffee nearby pretending they just discovered the outdoors.

I was thinking about the people who actually keep those towns alive.

The mechanics. The schoolteachers. The nurses. The snowplow drivers. The grocery store workers. The construction crews building luxury homes they themselves could never afford to enter through the front door.

Because increasingly, the people doing the actual work in many Western towns cannot afford to live in the communities they serve.

That should bother us more than it does.

Jackson Hole may be the clearest example in America. At some point the economy stopped revolving around ordinary people and started revolving around extraordinary wealth. Billionaires and multi-millionaires poured in, property values exploded and eventually normal salaries became almost meaningless.

Teachers commute long distances because they cannot afford housing near the schools where they teach. Young families leave. Workers stack roommates into tiny apartments while empty vacation homes sit dark most of the year waiting for wealthy owners to arrive a few weekends each winter.

And yet we’re somehow supposed to view this as success.

Bozeman feels headed the same direction. Missoula, too.

Beautiful mountain towns slowly transforming into luxury investment portfolios.

The strange part is how often ordinary working people defend the very system pushing them out.

A mechanic in Wyoming pays taxes on every paycheck without much choice in the matter. Federal taxes. Property taxes. Gas taxes. Sales taxes. Vehicle registration fees. Insurance premiums that now feel like monthly ransom payments.

A teacher gets the exact same treatment.

Meanwhile, billionaires often maneuver through a maze of loopholes, deductions and investment structures most normal Americans will never even hear about, much less benefit from.

Apparently, once you reach a certain level of wealth, the tax code changes from a rulebook into an escape room.

And yet suggest that maybe billionaires should pay a little more and people react like you’re personally trying to repossess Grandpa’s tractor.

I understand admiring success. Wyoming has always respected hard work, risk and entrepreneurship. We should.

But there’s a difference between admiring successful people and creating communities where only wealthy people can comfortably survive.

When teachers, police officers, nurses and firefighters can no longer afford homes in the towns they serve, something has gone wrong.

That’s not class warfare. That’s math.

And maybe that’s part of the reason this cycle keeps repeating itself. In Wyoming, all three members of our congressional delegation are multi-millionaires. Much of national politics is dominated by wealthy people funded by even wealthier people. Many major media companies are owned by enormous corporations or billionaires themselves.

Eventually the people writing the rules, shaping the conversations and funding the campaigns all start living in roughly the same financial universe.

Meanwhile, the ranch hand outside Lovell and the mechanic in Powell are living in another one entirely.

Sometimes it feels like America has become a country where ordinary people are encouraged to admire wealth more than question power.

And now we live in an era where the richest man in modern history can walk onto a stage carrying a chainsaw while cheering crowds applaud massive cuts to government agencies, universities and research programs.

Not every government program deserves saving. Waste exists. Bureaucracy can absolutely become bloated and ridiculous. Anybody who has ever spent an afternoon dealing with paperwork already knows that.

But somewhere inside those budget cuts are career scientists, medical researchers and public health workers who devoted decades of their lives trying to cure diseases and solve problems the rest of us are all terrified of facing ourselves someday.

There’s something unsettling about billionaires treating public institutions like failing tech companies that simply need aggressive downsizing, especially when the people making the cuts will never personally worry about paying rent, affording healthcare or buying groceries afterward.

Maybe that’s what struck me most while running last week.

The people carrying the heaviest burdens in America are often the first ones voting to protect the people carrying the lightest ones.