This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. In Donald Trump's big, beautiful bill,

it's estimated that 57 million households could see their tax bills go up or remain flat,

while the top 5% of earners will have their taxes cut by more than $1.5 trillion.

$1.5 trillion.

It's been called the largest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle

classes to the rich in a single law in U.S. history. The move here should hardly come as a shock.

Trump's appeal, his style is populist somehow, but all along the reality of his policies

have benefited the interests of the wealthy, the extremely wealthy, and billionaires

have been granted unprecedented position of access and power in this administration.

From his Perch in Washington, staff writer Evanos has been reporting on the politics and

the culture of a new oligarchy in America. And he's been asking this question,

what do you get for spending nearly $300 million on an election?

Not to mention another question.

What's the point of owning a boat that's the size of a football field?

Evans reporting is collected in a new book called The Haves and the Hav Yachts,

dispatches on the ultra-rich.

Evan, for years, we've been hearing about oligarchy in Russia.

We've been hearing about oligarchic structures in China, your old neck of the woods, and many other places, but never quite here.

We hear about millionaires and billionaires and all the rest, but not oligarchy.

What is an oligarchy really, and why are we hearing about it now in American terms?

Aristotle defined it.

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