

On second thought, even a billion dollars isn't cool enough. (Columbia Pictures)

A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? $1.55 billion. That's how much it took to make the cut for this year's vintage of the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans.

Pity the poor robber baron who's only amassed a $1.54 billion fortune.

Now, there's a ritualistic element to all this computing, quantifying, and cataloging. It seems like every year Bill Gates is number one, followed by Warren Buffett, a bunch of Walton heirs, and then an ever-longer list of Wall Street titans who run the gamut from CNBC celebrities to the anonymously opulent. But it's worth reminding ourselves that we didn't always have an economy where the surest path to dynastic wealth involved the words "two-and-20." Indeed, financiers only made up about 4.4 percent of the inaugural Forbes 400 in 1982; it's around 21 percent today. And, as you can see below, this is a story about the rise and rise of private equity and hedge funds.

This is what happens when Wall Street gets deregulated, the tax code favors leverage, and globalization creates more things to buy or bet on than ever before. And it's this financialization of fortunes that explains why America's super-rich don't need America's economy to do well to do well themselves.

Just look at the past few years. It's been a slow and steady and disappointing recovery for the real economy, but a blistering one for the financial economy — which is why the Forbes 400's total wealth is up 40 percent in inflation-adjusted terms since just 2011. In nominal dollars, they control $2.29 trillion today. They can thank a soaring stock market and ultra low interest rates, among other things.

The rich, in other words, are different from you and me: they have more money, so they can make more money.