Richistanis 'Living the Life That They Want'

Nov. 16, 2007— -- These days, there's a different kind of wildly well-to-do — 9 million of them — living large and loving it, and changing the profile of America's super rich. Their options are so limitless, the rules by which they exist are so different from "old money's" day-to-day, that it's as if they live in an imaginary land all their own.

Author Robert Frank is the Columbus of this new world; as revealed in the title of his book, he calls it "Richistan."

"This is really a world unlike the world that you and I live in," he says. "Never before have so many Americans become so wealthy, so quickly … What we have today are people who worked like dogs all their life to get where they are, and that defines them."

Residents of this new world — Richistanis — are workaholic winners who savor their spoils. "This group loves to live large," Frank says. "They love their boats, they love their planes, they love their big houses."

Houses don't come much bigger than the 700-year-old French chateau, 45 minutes outside of Paris, that belongs to 57-year-old American billionaire Tim Blixseth. It boasts rooms full of extravagant furnishings, like a $20,000 bed, a courtyard with Old World grandeur, a medieval chapel, and some modern amenities, too, like a spa.

Blixseth made more than a billion dollars in timber and real estate — yet, he flinches when anyone calls him rich.

"It's a connotation to me, like snooty, arrogant, nose in the air, and 'Oh, they're rich,'" he says. "I don't like rude rich people who [don't] treat the working class with respect."

That attitude may have started in his youth, when he was a "welfare kid," enduring the insults of fellow students back in Oregon. "When you had hot lunches at school," Blixseth explains, "they'd say 'welfare kids get over there,' and the rest of the kids would start heckling us — and that was really, really degrading."

But revenge would be his. "Later on in life, the school district sold that school, and I bought it," he says. "I walked past that counter, where I'd get those lunches. And that was the 'yeah, baby!'"