America touts itself as an egalitarian society. But the way we reward people suggests that while everyone has an equal chance to get rich, only about five people can make more than a billion in a year. The way these five people get there reveals what our society most values -- the ability to help people with huge amounts of money get much richer as quickly and consistently as possible.

Wednesday's New York Times listed those five most valuable players. Here are our society's biggest winners, where they work, how much they made in 2007, and how they won:

• John Paulson (Paulson & Co.) -- 2007 earnings: $3.7 billion. Beginning in 2005, Paulson made huge bets on the decline in value of securities backed by subprime mortgages
• George Soros (Soros Fund Management) -- 2007 earnings: $2.9 billion. Soros' $17 billion flagship Quantum Endowment fund racked up a 31.7% return in 2007, its best annual showing since the high-tech implosion at the start of this decade. Soros' $2.9 billion payday comes almost entirely from his personal stake in the fund (which he no longer manages). I don't know how he made that 31.7% return.
• James Simons (Renaissance Technology) -- 2007 earnings: $2.8 billion. Simons, a mathematician and former Defense Department code breaker, uses complex computer models to trade.

• Philip Falcone (Harbinger Capital Partners) -- 2007 earnings: $1.7 billion. Like Paulson, Falcone placed a winning bet against the mortgage market. He pulled in returns of 117% after fees in 2007.
• Kenneth Griffin (Citadel Investment Corp.) -- 2007 earnings: $1.5 billion. Griffin manages $20 billion and is a big information technology innovator that trades derivatives. equity securities. and listed options and buys distressed assets at a discount. For example, In late 2007 a Citadel-led group put $2.55 billion into struggling E*Trade Financial Corp., (NASDAQ: ETFC), the U.S.'s fourth-largest discount brokerage.

It's hard to find out much of the details of how these guys made this money. But there's a good chance that they are paying a 15% capital gains tax on the loot. That's unfair since they put very little of their own capital at risk in their trades -- most of the capital comes from banks and limited partners.

But our society values these people so much that it makes the median family -- earning $60,500 -- pay a higher tax rate (28%) than five who are among the richest people.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in E*Trade securities.