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Today, some five years after the end of the Great Recession, too many American families are still struggling to make ends meet and are living paycheck to paycheck. Millions of Americans find their cost of living soaring and face the sobering reality that their jobs are not paying enough to support their families. But while working and middle-class families are being squeezed, America’s millionaires and billionaires, rich CEOs, and big corporations are living a very different existence and are seeing their wealth, pay, and profits skyrocket.

This inequality is not the result of some luck of the draw or happenstance; it is by design. These millionaires and billionaires, CEOs, and big corporations use a wide array of tactics to make sure that the economic and political system works for them. The billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch are no strangers to this approach. They have used their immense wealth and considerable connections to build a network of political action groups, think tanks, issue advocacy organizations-most notably Americans for Prosperity, or AFP-and like-minded elected officials to rig the system to benefit their bottom line, often at the expense of everyone else.

The Koch brothers have significant financial interests motivating them. Charles and David Koch are ranked as the fifth- and sixth-richest individuals in the world, with an estimated worth of more than $52 billion each. With Charles as CEO and David as executive vice president, the brothers oversee Koch Industries, Inc., America’s second-largest privately held company, a business empire heavily invested in oil and gas, chemicals, transportation, and manufacturing.

Over the years, the Koch brothers have used their vast network to attack government on multiple fronts and levels across multiple issues. But despite the fact the Koch network engages on a broad range of issues-from dismantling workplace protections and repealing the Affordable Care Act to discrediting climate change to opposing a zoo tax in Columbus, Ohio-these attacks have as their overarching purpose to sow discontent with and shrink government. Tim Phillips, head of the Koch-funded AFP, admitted as much when he explained that his organization’s attacks on the Affordable Care Act were really about reducing the size of government. “We have a broader cautionary tale,” said Phillips. “The president’s out there touting billions of dollars on climate change. We want Americans to think about what [the government] promised with the last social welfare boondoggle and look at what the actual result is.”