The wealth of billionaires is quite 'real', as long as it's much smaller than the overall amount of money available.
To take a simpler case, take "quantitative easing", QE, which is a euphemism for printing money. Is that money real? Yes. And it will continue to be until people lose confidence in the currency. Remember that money is data - to print a billion dollars a central bank tells their software to do a quick `moneyToLoan += 10e9`.
The wealthy do play a different game, though. The game you play as labor is to keep yourself and your family alive, healthy, and comfortable. This game, call it game 1 is winnable! And when you win that, you get to play another exclusive game, call it game 2 which is 'allocating capital to make even more capital'. (Of course, you don't have to wait to win game 1 to play game 2, and since most people consume in proportion to income, the goalposts move, effectively keeping them in game 1 forever). But game 2 is the game that government plays, but in miniature. It's the game of power; a nice pot of money lets you reach out into the world through labor and do anything the human hand or head can do. The geeky idealists want to do something really big, like settle Mars. The cynical egoists just want MORE, and are willing to commit planetary suicide for a little extra.
