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To numerous US citizens, the economy over the recent five-year span has been challenging. Prices have skyrocketed while salaries remains flat. High mortgage rates have made homeownership a dismal prospect. The jobless rate has been gradually increasing.

Many Americans have stated they're putting off major life decisions, including raising children or switching jobs, because of financial volatility. But for a tiny fraction of people, the recent half-decade couldn't have been any better.

Wealth Explosion

The wealth of the world's billionaires grew 54% in 2020, at the peak of the pandemic. And even throughout all the financial uncertainty, the stock market has only continued to grow. This increase has primarily advantaged just a limited group of Americans: 10% of the population holds 93% of stock market wealth.

However unequal as this allocation seems, it's the economic framework working as it is currently designed.

"The wealthy have acquired their jets, they've acquired their multiple houses and mansions, but now they're buying senators and media outlets," stated economic inequality analyst Chuck Collins. "We're now moving into this other chapter of maximum resource removal where the wealthy are preying on the system of inequality."

Mapping Economic Classes

To help others grasp what exactly it means to be "wealthy" in the US, Collins borrows a concept from journalist Robert Frank who, in a 2007 book on the rich, imagined the different levels of wealth as "Affluencia" villages: Affluent Town, Lower Richistan, Middle Richistan, Upper Richistan and Billionaireville.

To contemporize the concept, Collins classifies these "wealth villages" based on income levels:

• At the base level, Affluent Town, are the 10 million Americans who have a household income of at least $110,000 and an overall wealth of over $1.5m.
• The villages get more restricted as wealth goes up: Lower Richistan has 2.6 million households who have wealth between $6m and $13m.
• Middle Richistan has 1.3 million households who have assets worth an average of $37m.
• Upper Richistan, made up of 130,000 Americans (roughly the size of a small city) has between $60m to $1bn in wealth.

Altogether, the residents of these villages make up the top 10% of the wealth income distribution, about 14 million Americans altogether, though their experiences vary dramatically.

"You could be in Lower Richistan, and you're still flying in the coach section of a commercial plane," Collins noted. "Whereas in Upper Richistan, you're traveling via a private jet. That's a really distinct lifestyle. You fly private, you have no stakes in the commercial aviation system. You don't care if the whole system shuts down – you're set."

The Billionaireville Effect

The highest hill in "Richistan" is Billionaireville, which is made up of about 800 American billionaires who are some of the world's most affluent. The power that this group has far surpasses those who are simply well-off, let alone the average American who doesn't live in "Richistan" at all.

But Collins thinks the political catchphrase "billionaires shouldn't exist" misses the point and has a "hint of elimination" to it.

"It's the separation between individual behaviors and a system of rules," Collins said. "We should be worried about an economic system that funnels so much wealth upward to the billionaires."

Fortune Building Strategies

To understand how wealth at the billionaire level works, Collins breaks it down into four parts: accumulating assets, protecting assets, government influence and hyper-extraction.

When many Americans think about wealth, they usually think only about the first step, Collins said. People can create a limited sum of wealth through creating or operating a successful business, which could get them residency in Affluent Town.

But getting to Billionaireville requires serious investment and strategy in those next three steps. Collins describes what he calls the "fortune security field": the tax lawyers, accountants and wealth managers who use their knowledge to ensure that the super rich are being strategic about their taxes.

"Wealth defense professionals use a broad range of tools such as trusts, international accounts, secret corporations, philanthropic entities and other vehicles to hold assets," he explains.

Political Influence and Hyper-Extraction

To enhance a wealth defense strategy, a family needs government backing. Wealth of over $40m translates to political power, Collins says, and can be used to secure fortune and maintain expansion.

The last stage is a different kind of wealth accumulation, one that Collins calls "hyper extraction" to describe how the wealthy have come to touch nearly every single part of an Americans' everyday life largely through private equity, which allows wealthy individuals to invest in private companies.

"Private equity is looking for those areas of the economy where they can extract value a little bit harder," Collins said. "One thing I don't think people comprehend is these billionaire private-equity funds are what happens when so much wealth is stored in so few hands, and they can basically shift and say, 'Where else can we squeeze money out of the economy?' Healthcare? Great. Mobile home parks? These people can't go anywhere, [so] you can increase their costs."

Actual Impacts

The results of this inequality go beyond the wealth getting wealthier. It's about people facing higher costs for their healthcare, rent and vet bills without seeing any substantial income improvement. And Collins said the hardship and discontent of this kind of society can lead to profound dissatisfaction.

"The most powerful affluent rulers understand people are being excluded [and] are financially struggling," Collins said, adding that Republicans have been good at tapping into a potent "phony populism".

Government Truth

The contradiction, Collins points out in his book, is that elected representatives have appointed a succession of billionaires to administrative posts. Along with tech billionaires who had brief but powerful roles overseeing massive cuts to the federal workforce, other important roles for commerce, treasury, education and the interior are also all billionaires.

This government structure, along with help from congressional allies, helped pass significant fiscal policies, which will make lasting reductions for the wealthy and corporations.

Future Solutions

While government groups continue to argue that foreign entry and poor economic deals are the source of everyone's economic problems, "the question becomes: Will the alternative political group, which has also been captured by the billionaires and big money, be able to effectively tackle the underlying harms?" Collins said.

Left-leaning officials, he argues, know what policies are needed to "alter economic flow", including deep changes to the tax system, raising the minimum wage and empowering worker groups.

"It was so, so close, and the bill really did represent the will of the majority of people who really want lawmakers to address some of these critical challenges," Collins said. "Elite control is not about building so much as blocking. It's easier to block than it is to make something meaningful happen, but the historical precedent is there. We know what that looks like."

Collins is optimistic that there can be change, but said it would require continuous government action.

"It may be sooner than expected that the balance shifts, and then it really is about preserving a sustained really popular movement to make progress on this profound imbalance we're living in," he said. "We can fix this. It is solvable."