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Among countless individuals in the United States, the economic climate over the past five years has been challenging. Expenses have soared while salaries remains stagnant. Elevated mortgage rates have made purchasing property a bleak prospect. The jobless rate has been slowly rising.

Many Americans have reported they're putting off major life decisions, including starting a family or moving to new employment, because of the instability. But for a very small group of people, the past five-year period couldn't have been more successful.

Wealth Explosion

The assets of the world's billionaires grew 54% in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. And even during all the financial uncertainty, the stock market has only kept rising. This increase has primarily advantaged just a limited group of Americans: 10% of the population owns 93% of stock market wealth.

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

"The wealthy have purchased their jets, they've purchased their multiple houses and mansions, but now they're buying senators and media outlets," explained economic inequality analyst Chuck Collins. "We're now stepping into this other chapter of extreme wealth extraction where the wealthy are exploiting the system of inequality."

Mapping Economic Classes

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

To update 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 annual salary of at least $110,000 and an total assets of over $1.5m.
• The villages get more exclusive 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.

In total, the residents of these villages comprise the top 10% of the wealth income distribution, about 14 million Americans altogether, though their circumstances vary dramatically.

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

The Billionaireville Effect

The summit in "Richistan" is Billionaireville, which is made up of about 800 American billionaires who are some of the world's richest. The influence that this group has far surpasses those who are simply wealthy, let alone the ordinary person who doesn't inhabit "Richistan" at all.

But Collins thinks the political catchphrase "billionaires shouldn't exist" fails to address the core issue and has a "hint of elimination" to it.

"It's the separation between personal actions and a structure of regulations," Collins explained. "We should be concerned about an economic system that directs so much wealth upward to the billionaires."

Wealth Accumulation Mechanisms

To understand how wealth at the billionaire level works, Collins breaks it down into four parts: acquiring fortune, protecting assets, policy control and extreme wealth removal.

When many Americans think about wealth, they usually think exclusively 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 membership in Affluent Town.

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

"Wealth defense professionals use a broad range of tools such as financial instruments, international accounts, secret corporations, non-profit organizations and other mechanisms to hold assets," he writes.

Political Influence and Hyper-Extraction

To further a wealth defense strategy, a family needs political support. Wealth of over $40m becomes political power, Collins says, and can be used to protect assets 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 influence nearly every single part of an Americans' routine activities largely through private equity, which allows wealthy individuals to support private companies.

"Private equity is looking for those areas of the economy where they can squeeze things a little bit harder," Collins said. "One thing I don't think people realize is these billionaire private-equity funds are what happens when so much wealth is stored in so few hands, and they can kind of turn around 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 raise their rents."

Actual Impacts

The consequences 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 meaningful wage increases. And Collins said the hardship and discontent of this kind of society can lead to profound dissatisfaction.

"The most powerful oligarchs understand people are being left behind [and] are monetarily hurting," Collins said, adding that Republicans have been good at accessing a potent "false common-man appeal".

Government Truth

The contradiction, Collins points out in his book, is that government officials have appointed a string of billionaires to administrative posts. Along with tech billionaires who had temporary but significant roles overseeing substantial reductions to the federal workforce, other key positions for commerce, treasury, education and the interior are also all billionaires.

This government structure, along with help from political partners, helped pass significant fiscal policies, which will make permanent tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

Future Solutions

While legislative bodies continue to argue that immigration and bad trade agreements are the source of everyone's economic problems, "the issue remains: Will the opposing party, which has also been captured by the billionaires and big money, be able to effectively tackle the underlying harms?" Collins said.

Liberal leaders, he argues, know what policies are needed to "change wealth distribution", including significant reforms to the tax system, increasing the minimum wage and empowering worker groups.

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

Collins is positive that there can be change, but said it would require sustained political momentum.

"It may be quickly that the tide turns, and then it really is about sustaining a continuous public campaign to make progress on this severe disparity we're living in," he said. "We can address this. It is addressable."