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Among countless US citizens, the financial landscape over the recent five-year span has been challenging. Prices have escalated while wages remains unchanged. Elevated mortgage rates have made purchasing property a dismal prospect. The rate of unemployment has been slowly rising.

Many Americans have stated they're postponing major life decisions, including raising children or changing careers, because of economic uncertainty. But for a very small group of people, the last five years couldn't have been more prosperous.

Fortune Expansion

The assets of the world's billionaires expanded 54% in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. And even amid all the financial uncertainty, the stock market has only continued to grow. This increase has largely benefited just a small number 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 bought their jets, they've acquired their multiple houses and mansions, but now they're buying senators and media outlets," commented economic inequality analyst Chuck Collins. "We're now entering this other chapter of hyper-extraction where the wealthy are exploiting the system of inequality."

Mapping Economic Classes

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

To modernize the concept, Collins categorizes 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 net worth of over $1.5m.
• The villages get more select 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 make up the top 10% of the wealth income distribution, about 14 million Americans altogether, though their lifestyles 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 different cultural experience. 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 peak in "Richistan" is Billionaireville, which is made up of about 800 American billionaires who are some of the world's wealthiest. The control that this group has greatly exceeds those who are simply affluent, let alone the average American who doesn't reside in "Richistan" at all.

But Collins thinks the political catchphrase "abolish billionaires" fails to address the core issue and has a "hint of elimination" to it.

"It's the separation between private conduct and a framework of policies," Collins said. "We should be focused on an economic system that channels so much wealth upward to the billionaires."

Fortune Building Strategies

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

When many Americans think about wealth, they usually think solely about the first step, Collins said. People can create a modest amount of wealth through starting or running a successful business, which could get them admission 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 expertise to ensure that the super rich are being deliberate about their taxes.

"Wealth defense professionals use a extensive selection of tools such as trusts, foreign deposits, anonymous shell companies, charitable foundations and other vehicles to hold assets," he details.

Political Influence and Hyper-Extraction

To advance a wealth defense strategy, a family needs government backing. Wealth of over $40m converts to political power, Collins says, and can be used to protect assets and protect its accumulation.

The ultimate step is a different kind of wealth accumulation, one that Collins calls "maximum taking" 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 seeking those sectors of the economy where they can extract value 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 accumulated 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 boost their expenses."

Actual Impacts

The effects of this inequality go beyond the wealth getting wealthier. It's about people paying more for their healthcare, rent and vet bills without seeing any substantial income improvement. And Collins said the suffering and anger of this kind of society can lead to profound dissatisfaction.

"The most powerful wealthy elites understand people are being left behind [and] are financially struggling," Collins said, adding that Republicans have been good at accessing a potent "phony populism".

Political Reality

The paradox, Collins points out in his book, is that government officials have appointed a string of billionaires to administrative posts. Along with wealthy entrepreneurs who had brief but powerful roles overseeing massive cuts to the federal workforce, other crucial appointments for commerce, treasury, education and the interior are also all billionaires.

This government structure, along with help from congressional allies, helped pass major tax legislation, which will make permanent tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

Potential Changes

While political parties continue to argue that immigration and unfavorable commercial treaties are the source of everyone's economic problems, "the issue remains: Will the other major party, which has also been controlled by the billionaires and big money, be able to seriously confront the underlying harms?" Collins said.

Progressive politicians, he argues, know what policies are needed to "change wealth distribution", including deep changes to the tax system, boosting the minimum wage and empowering worker groups.

"It was so, so close, and the bill really did reflect the will of the bulk of people who really want lawmakers to fix some of these urgent problems," Collins said. "Wealthy influence is not about creating so much as stopping. It's easier to block than it is to make something substantial take place, but the muscle memory is there. We know what that looks like."

Collins is hopeful that there can be change, but said it would require ongoing legislative effort.

"It may be sooner than expected that the balance shifts, and then it really is about maintaining a continuous public campaign to make progress on this severe disparity we're living in," he said. "We can solve this. It is solvable."