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For many individuals in the United States, the economic climate over the last half-decade has been challenging. Prices have escalated while pay remains flat. Elevated mortgage rates have made homeownership a dismal prospect. The jobless rate has been creeping up.

The majority of individuals have indicated they're putting off major life decisions, including raising children or switching jobs, because of the instability. But for a very small group of people, the last five years couldn't have been any better.

The Billionaire Boom

The assets of the world's billionaires increased 54% in 2020, at the peak of the pandemic. And even amid all the financial uncertainty, the stock market has only kept rising. This expansion has largely benefited just a limited group of Americans: 10% of the population owns 93% of stock market wealth.

However unequal as this division seems, it's the financial structure working as it is presently configured.

"Affluent individuals have acquired their jets, they've bought their multiple houses and mansions, but now they're securing senators and media outlets," stated economic inequality analyst Chuck Collins. "We're now moving into this other chapter of hyper-extraction where the wealthy are exploiting the system of inequality."

Mapping Economic Classes

To help others understand 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 "Richistan" villages: Prosperity Village, Lower Richistan, Middle Richistan, Upper Richistan and Billionaireville.

To modernize the concept, Collins organizes these "economic communities" based on income levels:

• At the lowest tier, Affluent Town, are the 10 million Americans who have a family earnings of at least $110,000 and an total assets 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 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 traveling via a private jet. That's a really separate reality. You fly private, you have no interest 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 richest. The control that this group has substantially outweighs those who are simply affluent, let alone the ordinary person who doesn't live in "Richistan" at all.

But Collins thinks the progressive slogan "end extreme wealth" doesn't capture the real problem and has a "whiff of exterminism" to it.

"It's the difference between individual behaviors and a framework of policies," Collins said. "We should be concerned about 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 separates it into four parts: getting the wealth, defending the wealth, government influence and extreme wealth removal.

When many Americans think about wealth, they usually think exclusively about the first step, Collins said. People can create a modest amount of wealth through establishing or managing a successful business, which could get them residency in Affluent Town.

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

"Wealth defense professionals use a broad range of tools such as legal entities, foreign deposits, secret corporations, philanthropic entities and other mechanisms to hold assets," he details.

Government Power and Extreme Wealth Removal

To enhance a wealth defense strategy, a family needs policy assistance. Wealth of over $40m becomes 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 "extreme removal" to describe how the wealthy have come to touch nearly every single part of an Americans' routine activities largely through capital management, which allows wealthy individuals to fund private companies.

"Private equity is seeking those areas of the economy where they can extract value a little bit harder," Collins said. "One thing I don't think people understand is these billionaire private-equity funds are what happens when so much wealth is accumulated in so few hands, and they can essentially pivot and say, 'Where else can we generate returns out of the economy?' Healthcare? Great. Mobile home parks? These people can't go anywhere, [so] you can boost their expenses."

Tangible Effects

The consequences 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 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 "fake grassroots movement".

Government Truth

The contradiction, Collins points out in his book, is that political leaders have appointed a succession of billionaires to government roles. Along with wealthy entrepreneurs who had short yet influential roles overseeing massive cuts to the federal workforce, other crucial appointments for commerce, treasury, education and the interior are also all billionaires.

This political landscape, along with help from congressional allies, helped pass significant fiscal policies, which will make enduring decreases for the wealthy and corporations.

Potential Changes

While legislative bodies continue to argue that border policies and unfavorable commercial treaties are the source of everyone's economic problems, "the issue remains: Will the alternative political group, which has also been influenced by the billionaires and big money, be able to seriously confront 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 strengthening unions.

"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. "Oligarchic power is not about creating so much as blocking. It's easier to block than it is to make something meaningful happen, but the institutional knowledge 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 balance shifts, and then it really is about maintaining a sustained really popular movement to make progress on this severe disparity we're living in," he said. "We can solve this. It is fixable."