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For many individuals in the United States, the economic climate over the past five years has been tough. Costs have soared while wages remains unchanged. High mortgage rates have made purchasing property a bleak prospect. The rate of unemployment has been slowly rising.

Many Americans have indicated they're putting off major life decisions, including starting a family or moving to new employment, because of financial volatility. But for a tiny fraction of people, the past five-year period 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 economic instability, the stock market has only continued to grow. This growth has primarily advantaged just a limited group of Americans: 10% of the population controls 93% of stock market wealth.

Despite the imbalance as this allocation seems, it's the financial structure working as it is currently designed.

"Rich elites have bought their jets, they've purchased their multiple houses and mansions, but now they're acquiring senators and media outlets," explained economic inequality analyst Chuck Collins. "We're now moving into this other chapter of maximum resource removal where the wealthy are exploiting the system of inequality."

Understanding Wealth Tiers

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, conceptualized the different levels of wealth as "Richistan" villages: Prosperity Village, Lower Richistan, Middle Richistan, Upper Richistan and Billionaireville.

To contemporize the concept, Collins classifies these "economic communities" based on income levels:

• At the base level, Affluent Town, are the 10 million Americans who have a family earnings of at least $110,000 and an overall wealth 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 constitute 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 sitting in the coach section of a commercial plane," Collins said. "Whereas in Upper Richistan, you're traveling via a private jet. That's a really distinct lifestyle. You fly private, you have no investment in the commercial aviation system. You don't care if the whole system collapses – you're set."

Extreme Affluence Consequences

The summit 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 greatly exceeds those who are simply affluent, let alone the typical citizen who doesn't live in "Richistan" at all.

But Collins thinks the political catchphrase "abolish billionaires" doesn't capture the real problem and has a "whiff of exterminism" to it.

"It's the difference between private conduct and a structure of regulations," Collins explained. "We should be focused on an economic system that funnels so much wealth upward to the billionaires."

The Four Pillars of Billionaire Wealth

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 only about the first step, Collins said. People can create a modest amount of wealth through creating or operating a successful business, which could get them membership in Affluent Town.

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

"Wealth defense professionals use a wide variety of tools such as financial instruments, offshore bank accounts, anonymous shell companies, non-profit organizations and other mechanisms to hold assets," he writes.

Government Power and Extreme Wealth Removal

To advance a wealth defense strategy, a family needs political support. Wealth of over $40m converts to political power, Collins says, and can be used to defend wealth and ensure continued growth.

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

"Private equity is searching for those corners 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 increase their costs."

The Real Consequences

The results of this inequality go beyond the wealth getting wealthier. It's about people spending additional funds for their healthcare, rent and vet bills without seeing any meaningful wage increases. And Collins said the suffering and anger of this kind of society can lead to profound dissatisfaction.

"The most powerful affluent rulers understand people are being marginalized [and] are economically suffering," Collins said, adding that conservative politicians have been good at accessing a potent "fake grassroots movement".

Government Truth

The irony, Collins points out in his book, is that political leaders have appointed a string of billionaires to cabinet positions. 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 legislative supporters, 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 unfavorable commercial treaties are the source of everyone's economic problems, "the issue remains: Will the opposing party, which has also been controlled 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 "reverse the updraft of wealth", including substantial modifications to the tax system, raising the minimum wage and empowering worker groups.

"It was so, so close, and the legislation really did embody the will of the majority of people who really want lawmakers to fix some of these critical challenges," Collins said. "Oligarchic power is not about developing so much as stopping. It's easier to block than it is to make something substantial take place, but the institutional knowledge is there. We know what that looks like."

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

"It may be before we know it that the tide turns, 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 solvable."