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Among countless individuals in the United States, the financial landscape over the recent five-year span has been challenging. Prices have soared while pay remains stagnant. Elevated mortgage rates have made homeownership a grim prospect. The jobless rate has been slowly rising.

Many Americans have stated they're putting off major life decisions, including having kids or moving to new employment, because of economic uncertainty. But for a tiny fraction of people, the past five-year period couldn't have been any better.

The Billionaire Boom

The fortune of the world's billionaires expanded 54% in 2020, at the peak of the pandemic. And even amid all the financial uncertainty, the stock market has only kept rising. This increase has largely benefited just a tiny percentage of Americans: 10% of the population controls 93% of stock market wealth.

As uneven as this distribution seems, it's the system working as it is existing today.

"Rich elites have acquired their jets, they've bought their multiple houses and mansions, but now they're acquiring senators and media outlets," commented wealth disparity expert Chuck Collins. "We're now stepping into this other chapter of extreme wealth extraction where the wealthy are taking advantage of the system of inequality."

Mapping Economic Classes

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

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

• At the foundation, Affluent Town, are the 10 million Americans who have a annual salary 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.

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 using 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 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 well-off, let alone the average American who doesn't live in "Richistan" at all.

But Collins thinks the activist mantra "billionaires shouldn't exist" misses the point and has a "whiff of exterminism" to it.

"It's the difference between personal actions and a structure of regulations," Collins explained. "We should be focused on 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 divides it into four parts: acquiring fortune, protecting assets, policy control and extreme wealth removal.

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 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 "wealth defense industry": the tax lawyers, accountants and wealth managers who use their skills to ensure that the super rich are being strategic about their taxes.

"Wealth defense professionals use a broad range of tools such as legal entities, offshore bank accounts, undisclosed businesses, charitable foundations and other vehicles to hold assets," he explains.

Government Power and Extreme Wealth Removal

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

The final phase 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 investment firms, which allows wealthy individuals to invest in private companies.

"Private equity is searching for those sectors 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 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 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 excluded [and] are monetarily hurting," Collins said, adding that Republicans have been good at accessing a potent "false common-man appeal".

Policy Situation

The irony, Collins points out in his book, is that elected representatives have appointed a string of billionaires to cabinet positions. Along with wealthy entrepreneurs who had brief but powerful roles overseeing significant decreases 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 legislative supporters, helped pass huge tax bills, 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 influenced by the billionaires and big money, be able to meaningfully address the underlying harms?" Collins said.

Liberal leaders, he argues, know what policies are needed to "alter economic flow", including deep changes to the tax system, increasing the minimum wage and supporting labor organizations.

"It was so, so close, and the legislation really did embody the will of the most of people who really want lawmakers to solve some of these critical challenges," Collins said. "Elite control is not about building so much as preventing. 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 optimistic that there can be change, but said it would require ongoing legislative effort.

"It may be quickly that the balance shifts, and then it really is about sustaining a ongoing grassroots effort to make progress on this severe disparity we're living in," he said. "We can fix this. It is addressable."