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For many Americans, the financial landscape over the last half-decade has been difficult. Costs have escalated while pay remains unchanged. Elevated mortgage rates have made homeownership a dismal prospect. The unemployment rate has been gradually increasing.

Most people have stated they're delaying major life decisions, including raising children or moving to new employment, because of the instability. But for a very small group of people, the last five years couldn't have been more successful.

Fortune Expansion

The fortune of the world's billionaires increased 54% in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. And even during all the economic instability, the stock market has only kept rising. This increase has primarily advantaged just a tiny percentage of Americans: 10% of the population owns 93% of stock market wealth.

Despite the imbalance as this distribution seems, it's the economic framework working as it is presently configured.

"Rich elites have purchased their jets, they've purchased their multiple houses and mansions, but now they're securing senators and media outlets," commented wealth disparity expert Chuck Collins. "We're now entering this other chapter of hyper-extraction where the wealthy are preying on the system of inequality."

Mapping Economic Classes

To help others grasp 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: Wealth Borough, Lower Richistan, Middle Richistan, Upper Richistan and Billionaireville.

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

• At the foundation, Affluent Town, are the 10 million Americans who have a household income 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.

Altogether, the residents of these villages comprise 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 sitting in the coach section of a commercial plane," Collins said. "Whereas in Upper Richistan, you're using a private jet. That's a really distinct lifestyle. You fly private, you have no stakes in the commercial aviation system. You don't care if the whole system fails – you're set."

Ultra-Wealth Impact

The highest hill in "Richistan" is Billionaireville, which is made up of about 800 American billionaires who are some of the world's most affluent. The control that this group has greatly exceeds those who are simply affluent, let alone the average American who doesn't live in "Richistan" at all.

But Collins thinks the progressive slogan "billionaires shouldn't exist" doesn't capture the real problem and has a "suggestion of eradication" to it.

"It's the separation between individual behaviors and a system of rules," Collins commented. "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 breaks it down into four parts: accumulating assets, securing fortune, 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 limited sum 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 "fortune security field": the tax lawyers, accountants and wealth managers who use their knowledge 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, international accounts, secret corporations, charitable foundations and other vehicles to hold assets," he writes.

Government Power and Extreme Wealth Removal

To enhance a wealth defense strategy, a family needs policy assistance. Wealth of over $40m translates to political power, Collins says, and can be used to protect assets and ensure continued growth.

The final phase is a different kind of wealth accumulation, one that Collins calls "extreme removal" to describe how the wealthy have come to affect nearly every single part of an Americans' routine activities largely through capital management, 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 extract profits 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 consequences 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 substantial income improvement. And Collins said the pain and frustration of this kind of society can lead to profound dissatisfaction.

"The most powerful affluent rulers understand people are being left behind [and] are financially struggling," Collins said, adding that right-leaning leaders have been good at accessing a potent "fake grassroots movement".

Policy Situation

The paradox, Collins points out in his book, is that elected representatives have appointed a succession of billionaires to administrative posts. Along with wealthy entrepreneurs who had brief but powerful roles overseeing massive cuts 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 enduring decreases for the wealthy and corporations.

The Path Forward

While political parties continue to argue that foreign entry and unfavorable commercial treaties are the source of everyone's economic problems, "the challenge is: Will the alternative political group, 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 significant reforms to the tax system, boosting the minimum wage and supporting labor organizations.

"It was so, so close, and the law really did represent the will of the majority of people who really want lawmakers to fix some of these pressing issues," Collins said. "Elite control is not about creating so much as preventing. It's easier to block than it is to make something meaningful happen, but the historical precedent is there. We know what that looks like."

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

"It may be before we know it that the balance shifts, and then it really is about maintaining a sustained really popular movement to make progress on this extreme inequality we're living in," he said. "We can solve this. It is fixable."