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For many US citizens, the financial landscape over the past five years has been challenging. Prices have escalated while pay remains flat. High mortgage rates have made purchasing property a bleak prospect. The jobless rate has been slowly rising.

Most people have indicated they're delaying major life decisions, including having kids or moving to new employment, because of economic uncertainty. But for a select few of people, the recent half-decade couldn't have been any better.

Fortune Expansion

The assets of the world's billionaires expanded 54% in 2020, at the climax of the pandemic. And even amid all the market volatility, the stock market has only persisted in expanding. This growth has largely benefited just a tiny percentage of Americans: 10% of the population controls 93% of stock market wealth.

Despite the imbalance as this division seems, it's the system working as it is presently configured.

"The wealthy have purchased their jets, they've bought their multiple houses and mansions, but now they're securing senators and media outlets," commented economic inequality analyst Chuck Collins. "We're now stepping into this other chapter of extreme wealth extraction where the wealthy are preying on the system of inequality."

Mapping Economic Classes

To help others grasp what exactly it means to be "wealthy" in the US, Collins utilizes a concept from journalist Robert Frank who, in a 2007 book on the rich, envisioned 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 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.

Collectively, 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 traveling 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 distinct lifestyle. You fly private, you have no stakes in the commercial aviation system. You don't care if the whole system shuts down – 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 richest. The power that this group has greatly exceeds those who are simply affluent, let alone the ordinary person who doesn't inhabit "Richistan" at all.

But Collins thinks the political catchphrase "billionaires shouldn't exist" doesn't capture the real problem and has a "hint of elimination" 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."

Wealth Accumulation Mechanisms

To understand how wealth at the billionaire level works, Collins separates it into four parts: accumulating assets, defending the wealth, political capture and maximum resource extraction.

When many Americans think about wealth, they usually think solely about the first step, Collins said. People can create a reasonable quantity of wealth through starting or running a successful business, which could get them residency 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 calculated about their taxes.

"Wealth defense professionals use a extensive selection of tools such as legal entities, international accounts, undisclosed businesses, charitable foundations and other methods to hold assets," he details.

Political Influence and Hyper-Extraction

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

The last stage is a different kind of wealth accumulation, one that Collins calls "extreme removal" to describe how the wealthy have come to influence nearly every single part of an Americans' everyday life largely through investment firms, which allows wealthy individuals to fund private companies.

"Private equity is seeking those areas of the economy where they can squeeze things a little bit harder," Collins said. "One thing I don't think people comprehend is these billionaire private-equity funds are what happens when so much wealth is stored in so few hands, and they can essentially pivot 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 raise their rents."

Actual Impacts

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 significant salary growth. 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 left behind [and] are financially struggling," Collins said, adding that Republicans have been good at connecting with a potent "phony populism".

Government Truth

The irony, Collins points out in his book, is that government officials have appointed a succession of billionaires to administrative posts. Along with wealthy entrepreneurs who had brief but powerful roles overseeing substantial reductions to the federal workforce, other key positions for commerce, treasury, education and the interior are also all billionaires.

This administrative framework, along with help from congressional allies, helped pass significant fiscal policies, which will make lasting reductions for the wealthy and corporations.

Future Solutions

While legislative bodies continue to argue that immigration and bad trade agreements are the source of everyone's economic problems, "the challenge is: Will the opposing party, which has also been captured 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, raising the minimum wage and empowering worker groups.

"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 urgent problems," Collins said. "Wealthy influence is not about developing so much as stopping. 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 continuous government action.

"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 extreme inequality we're living in," he said. "We can address this. It is fixable."