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Among countless Americans, the financial landscape over the recent five-year span has been challenging. Prices have soared while salaries remains flat. Elevated mortgage rates have made homeownership a grim prospect. The jobless rate has been gradually increasing.

The majority of individuals have reported they're delaying major life decisions, including raising children or switching jobs, because of economic uncertainty. But for a tiny fraction of people, the recent half-decade couldn't have been any better.

Fortune Expansion

The wealth of the world's billionaires expanded 54% in 2020, at the climax of the pandemic. And even during all the economic instability, the stock market has only kept rising. This growth has primarily advantaged just a small number of Americans: 10% of the population owns 93% of stock market wealth.

As uneven as this distribution seems, it's the financial structure working as it is presently configured.

"The wealthy have acquired 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 hyper-extraction where the wealthy are taking advantage of the system of inequality."

Mapping Economic Classes

To help others understand 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, imagined the different levels of wealth as "Affluencia" villages: Wealth Borough, Lower Richistan, Middle Richistan, Upper Richistan and Billionaireville.

To update the concept, Collins categorizes these "economic communities" based on income levels:

• At the foundation, Affluent Town, are the 10 million Americans who have a family earnings of at least $110,000 and an net worth 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 comprise the top 10% of the wealth income distribution, about 14 million Americans altogether, though their experiences vary dramatically.

"You could be in Lower Richistan, and you're still flying in the coach section of a commercial plane," Collins said. "Whereas in Upper Richistan, you're flying in a private jet. That's a really different cultural experience. You fly private, you have no interest in the commercial aviation system. You don't care if the whole system collapses – you're set."

Extreme Affluence Consequences

The peak 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 substantially outweighs those who are simply wealthy, let alone the average American who doesn't reside in "Richistan" at all.

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

"It's the separation between individual behaviors and a system of rules," Collins commented. "We should be worried about an economic system that funnels 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: accumulating assets, protecting assets, political capture and maximum resource extraction.

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

But getting to Billionaireville requires significant resources and strategy in those next three steps. Collins describes what he calls the "asset protection sector": 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, secret corporations, philanthropic entities and other methods to hold assets," he explains.

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 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 influence nearly every single part of an Americans' daily existence largely through investment firms, which allows wealthy individuals to invest in private companies.

"Private equity is seeking those corners of the economy where they can increase profits 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 basically shift 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 raise their rents."

Actual Impacts

The effects of this inequality go beyond the wealth getting wealthier. It's about people facing higher costs for their healthcare, rent and vet bills without seeing any meaningful wage increases. And Collins said the pain and frustration of this kind of society can lead to profound dissatisfaction.

"The most powerful oligarchs understand people are being marginalized [and] are economically suffering," Collins said, adding that right-leaning leaders have been good at connecting with a potent "false common-man appeal".

Government Truth

The paradox, Collins points out in his book, is that political leaders have appointed a series of billionaires to cabinet positions. Along with tech billionaires who had brief but powerful roles overseeing massive cuts to the federal workforce, other important roles 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 enduring decreases for the wealthy and corporations.

The Path Forward

While legislative bodies continue to argue that foreign entry and poor economic deals are the source of everyone's economic problems, "the issue remains: Will the alternative political group, which has also been controlled by the billionaires and big money, be able to meaningfully address the underlying harms?" Collins said.

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

"It was so, so close, and the law really did embody the will of the most of people who really want lawmakers to address some of these critical challenges," Collins said. "Wealthy influence is not about creating so much as blocking. 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 sooner than expected that the tide turns, and then it really is about sustaining 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."