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Among countless Americans, the economic climate over the recent five-year span has been challenging. Expenses have soared while wages remains unchanged. High mortgage rates have made homeownership a bleak prospect. The jobless rate has been slowly rising.

Many Americans have reported they're putting off major life decisions, including having kids or changing careers, because of economic uncertainty. But for a very small group of people, the past five-year period couldn't have been more successful.

Fortune Expansion

The fortune of the world's billionaires grew 54% in 2020, at the climax of the pandemic. And even during all the financial uncertainty, the stock market has only kept rising. This expansion has largely benefited just a small number of Americans: 10% of the population owns 93% of stock market wealth.

However unequal as this division seems, it's the financial structure working as it is presently configured.

"Rich elites have acquired their jets, they've purchased their multiple houses and mansions, but now they're buying senators and media outlets," stated inequality researcher Chuck Collins. "We're now entering this other chapter of hyper-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 borrows a concept from journalist Robert Frank who, in a 2007 book on the rich, conceptualized the different levels of wealth as "Affluencia" villages: Affluent Town, Lower Richistan, Middle Richistan, Upper Richistan and Billionaireville.

To contemporize the concept, Collins classifies 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 net worth 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.

Altogether, the residents of these villages constitute 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 explained. "Whereas in Upper Richistan, you're using a private jet. That's a really different cultural experience. You fly private, you have no stakes in the commercial aviation system. You don't care if the whole system collapses – you're set."

The Billionaireville Effect

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 far surpasses those who are simply wealthy, let alone the typical citizen who doesn't inhabit "Richistan" at all.

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

"It's the difference between private conduct and a structure of regulations," Collins commented. "We should be focused on an economic system that directs 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: acquiring fortune, defending the wealth, government influence and extreme wealth removal.

When many Americans think about wealth, they usually think exclusively about the first step, Collins said. People can create a modest amount of wealth through starting or running a successful business, which could get them admission in Affluent Town.

But getting to Billionaireville requires significant resources and tactics 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 strategic about their taxes.

"Wealth defense professionals use a extensive selection of tools such as financial instruments, foreign deposits, anonymous shell companies, philanthropic entities and other mechanisms to hold assets," he writes.

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 protect its accumulation.

The final phase is a different kind of wealth accumulation, one that Collins calls "maximum taking" to describe how the wealthy have come to touch nearly every single part of an Americans' daily existence largely through investment firms, which allows wealthy individuals to fund private companies.

"Private equity is seeking those areas of the economy where they can extract value 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 accumulated 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 boost their expenses."

Tangible Effects

The consequences 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 suffering and anger of this kind of society can lead to deep discontent.

"The most powerful oligarchs understand people are being marginalized [and] are financially struggling," Collins said, adding that conservative politicians have been good at accessing a potent "phony populism".

Government Truth

The contradiction, Collins points out in his book, is that government officials have appointed a series of billionaires to cabinet positions. Along with wealthy entrepreneurs who had temporary but significant roles overseeing massive cuts to the federal workforce, other important roles for commerce, treasury, education and the interior are also all billionaires.

This administrative framework, along with help from congressional allies, helped pass major tax legislation, which will make enduring decreases for the wealthy and corporations.

Potential Changes

While legislative bodies continue to argue that border policies and poor economic deals are the source of everyone's economic problems, "the question becomes: Will the alternative political group, which has also been controlled by the billionaires and big money, be able to seriously confront the underlying harms?" Collins said.

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

"It was so, so close, and the bill really did reflect the will of the most of people who really want lawmakers to address some of these urgent problems," 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 muscle memory is there. We know what that looks like."

Collins is positive that there can be change, but said it would require continuous government action.

"It may be sooner than expected that the pendulum swings back, and then it really is about maintaining a ongoing grassroots effort to make progress on this profound imbalance we're living in," he said. "We can fix this. It is addressable."