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Among countless US citizens, the economic climate over the past five years has been tough. Expenses have skyrocketed while pay remains flat. High mortgage rates have made homeownership a bleak prospect. The jobless rate has been creeping up.

The majority of individuals have reported they're putting off major life decisions, including raising children or switching jobs, because of financial volatility. But for a tiny fraction of people, the past five-year period couldn't have been more prosperous.

Wealth Explosion

The fortune of the world's billionaires expanded 54% in 2020, at the climax of the pandemic. And even throughout all the economic instability, the stock market has only kept rising. This expansion has mostly helped just a small number of Americans: 10% of the population controls 93% of stock market wealth.

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

"Rich elites have acquired their jets, they've bought their multiple houses and mansions, but now they're securing senators and media outlets," explained wealth disparity expert Chuck Collins. "We're now moving into this other chapter of hyper-extraction where the wealthy are exploiting the system of inequality."

Understanding Wealth Tiers

To help others understand 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, envisioned the different levels of wealth as "Affluencia" villages: Prosperity Village, Lower Richistan, Middle Richistan, Upper Richistan and Billionaireville.

To contemporize the concept, Collins organizes these "affluence districts" 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 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 make up 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 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 separate reality. You fly private, you have no investment in the commercial aviation system. You don't care if the whole system collapses – you're set."

The Billionaireville Effect

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

But Collins thinks the activist mantra "abolish billionaires" fails to address the core issue and has a "whiff of exterminism" to it.

"It's the separation between personal actions and a structure of regulations," Collins commented. "We should be focused on an economic system that funnels so much wealth upward to the billionaires."

Fortune Building Strategies

To understand how wealth at the billionaire level works, Collins divides it into four parts: acquiring fortune, defending the wealth, government influence 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 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 expertise to ensure that the super rich are being calculated about their taxes.

"Wealth defense professionals use a extensive selection of tools such as trusts, foreign deposits, anonymous shell companies, philanthropic entities and other methods to hold assets," he details.

Government Power and Extreme Wealth Removal

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 secure fortune and ensure continued growth.

The last stage is a different kind of wealth accumulation, one that Collins calls "hyper extraction" 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 support private companies.

"Private equity is looking for those areas of the economy where they can increase profits 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 parked 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 raise their rents."

Actual Impacts

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 deep discontent.

"The most powerful wealthy elites understand people are being left behind [and] are monetarily hurting," Collins said, adding that conservative politicians have been good at accessing a potent "fake grassroots movement".

Government Truth

The contradiction, Collins points out in his book, is that government officials have appointed a string of billionaires to administrative posts. Along with tech billionaires 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 government structure, along with help from legislative supporters, helped pass major tax legislation, which will make enduring decreases for the wealthy and corporations.

Potential Changes

While government groups continue to argue that foreign entry and bad trade agreements are the source of everyone's economic problems, "the issue remains: Will the other major party, 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 substantial modifications to the tax system, increasing the minimum wage and strengthening unions.

"It was so, so close, and the bill really did represent the will of the majority of people who really want lawmakers to address some of these urgent problems," Collins said. "Wealthy influence is not about creating so much as stopping. It's easier to block than it is to make something significant occur, but the institutional knowledge 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 maintaining a ongoing grassroots effort to make progress on this extreme inequality we're living in," he said. "We can solve this. It is fixable."