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To numerous Americans, the economic climate over the past five years has been challenging. Prices have soared while pay remains unchanged. Elevated mortgage rates have made purchasing property a bleak prospect. The jobless rate has been slowly rising.

Most people have reported they're delaying major life decisions, including starting a family or switching jobs, because of the instability. But for a select few of people, the recent half-decade couldn't have been more prosperous.

Wealth Explosion

The assets of the world's billionaires grew 54% in 2020, at the climax of the pandemic. And even throughout all the economic instability, the stock market has only persisted in expanding. This increase has largely benefited 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 system working as it is existing today.

"The wealthy have purchased their jets, they've purchased their multiple houses and mansions, but now they're buying senators and media outlets," stated wealth disparity expert Chuck Collins. "We're now entering this other chapter of maximum resource removal where the wealthy are preying on the system of inequality."

Understanding Wealth Tiers

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

To update the concept, Collins classifies these "affluence districts" 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 overall wealth 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 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 noted. "Whereas in Upper Richistan, you're traveling via 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 fails – you're set."

Ultra-Wealth Impact

The peak 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 wealthy, let alone the typical citizen 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 difference between private conduct and a framework of policies," Collins said. "We should be focused on an economic system that directs so much wealth upward to the billionaires."

Fortune Building Strategies

To understand how wealth at the billionaire level works, Collins separates it into four parts: acquiring fortune, protecting assets, policy control and extreme wealth removal.

When many Americans think about wealth, they usually think exclusively 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 admission in Affluent Town.

But getting to Billionaireville requires significant resources 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, undisclosed businesses, charitable foundations and other methods to hold assets," he explains.

Government Power and Extreme Wealth Removal

To further a wealth defense strategy, a family needs political support. Wealth of over $40m converts to political power, Collins says, and can be used to defend wealth and ensure continued growth.

The ultimate step 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' routine activities largely through capital management, which allows wealthy individuals to invest in private companies.

"Private equity is seeking those corners of the economy where they can extract value a little bit harder," Collins said. "One thing I don't think people understand is these billionaire private-equity funds are what happens when so much wealth is parked in so few hands, and they can basically shift 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 boost their expenses."

Tangible Effects

The results 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 significant salary growth. And Collins said the pain and frustration of this kind of society can lead to deep discontent.

"The most powerful oligarchs understand people are being left behind [and] are financially struggling," Collins said, adding that Republicans have been good at accessing a potent "false common-man appeal".

Political Reality

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 short yet influential roles overseeing massive cuts to the federal workforce, other important roles for commerce, treasury, education and the interior are also all billionaires.

This political landscape, along with help from political partners, helped pass significant fiscal policies, which will make enduring decreases for the wealthy and corporations.

Potential Changes

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

Left-leaning officials, he argues, know what policies are needed to "change wealth distribution", including deep changes to the tax system, increasing the minimum wage and strengthening unions.

"It was so, so close, and the law really did reflect the will of the most of people who really want lawmakers to address some of these pressing issues," Collins said. "Oligarchic power is not about building so much as stopping. It's easier to block than it is to make something meaningful happen, but the institutional knowledge 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 before we know it that the tide turns, and then it really is about maintaining a continuous public campaign to make progress on this profound imbalance we're living in," he said. "We can address this. It is addressable."