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For many US citizens, the economic climate over the recent five-year span has been challenging. Costs have escalated while salaries remains stagnant. High mortgage rates have made buying a home a dismal prospect. The jobless rate has been creeping up.

Many Americans have indicated they're postponing major life decisions, including starting a family or switching jobs, because of the instability. But for a select few of people, the last five years couldn't have been any better.

Wealth Explosion

The fortune of the world's billionaires increased 54% in 2020, at the peak of the pandemic. And even throughout all the financial uncertainty, the stock market has only continued to grow. This growth has mostly helped just a limited group of Americans: 10% of the population holds 93% of stock market wealth.

As uneven as this division seems, it's the economic framework 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," explained wealth disparity expert Chuck Collins. "We're now stepping into this other chapter of maximum resource removal where the wealthy are taking advantage of the system of inequality."

Mapping Economic Classes

To help others understand what exactly it means to be "affluent" in the US, Collins adopts a concept from journalist Robert Frank who, in a 2007 book on the rich, imagined the different levels of wealth as "Wealthville" villages: Wealth Borough, Lower Richistan, Middle Richistan, Upper Richistan and Billionaireville.

To contemporize 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 select 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 circumstances vary dramatically.

"You could be in Lower Richistan, and you're still sitting in the coach section of a commercial plane," Collins explained. "Whereas in Upper Richistan, you're using 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."

The Billionaireville Effect

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 power that this group has far surpasses those who are simply wealthy, let alone the ordinary person who doesn't reside in "Richistan" at all.

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

"It's the separation between individual behaviors and a framework of policies," Collins explained. "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: acquiring fortune, securing fortune, 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 creating or operating a successful business, which could get them membership in Affluent Town.

But getting to Billionaireville requires serious investment and tactics 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 broad range 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 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 defend wealth and protect its accumulation.

The ultimate step 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' everyday life largely through capital management, which allows wealthy individuals to fund private companies.

"Private equity is looking for those corners 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 accumulated in so few hands, and they can basically shift 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 increase their costs."

Tangible Effects

The results 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 significant salary growth. And Collins said the hardship and discontent of this kind of society can lead to serious unrest.

"The most powerful wealthy elites understand people are being marginalized [and] are monetarily hurting," Collins said, adding that Republicans 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 government roles. Along with affluent innovators who had short yet influential roles overseeing substantial reductions 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 major tax legislation, which will make lasting reductions for the wealthy and corporations.

Future Solutions

While government groups continue to argue that foreign entry and poor economic deals 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 meaningfully address the underlying harms?" Collins said.

Left-leaning officials, he argues, know what policies are needed to "reverse the updraft of wealth", including deep changes to the tax system, increasing the minimum wage and empowering worker groups.

"It was so, so close, and the law really did embody the will of the bulk of people who really want lawmakers to solve some of these critical challenges," Collins said. "Oligarchic power is not about building so much as preventing. It's easier to block than it is to make something substantial take place, 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 sustained political momentum.

"It may be before we know it that the tide turns, and then it really is about sustaining a continuous public campaign to make progress on this severe disparity we're living in," he said. "We can solve this. It is addressable."