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To numerous US citizens, the financial landscape over the recent five-year span has been tough. Costs have soared while pay remains flat. Steep mortgage rates have made homeownership a dismal prospect. The jobless rate has been gradually increasing.

Most people have reported they're putting off major life decisions, including starting a family or switching jobs, because of the instability. But for a select few of people, the past five-year period couldn't have been more successful.

Fortune Expansion

The assets of the world's billionaires expanded 54% in 2020, at the peak of the pandemic. And even throughout all the economic instability, the stock market has only kept rising. This growth has mostly helped just a tiny percentage of Americans: 10% of the population owns 93% of stock market wealth.

Despite the imbalance as this allocation seems, it's the economic framework working as it is presently configured.

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

Mapping Economic Classes

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

To modernize the concept, Collins organizes these "economic communities" based on income levels:

• At the base level, Affluent Town, are the 10 million Americans who have a household income of at least $110,000 and an total assets 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 comprise the top 10% of the wealth income distribution, about 14 million Americans altogether, though their lifestyles vary dramatically.

"You could be in Lower Richistan, and you're still traveling 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 interest in the commercial aviation system. You don't care if the whole system fails – you're set."

Ultra-Wealth Impact

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 far surpasses those who are simply well-off, let alone the typical citizen who doesn't reside in "Richistan" at all.

But Collins thinks the political catchphrase "end extreme wealth" fails to address the core issue and has a "hint of elimination" to it.

"It's the difference between individual behaviors and a framework of policies," Collins said. "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 breaks it down into four parts: getting the wealth, securing fortune, policy control and hyper-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 starting or running 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 "fortune security field": the tax lawyers, accountants and wealth managers who use their skills to ensure that the super rich are being deliberate about their taxes.

"Wealth defense professionals use a wide variety of tools such as legal entities, foreign deposits, secret corporations, philanthropic entities and other vehicles to hold assets," he details.

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 protect assets and ensure continued growth.

The final phase is a different kind of wealth accumulation, one that Collins calls "extreme removal" to describe how the wealthy have come to affect nearly every single part of an Americans' everyday life largely through private equity, which allows wealthy individuals to fund private companies.

"Private equity is looking for those sectors of the economy where they can increase profits 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 accumulated 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 increase their costs."

The Real Consequences

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 meaningful wage increases. And Collins said the pain and frustration of this kind of society can lead to deep discontent.

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

Government Truth

The contradiction, Collins points out in his book, is that political leaders have appointed a succession of billionaires to administrative posts. Along with tech billionaires who had temporary but significant roles overseeing substantial reductions to the federal workforce, other crucial appointments for commerce, treasury, education and the interior are also all billionaires.

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

The Path Forward

While political parties continue to argue that border policies and bad trade agreements are the source of everyone's economic problems, "the challenge is: Will the opposing party, which has also been influenced 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 substantial modifications to the tax system, boosting the minimum wage and strengthening unions.

"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 urgent problems," Collins said. "Elite control is not about developing so much as preventing. 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 hopeful that there can be change, but said it would require ongoing legislative effort.

"It may be before we know it that the pendulum swings back, 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 address this. It is addressable."