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For many individuals in the United States, the economic climate over the past five years has been tough. Costs have soared while salaries remains stagnant. High mortgage rates have made purchasing property a grim prospect. The unemployment rate has been gradually increasing.

Most people have reported they're delaying major life decisions, including raising children or changing careers, because of financial volatility. But for a select few of people, the last five years couldn't have been more successful.

Wealth Explosion

The fortune of the world's billionaires expanded 54% in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. And even amid all the economic instability, the stock market has only kept rising. This growth has largely benefited just a limited group of Americans: 10% of the population owns 93% of stock market wealth.

As uneven as this division seems, it's the system working as it is currently designed.

"Affluent individuals have acquired their jets, they've acquired their multiple houses and mansions, but now they're acquiring senators and media outlets," commented inequality researcher Chuck Collins. "We're now moving into this other chapter of maximum resource removal where the wealthy are preying on the system of inequality."

Mapping Economic Classes

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

To modernize the concept, Collins classifies these "wealth villages" 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 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.

Collectively, the residents of these villages make up 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 using a private jet. That's a really separate reality. 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 highest hill in "Richistan" is Billionaireville, which is made up of about 800 American billionaires who are some of the world's richest. The influence that this group has far surpasses those who are simply affluent, let alone the ordinary person who doesn't reside in "Richistan" at all.

But Collins thinks the political catchphrase "billionaires shouldn't exist" fails to address the core issue and has a "hint of elimination" to it.

"It's the separation between personal actions and a system of rules," Collins explained. "We should be focused on an economic system that funnels 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: accumulating assets, securing fortune, political capture and extreme wealth removal.

When many Americans think about wealth, they usually think only 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 residency in Affluent Town.

But getting to Billionaireville requires serious investment and strategy 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 deliberate about their taxes.

"Wealth defense professionals use a broad range of tools such as trusts, foreign deposits, undisclosed businesses, philanthropic entities and other mechanisms to hold assets," he writes.

Government Power and Extreme Wealth Removal

To enhance a wealth defense strategy, a family needs government backing. Wealth of over $40m becomes political power, Collins says, and can be used to defend wealth and maintain expansion.

The final phase is a different kind of wealth accumulation, one that Collins calls "maximum taking" to describe how the wealthy have come to influence nearly every single part of an Americans' daily existence largely through investment firms, 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 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 raise their rents."

Actual Impacts

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

"The most powerful affluent rulers understand people are being left behind [and] are monetarily hurting," Collins said, adding that right-leaning leaders have been good at accessing a potent "phony populism".

Government Truth

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

This administrative framework, along with help from congressional allies, helped pass huge tax bills, which will make permanent tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

Potential Changes

While government groups continue to argue that border policies and unfavorable commercial treaties are the source of everyone's economic problems, "the challenge is: Will the other major party, which has also been influenced by the billionaires and big money, be able to meaningfully address the underlying harms?" Collins said.

Progressive politicians, 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 strengthening unions.

"It was so, so close, and the law really did embody the will of the bulk of people who really want lawmakers to address some of these urgent problems," Collins said. "Oligarchic power is not about building 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 optimistic that there can be change, but said it would require sustained political momentum.

"It may be sooner than expected that the pendulum swings back, and then it really is about preserving a sustained really popular movement to make progress on this extreme inequality we're living in," he said. "We can solve this. It is fixable."