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For many US citizens, the economy over the past five years has been challenging. Expenses have escalated while wages remains stagnant. Elevated mortgage rates have made homeownership a bleak prospect. The jobless rate has been slowly rising.

The majority of individuals have indicated they're postponing major life decisions, including having kids or switching jobs, because of the instability. But for a tiny fraction of people, the recent half-decade couldn't have been more prosperous.

The Billionaire Boom

The assets of the world's billionaires expanded 54% in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. And even throughout all the market volatility, the stock market has only kept rising. This growth has largely benefited just a tiny percentage of Americans: 10% of the population holds 93% of stock market wealth.

As uneven as this division seems, it's the financial structure working as it is presently configured.

"Affluent individuals have bought their jets, they've bought their multiple houses and mansions, but now they're buying senators and media outlets," explained economic inequality analyst 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 "affluent" 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 "Wealthville" villages: Wealth Borough, Lower Richistan, Middle Richistan, Upper Richistan and Billionaireville.

To modernize the concept, Collins categorizes these "affluence districts" based on income levels:

• At the base level, 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 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.

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 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 different cultural experience. You fly private, you have no stakes 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 richest. The power that this group has greatly exceeds those who are simply affluent, let alone the typical citizen who doesn't inhabit "Richistan" at all.

But Collins thinks the activist mantra "billionaires shouldn't exist" doesn't capture the real problem and has a "hint of elimination" to it.

"It's the difference between private conduct and a structure of regulations," Collins commented. "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 breaks it down into four parts: getting the wealth, defending the wealth, 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 limited sum of wealth through starting or running a successful business, which could get them residency in Affluent Town.

But getting to Billionaireville requires substantial commitment 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 calculated about their taxes.

"Wealth defense professionals use a extensive selection of tools such as financial instruments, international accounts, anonymous shell companies, non-profit organizations and other vehicles to hold assets," he writes.

Government Power and Extreme Wealth Removal

To enhance a wealth defense strategy, a family needs political support. Wealth of over $40m translates to political power, Collins says, and can be used to secure fortune and maintain expansion.

The ultimate step 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' daily existence largely through capital management, which allows wealthy individuals to support private companies.

"Private equity is seeking those sectors of the economy where they can squeeze things 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 stored in so few hands, and they can essentially pivot 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."

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 hardship and discontent of this kind of society can lead to deep discontent.

"The most powerful wealthy elites understand people are being marginalized [and] are financially struggling," Collins said, adding that conservative politicians have been good at accessing a potent "phony populism".

Government Truth

The paradox, Collins points out in his book, is that government officials have appointed a string of billionaires to cabinet positions. Along with affluent innovators 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 legislative supporters, helped pass huge tax bills, which will make enduring decreases 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 opposing party, which has also been controlled by the billionaires and big money, be able to effectively tackle the underlying harms?" Collins said.

Progressive politicians, he argues, know what policies are needed to "reverse the updraft of wealth", including significant reforms to the tax system, increasing the minimum wage and supporting labor organizations.

"It was so, so close, and the legislation really did represent the will of the majority of people who really want lawmakers to solve some of these pressing issues," Collins said. "Elite control 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 positive that there can be change, but said it would require sustained political momentum.

"It may be sooner than expected that the tide turns, and then it really is about preserving a ongoing grassroots effort to make progress on this profound imbalance we're living in," he said. "We can address this. It is fixable."