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For many US citizens, the economy over the past five years has been tough. Prices have soared while salaries remains flat. Steep mortgage rates have made homeownership a dismal prospect. The unemployment rate has been slowly rising.

The majority of individuals have reported they're putting off major life decisions, including having kids or switching jobs, because of the instability. But for a select few of people, the last five years couldn't have been any better.

Fortune Expansion

The assets of the world's billionaires expanded 54% in 2020, at the climax 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 small number of Americans: 10% of the population controls 93% of stock market wealth.

However unequal as this allocation seems, it's the financial structure working as it is presently configured.

"Affluent individuals have purchased their jets, they've bought their multiple houses and mansions, but now they're securing senators and media outlets," stated inequality researcher Chuck Collins. "We're now moving into this other chapter of hyper-extraction where the wealthy are exploiting the system of inequality."

Understanding Wealth Tiers

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

To contemporize 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 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.

In total, the residents of these villages constitute 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 flying 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 collapses – 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 richest. The control that this group has far surpasses those who are simply wealthy, let alone the average American who doesn't inhabit "Richistan" at all.

But Collins thinks the political catchphrase "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 funnels so much wealth upward to the billionaires."

Fortune Building Strategies

To understand how wealth at the billionaire level works, Collins divides it into four parts: getting the wealth, protecting assets, political capture and hyper-extraction.

When many Americans think about wealth, they usually think solely about the first step, Collins said. People can create a limited sum of wealth through establishing or managing a successful business, which could get them residency in Affluent Town.

But getting to Billionaireville requires serious investment 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 knowledge 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, international accounts, secret corporations, philanthropic entities and other vehicles to hold assets," he details.

Government Power and Extreme Wealth Removal

To advance 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 protect its accumulation.

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' everyday life largely through investment firms, which allows wealthy individuals to support private companies.

"Private equity is searching for those sectors of the economy where they can extract value 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 stored 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."

Tangible Effects

The effects of this inequality go beyond the wealth getting wealthier. It's about people paying more for their healthcare, rent and vet bills without seeing any substantial income improvement. And Collins said the pain and frustration of this kind of society can lead to serious unrest.

"The most powerful oligarchs understand people are being excluded [and] are monetarily hurting," Collins said, adding that conservative politicians have been good at connecting with a potent "false common-man appeal".

Political Reality

The contradiction, Collins points out in his book, is that elected representatives have appointed a string of billionaires to government roles. Along with wealthy entrepreneurs who had brief but powerful roles overseeing significant decreases to the federal workforce, other crucial appointments for commerce, treasury, education and the interior are also all billionaires.

This administrative framework, along with help from legislative supporters, helped pass major tax legislation, which will make lasting reductions for the wealthy and corporations.

Future Solutions

While political parties continue to argue that foreign entry and unfavorable commercial treaties are the source of everyone's economic problems, "the issue remains: Will the opposing party, which has also been controlled by the billionaires and big money, be able to seriously confront the underlying harms?" Collins said.

Liberal leaders, he argues, know what policies are needed to "change wealth distribution", including deep changes to the tax system, boosting the minimum wage and empowering worker groups.

"It was so, so close, and the law really did reflect the will of the bulk of people who really want lawmakers to address some of these urgent problems," Collins said. "Wealthy influence is not about building so much as stopping. It's easier to block than it is to make something meaningful happen, but the historical precedent 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 sooner than expected that the balance shifts, and then it really is about maintaining a sustained really popular movement to make progress on this severe disparity we're living in," he said. "We can fix this. It is solvable."