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Among countless US citizens, the financial landscape over the past five years has been tough. Prices have soared while pay remains unchanged. Elevated mortgage rates have made buying a home a bleak prospect. The rate of unemployment has been slowly rising.

Most people have reported they're putting off major life decisions, including starting a family or changing careers, because of financial volatility. But for a very small group of people, the recent half-decade couldn't have been more prosperous.

Wealth Explosion

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

However unequal as this division seems, it's the economic framework working as it is presently configured.

"The wealthy have bought 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 extreme wealth extraction where the wealthy are preying on the system of inequality."

Analyzing Income Brackets

To help others understand 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, imagined the different levels of wealth as "Wealthville" villages: Affluent Town, Lower Richistan, Middle Richistan, Upper Richistan and Billionaireville.

To update the concept, Collins categorizes these "wealth villages" based on income levels:

• At the foundation, 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 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 experiences vary dramatically.

"You could be in Lower Richistan, and you're still flying in the coach section of a commercial plane," Collins noted. "Whereas in Upper Richistan, you're flying in a private jet. That's a really separate reality. You fly private, you have no investment in the commercial aviation system. You don't care if the whole system fails – you're set."

Ultra-Wealth Impact

The summit in "Richistan" is Billionaireville, which is made up of about 800 American billionaires who are some of the world's most affluent. The influence that this group has substantially outweighs those who are simply well-off, let alone the typical citizen who doesn't live in "Richistan" at all.

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

"It's the separation between personal actions and a structure of regulations," Collins explained. "We should be focused on an economic system that channels so much wealth upward to the billionaires."

The Four Pillars of Billionaire Wealth

To understand how wealth at the billionaire level works, Collins separates it into four parts: accumulating assets, 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 admission in Affluent Town.

But getting to Billionaireville requires significant resources 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 wide variety of tools such as trusts, offshore bank accounts, secret corporations, charitable foundations and other methods to hold assets," he writes.

Government Power and Extreme Wealth Removal

To advance a wealth defense strategy, a family needs government backing. Wealth of over $40m converts to political power, Collins says, and can be used to secure fortune and ensure continued growth.

The last stage is a different kind of wealth accumulation, one that Collins calls "maximum taking" to describe how the wealthy have come to affect nearly every single part of an Americans' daily existence 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 increase profits 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 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."

The Real Consequences

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 substantial income improvement. And Collins said the hardship and discontent of this kind of society can lead to serious unrest.

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

Policy Situation

The contradiction, Collins points out in his book, is that government officials have appointed a series of billionaires to government roles. Along with tech billionaires who had temporary but significant roles overseeing massive cuts to the federal workforce, other important roles for commerce, treasury, education and the interior are also all billionaires.

This political landscape, along with help from congressional allies, helped pass significant fiscal policies, which will make permanent tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

The Path Forward

While legislative bodies continue to argue that border policies and bad trade agreements are the source of everyone's economic problems, "the question becomes: Will the other major 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 represent 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 stopping. It's easier to block than it is to make something meaningful happen, 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 quickly that the pendulum swings back, and then it really is about maintaining a continuous public campaign to make progress on this severe disparity we're living in," he said. "We can solve this. It is fixable."