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Among countless individuals in the United States, the financial landscape over the last half-decade has been challenging. Costs have escalated while salaries remains flat. Elevated mortgage rates have made buying a home a grim prospect. The jobless rate has been slowly rising.

The majority of individuals have reported they're putting off major life decisions, including having kids or changing careers, because of economic uncertainty. But for a select few of people, the recent half-decade couldn't have been any better.

Wealth Explosion

The assets of the world's billionaires increased 54% in 2020, at the climax of the pandemic. And even during all the market volatility, the stock market has only continued to grow. This growth has largely benefited just a limited group of Americans: 10% of the population owns 93% of stock market wealth.

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

"Affluent individuals have bought their jets, they've purchased their multiple houses and mansions, but now they're buying senators and media outlets," explained inequality researcher Chuck Collins. "We're now entering this other chapter of maximum resource removal where the wealthy are exploiting the system of inequality."

Mapping Economic Classes

To help others comprehend what exactly it means to be "wealthy" 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 "Affluencia" villages: Prosperity Village, Lower Richistan, Middle Richistan, Upper Richistan and Billionaireville.

To update the concept, Collins classifies these "economic communities" based on income levels:

• At the foundation, Affluent Town, are the 10 million Americans who have a family earnings 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.

Collectively, 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 different cultural experience. You fly private, you have no interest in the commercial aviation system. You don't care if the whole system shuts down – you're set."

Extreme Affluence Consequences

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 control that this group has substantially outweighs those who are simply wealthy, let alone the average American who doesn't live in "Richistan" at all.

But Collins thinks the progressive slogan "abolish billionaires" doesn't capture the real problem and has a "hint of elimination" to it.

"It's the difference between personal actions and a structure of regulations," Collins commented. "We should be worried about 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 divides it into four parts: getting the wealth, securing fortune, government influence and hyper-extraction.

When many Americans think about wealth, they usually think only 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 admission 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 skills to ensure that the super rich are being calculated about their taxes.

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

Political Influence and Hyper-Extraction

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

The ultimate step is a different kind of wealth accumulation, one that Collins calls "hyper extraction" to describe how the wealthy have come to touch nearly every single part of an Americans' everyday life largely through investment firms, which allows wealthy individuals to support private companies.

"Private equity is looking for those areas 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 boost their expenses."

The Real Consequences

The results 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 meaningful wage increases. And Collins said the suffering and anger of this kind of society can lead to serious unrest.

"The most powerful affluent rulers understand people are being left behind [and] are monetarily hurting," Collins said, adding that Republicans have been good at tapping into a potent "fake grassroots movement".

Political Reality

The contradiction, Collins points out in his book, is that political leaders have appointed a series 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 administrative framework, 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 legislative bodies continue to argue that immigration and unfavorable commercial treaties are the source of everyone's economic problems, "the challenge is: Will the other major party, which has also been captured 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 "alter economic flow", including significant reforms 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 urgent problems," Collins said. "Oligarchic power is not about developing so much as preventing. It's easier to block than it is to make something significant occur, but the muscle memory is there. We know what that looks like."

Collins is optimistic that there can be change, but said it would require continuous government action.

"It may be quickly 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 solvable."