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Among countless US citizens, the economy over the last half-decade has been difficult. Expenses have skyrocketed while wages remains flat. High mortgage rates have made purchasing property a dismal prospect. The rate of unemployment has been creeping up.

The majority of individuals have indicated they're postponing major life decisions, including having kids or moving to new employment, because of financial volatility. But for a tiny fraction of people, the past five-year period couldn't have been more successful.

Fortune Expansion

The assets of the world's billionaires expanded 54% in 2020, at the peak of the pandemic. And even throughout all the economic instability, the stock market has only continued to grow. This increase has primarily advantaged just a tiny percentage of Americans: 10% of the population holds 93% of stock market wealth.

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

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

Analyzing Income Brackets

To help others comprehend 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 "Affluencia" villages: Prosperity Village, Lower Richistan, Middle Richistan, Upper Richistan and Billionaireville.

To contemporize the concept, Collins organizes these "wealth villages" based on income levels:

• At the lowest tier, Affluent Town, are the 10 million Americans who have a annual salary 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.

In total, 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 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 distinct lifestyle. You fly private, you have no interest in the commercial aviation system. You don't care if the whole system collapses – you're set."

Extreme Affluence Consequences

The peak in "Richistan" is Billionaireville, which is made up of about 800 American billionaires who are some of the world's wealthiest. The control that this group has greatly exceeds those who are simply well-off, let alone the average American who doesn't inhabit "Richistan" at all.

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

"It's the difference between individual behaviors and a framework of policies," Collins said. "We should be focused on an economic system that channels so much wealth upward to the billionaires."

Wealth Accumulation Mechanisms

To understand how wealth at the billionaire level works, Collins breaks it down into four parts: acquiring fortune, defending the wealth, policy control and hyper-extraction.

When many Americans think about wealth, they usually think exclusively about the first step, Collins said. People can create a modest amount 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 planning in those next three steps. Collins describes what he calls the "wealth defense industry": the tax lawyers, accountants and wealth managers who use their knowledge to ensure that the super rich are being strategic about their taxes.

"Wealth defense professionals use a extensive selection of tools such as financial instruments, foreign deposits, anonymous shell companies, non-profit organizations and other methods to hold assets," he explains.

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 last stage is a different kind of wealth accumulation, one that Collins calls "hyper extraction" to describe how the wealthy have come to influence nearly every single part of an Americans' routine activities 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 parked in so few hands, and they can kind of turn around 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 boost their expenses."

Tangible Effects

The consequences 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 pain and frustration 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 Republicans have been good at connecting with a potent "fake grassroots movement".

Political Reality

The irony, Collins points out in his book, is that elected representatives have appointed a series of billionaires to cabinet positions. Along with wealthy entrepreneurs who had brief but powerful 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 political partners, helped pass huge tax bills, which will make enduring decreases for the wealthy and corporations.

Potential Changes

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 alternative political group, which has also been influenced by the billionaires and big money, be able to effectively tackle the underlying harms?" Collins said.

Left-leaning officials, he argues, know what policies are needed to "change wealth distribution", including significant reforms to the tax system, increasing the minimum wage and empowering worker groups.

"It was so, so close, and the legislation really did reflect the will of the most of people who really want lawmakers to fix some of these pressing issues," Collins said. "Oligarchic power is not about developing so much as stopping. It's easier to block than it is to make something substantial take place, but the historical precedent is there. We know what that looks like."

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

"It may be before we know it that the tide turns, and then it really is about sustaining a sustained really popular movement to make progress on this profound imbalance we're living in," he said. "We can solve this. It is solvable."