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To numerous US citizens, the economic climate over the last half-decade has been tough. Prices have escalated while salaries remains unchanged. Elevated mortgage rates have made buying a home a grim prospect. The unemployment rate has been slowly rising.

Most people have indicated they're putting off major life decisions, including starting a family or moving to new employment, because of financial volatility. But for a select few of people, the past five-year period couldn't have been any better.

The Billionaire Boom

The assets of the world's billionaires increased 54% in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. And even amid all the market volatility, the stock market has only continued to grow. This expansion has mostly helped just a limited group of Americans: 10% of the population controls 93% of stock market wealth.

However unequal as this distribution seems, it's the economic framework working as it is currently designed.

"Affluent individuals have purchased their jets, they've purchased their multiple houses and mansions, but now they're acquiring senators and media outlets," stated economic inequality analyst Chuck Collins. "We're now entering this other chapter of extreme wealth extraction where the wealthy are exploiting the system of inequality."

Mapping Economic Classes

To help others comprehend what exactly it means to be "affluent" 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 modernize the concept, Collins classifies these "affluence districts" based on income levels:

• At the base level, 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.

Altogether, 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 explained. "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 fails – you're set."

The Billionaireville Effect

The highest hill 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 wealthy, 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 "hint of elimination" to it.

"It's the distinction between personal actions and a system of rules," Collins commented. "We should be focused on an economic system that directs 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: 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 reasonable quantity 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 deliberate about their taxes.

"Wealth defense professionals use a broad range of tools such as financial instruments, offshore bank accounts, anonymous shell companies, charitable foundations and other vehicles to hold assets," he explains.

Government Power and Extreme Wealth Removal

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

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

"Private equity is seeking those areas of the economy where they can increase profits 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 generate returns 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 significant salary growth. And Collins said the suffering and anger of this kind of society can lead to deep discontent.

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

Policy Situation

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

This government structure, along with help from political partners, helped pass major tax legislation, which will make permanent tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

Potential Changes

While government groups continue to argue that immigration and bad trade agreements are the source of everyone's economic problems, "the challenge is: Will the opposing party, which has also been controlled by the billionaires and big money, be able to meaningfully address the underlying harms?" Collins said.

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

"It was so, so close, and the bill really did represent the will of the most of people who really want lawmakers to solve some of these pressing issues," Collins said. "Oligarchic power is not about creating so much as preventing. It's easier to block than it is to make something significant occur, 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 sustained political momentum.

"It may be before we know it that the tide turns, and then it really is about sustaining a ongoing grassroots effort to make progress on this severe disparity we're living in," he said. "We can solve this. It is solvable."