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For many US citizens, the financial landscape over the recent five-year span has been difficult. Expenses have escalated while wages remains flat. Steep mortgage rates have made buying a home a bleak prospect. The unemployment rate has been gradually increasing.

Most people have reported they're putting off major life decisions, including having kids or changing careers, because of economic uncertainty. But for a very small group of people, the past five-year period couldn't have been any better.

Wealth Explosion

The assets of the world's billionaires expanded 54% in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. And even amid all the market volatility, the stock market has only persisted in expanding. This increase has mostly helped just a small number of Americans: 10% of the population owns 93% of stock market wealth.

Despite the imbalance as this division seems, it's the financial structure working as it is currently designed.

"The wealthy have bought their jets, they've bought their multiple houses and mansions, but now they're acquiring senators and media outlets," explained wealth disparity expert 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 adopts 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 contemporize the concept, Collins classifies these "affluence districts" based on income levels:

• At the foundation, Affluent Town, are the 10 million Americans who have a annual salary of at least $110,000 and an overall wealth 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 comprise 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 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 separate reality. 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 summit in "Richistan" is Billionaireville, which is made up of about 800 American billionaires who are some of the world's most affluent. The power that this group has far surpasses those who are simply affluent, let alone the average American who doesn't inhabit "Richistan" at all.

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

"It's the distinction between personal actions and a structure of regulations," 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 divides it into four parts: getting the wealth, securing fortune, 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 modest amount of wealth through establishing or managing a successful business, which could get them residency in Affluent Town.

But getting to Billionaireville requires substantial commitment 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 skills 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, offshore bank accounts, secret corporations, charitable foundations and other methods to hold assets," he details.

Government Power and Extreme Wealth Removal

To enhance a wealth defense strategy, a family needs government backing. Wealth of over $40m converts to 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 "extreme removal" to describe how the wealthy have come to influence 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 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 raise their rents."

Tangible Effects

The consequences 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 suffering and anger of this kind of society can lead to profound dissatisfaction.

"The most powerful affluent rulers understand people are being excluded [and] are monetarily hurting," Collins said, adding that Republicans have been good at tapping into a potent "phony populism".

Political Reality

The contradiction, Collins points out in his book, is that government officials have appointed a succession of billionaires to government roles. Along with affluent innovators who had brief but powerful roles overseeing substantial reductions 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 congressional allies, helped pass significant fiscal policies, which will make lasting reductions for the wealthy and corporations.

Potential Changes

While government groups continue to argue that foreign entry and bad trade agreements are the source of everyone's economic problems, "the question becomes: Will the other major party, which has also been influenced 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 "change wealth distribution", including deep changes to the tax system, increasing the minimum wage and empowering worker groups.

"It was so, so close, and the bill really did reflect 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 creating so much as blocking. 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 sooner than expected that the pendulum swings back, and then it really is about maintaining a sustained really popular movement to make progress on this extreme inequality we're living in," he said. "We can address this. It is solvable."