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Among countless individuals in the United States, the economic climate over the past five years has been difficult. Prices have skyrocketed while salaries remains flat. High mortgage rates have made purchasing property a grim prospect. The rate of unemployment has been creeping up.

The majority of individuals have stated they're postponing major life decisions, including starting a family or changing careers, because of economic uncertainty. But for a tiny fraction of people, the last five years couldn't have been any better.

Fortune Expansion

The fortune of the world's billionaires expanded 54% in 2020, at the climax of the pandemic. And even throughout all the market volatility, the stock market has only continued to grow. This expansion has primarily advantaged just a limited group of Americans: 10% of the population holds 93% of stock market wealth.

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

"The wealthy have acquired their jets, they've bought their multiple houses and mansions, but now they're acquiring senators and media outlets," stated economic inequality analyst Chuck Collins. "We're now stepping into this other chapter of maximum resource removal where the wealthy are taking advantage of 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, imagined the different levels of wealth as "Richistan" villages: Wealth Borough, Lower Richistan, Middle Richistan, Upper Richistan and Billionaireville.

To modernize the concept, Collins categorizes these "affluence districts" based on income levels:

• At the base level, Affluent Town, are the 10 million Americans who have a family earnings of at least $110,000 and an net worth of over $1.5m.
• The villages get more select 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 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 sitting in the coach section of a commercial plane," Collins explained. "Whereas in Upper Richistan, you're flying in a private jet. That's a really different cultural experience. You fly private, you have no investment in the commercial aviation system. You don't care if the whole system collapses – 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 wealthiest. The influence that this group has substantially outweighs those who are simply well-off, let alone the typical citizen who doesn't reside in "Richistan" at all.

But Collins thinks the political catchphrase "end extreme wealth" misses the point and has a "hint of elimination" to it.

"It's the distinction between private conduct and a system of rules," 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 breaks it down into four parts: acquiring fortune, 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 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 calculated about their taxes.

"Wealth defense professionals use a broad range of tools such as trusts, offshore bank accounts, secret corporations, non-profit organizations and other vehicles to hold assets," he explains.

Government Power and Extreme Wealth Removal

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

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' everyday life largely through capital management, which allows wealthy individuals to fund private companies.

"Private equity is seeking 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 accumulated in so few hands, and they can essentially pivot 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."

Actual Impacts

The consequences of this inequality go beyond the wealth getting wealthier. It's about people spending additional funds 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 serious unrest.

"The most powerful affluent rulers understand people are being left behind [and] are economically suffering," Collins said, adding that Republicans have been good at accessing a potent "phony populism".

Political Reality

The contradiction, Collins points out in his book, is that government officials have appointed a string of billionaires to cabinet positions. Along with affluent innovators who had temporary but significant roles overseeing significant decreases to the federal workforce, other key positions for commerce, treasury, education and the interior are also all billionaires.

This political landscape, along with help from legislative supporters, helped pass significant fiscal policies, which will make enduring decreases for the wealthy and corporations.

Potential Changes

While legislative bodies continue to argue that foreign entry 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.

Liberal leaders, he argues, know what policies are needed to "change wealth distribution", including deep changes to the tax system, increasing the minimum wage and strengthening unions.

"It was so, so close, and the bill really did represent the will of the majority of people who really want lawmakers to address some of these urgent problems," 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 historical precedent is there. We know what that looks like."

Collins is positive 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 preserving a ongoing grassroots effort to make progress on this profound imbalance we're living in," he said. "We can fix this. It is fixable."