To many Americans, the economy of the past five years has been rough. Prices have soared yet pay remains stagnant. High mortgage rates have made buying a home a dismal prospect. The unemployment rate has been creeping up.

Most people have indicated they’re delaying major life decisions, including having kids or switching jobs, because of the instability. But for a very small group of people, the last five years couldn’t have been any better.

The wealth of the world’s billionaires grew 54% in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. And even amid all the economic instability, the stock market has only continued to grow. This growth has largely benefited just a small number of Americans: 10% of the population owns 93% of stock market wealth.

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

In his new book Burned by Billionaires, inequality researcher Chuck Collins argues that the system that perpetuates wealth inequality is purposely opaque to most Americans.

“[The wealthy] have bought their jets, they’ve bought their multiple houses and mansions, but now they’re buying senators and media outlets,” Collins told the Guardian in an interview. “We’re now entering this other chapter of hyper-extraction where the wealthy are preying on the system of inequality.”

Collins, a director at the Institute for Policy Studies, is no stranger to wealth.