the world gaining 400 billionaires last year would have set off an economic boom
given everyone raises
and lowered our prices
That doesn't logically follow. Economic growth goes hand-in-hand with price inflation, as increases in spending power run up against natural resource and labor constraints. Once you've picked over the low-hanging fruit, the cost of the next unit will rise.
What we're seeing in Western Nations is a global rebalancing of wealth that's coming at the expense of our own elevated position. And while we're seeing that rebalancing, we're watching a handful of insulated elites continue to enjoy higher-than-expected quality of life that we assumed we were going to be entitled towards.
But if you're living in the Global South? Particularly in the BRIICS states? You're finally getting to enjoy the fruits of industrialization, centuries after it began. As the US hegemony breaks down and we move back to a multi-polar world, the resource rich states are seeing a windfall not enjoyed since the end of the 2nd World War.
And, as a consequence, the US has scrambled to claw those gains back, either through direct military intervention (Iran, China, the East African states) or through espionage and domestic regime change (Latin America, the Philippines, Eastern Europe).
Our fumbling grasp at a retreating position as global hegemon is destroying the supply chains that made the globe wealthier. And that's adding pressure to prices, both domestically and globally, even as its inflating wages and spurring growth.
So it's a much bigger story than the simple Reaganite math of "Trickle Down Make Big Number Go Up". We're transitioning to a new global economic model of more egalitarian wealth and uniform industrialization. But we're making the transition in one of the worst ways possible - through war, through ethnic cleansing, and through degradation of legal trade and travel.