That's true for things with a static supply, like famous pieces of art or Manhattan real estate. But all that new wealth out there bidding against you also rep

That's true for things with a static supply, like famous pieces of art or Manhattan real estate. But all that new wealth out there bidding against you also represents new wealth out there available for purchase, driving costs down. Under a stable currency, increasing wealth and productivity leads to steadily falling prices for most goods. This means that other people getting richer can actually benefit you even if you don't. But this process is swamped by monetary inflation. Lots of people look only at nominal price levels and conclude that inflation hasn't been bad. But when you consider the major productivity gains of the past decades, we should have been seeing falling prices. The real inflation is the difference between these, and it's big, and it makes it harder and harder for the poor to stay above water.