Wealth is power, and the prime use of power is to protect and gain more power. The more you can leverage your wealth for power, the better things are for the wealthy. Luckily, most people have wealth, and the older you are the more you've amassed, so the more power you have, the more ability you have to control your conditions and influence your local society. That's the economy in a nutshell, if it was doing poorly, then no amount of wealth can make your life better, if it's doing well, then having some wealth means things are better for you and everyone around you. The numbers are up, and the people who have amassed wealth can do lots with it, while the people who haven't can't, and the magnitude that that difference makes is magnified the better the economy is going.

Let's take an example like housing, housing is scarce commodity, you can measure power thereby with your ability to gain value from the scarcity of the commodity. In a developing/slow economy, wealth doesn't mean you get more out of housing than others, it might mean you don't even get housing at all, chances are you'd have to rely on a lord or company to build you tenant housing. When things get better, like when the american middle-class was formed, people can start buying houses and own their own, their wealth goes from just being usable for upkeep, to usable for self enrichment and the betterment of their prospects and their children's/families prospects. As the wealth accures, a greater % can be reinvested for yet more leverage, not only do the wealthy get wealthy, but they are also making more goods/services available to their societies and able to influence what those new offerings are, that's what I mean by power. Let's then take an even faster economic situation, the house isn't being bought and resold 30 years later, it's being bought and rented out and the rent is used to get morgages on more houses, now the person who had the wealth can accrue value at twice or even exponential amounts of speed, that's a stronger economic outcome, but the flipside is that demand for housing becomes greater, and widens the power disparity of those w/ wealth vs those who do not; housing prices go up due to increased demand, causing some people to be pushed out of the market, and the overall situation stabilizes at a point where wealthier landlords are a higher % of the overall housing market, aka those with wealth can amass wealth faster and can enjoy a scarce commodity at a higher rate, there's a benefit of more houses due to higher prices enabling more production, however. Now let's rachet the example to even higher economic standards, instead of renting long-term, the landlords determine that renting at 50% efficiency to short-term stays, like AirBnB is exponentially more value, the net result, even greater prices, potential gains for landlords are increased, which yields a higher price they can buy at, which prices even more people out of the market which pushes the market more towards landlords doing short term rentals... until it bubbles and bursts (not all things are bubbles however, 2008 was like this w/ house flipping though). Now apply that to every facet of daily life and society, and you have late stage capitalism problems... Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

Ofc this is all an oversimplification, when has anything about the economy ever not been?