It's like the British Empire heights.

The peasants in England were still incredibly poor. The British Empire was the largest empire in history, and the nobility and elites sucked up all the imperial wealth.

Because remember, being rich isn't about the amount of money you have, it's about the amount of money you have more than the average person. The goal of capitalism under oligarchical control is the maximization of the gap.

What has made everyman's life better has been technology. It was never capitalism and finance.