You are confusing money for wealth. If I gave you back 3000 years in a time machine with a trillion dollars worth of gold (gold being money 3000 years ago) you would be much poorer than you are today despite having most of the world's money in your new era. Someone taking a log and turning it into a chair increases the world's wealth even if no money changes hands. Someone who prints money (via inflation or counterfeiting) has changed the amount of money in the world but has not changed the amount of wealth.