The decades after World War II were the golden age of the middle class. The rules of the game at that time were very simple: get a good education, find a stable job, and buy a house, and you could slowly accumulate wealth through wages and property. Labor was the true core value, and the global financial landscape operated under the Bretton Woods system, with the proportion of the middle class continuously increasing and society being relatively stable.
But today, the AI revolution has made everything fundamentally different. The essence of AI is 'capital replacing labor.' Whoever masters computing power, algorithms, and platforms can take the largest share of the dividends. Super companies are becoming stronger due to scale effects and network effects, while a large number of medium-skilled jobs are being rapidly replaced. The future landscape will become increasingly clear: top billionaires will become stronger, the lower class will depend on subsidies for survival, and the middle class will be gradually compressed, with their proportion continuously declining. This is completely different from the financial landscape of the decades after World War II.
In such an environment, 'cash is king' has completely fallen behind, and the logic of buying houses worldwide to preserve value is also failing. Cash will only continue to lose value in the face of inflation and the accelerated appreciation of capital, while real estate is no longer a universally recognized wealth appreciation tool and often becomes a burden. Clinging to cash and real estate will only lead to increasingly poor performance against the trend.
The real answer is simple: firmly hold risk assets.
·Gold: For thousands of years, it has been hard currency and a foundational asset that spans cycles.
·Bitcoin and Ethereum: They have become the 'hard assets' of the digital world, capable of resisting inflation and closely tied to the capital logic of the new financial system and the AI era.
·Some leading American tech stocks: Computing power, AI, and platform companies will continue to monopolize profits, serving as the most direct outlet for capital dividends.
The short-term volatility of these risk assets is indeed significant, but in the long term, they are what truly bind to productivity and capital returns. In the AI era, the competition is not about who works harder, but who stands firmly on the side of capital earlier and more resolutely. Those who can hold onto these risk assets will have the opportunity to continue to be at the top in future wealth distribution.
Acknowledgment: The views of Di God were referenced in this article.