Inflation v. Desk Jobs

Inflation has taken the shine out of every form of investment other than physical assets and entrepreneurship. The dramatic increases in the cost of housing, living, and relatively slow increase of standard wages have created a liquidity-constrained situation for retail investors, and also made the stores of that liquidity continually less appealing. When adjusting for risk, stocks barely beat bonds, and do not provide the same sort of growth potential they would in a lower-inflation society. Forms of non-physical alternative assets all face the same problem: they just don’t beat inflation by as much as they used to, at ever greater risk. The old playbook of working a normal job, spending less than you earned, and investing your money in the S&P still works, but has become increasingly difficult, with lower upside. While inflation, slowing wages, and institutional instability have made desk jobs a far less viable path to success than they once were, some paths to wealth and financial stability have increased in their relative value and probability of success. Becoming an entrepreneur or partial owner of an early stage business, while owning gold for safety, provides a large upside in comparison to the risks of the current equities market. Inflation helps rather than hurts these investments, and they are the perfect hedge for a world of structural de-dollarization.

Entrepreneurship is able to directly ride the tide of inflation and adjust to, and take advantage of, institutional instability. It’s not a bad thing that entrepreneurs can take advantage of this, because if they didn’t, everyone would be getting the short end of the stick from government-driven price fluctuations. Owning a business lets people invest countercyclically and use market over and under evaluations to create their own value. Rather than being victim to the fluctuations of the S&P and inflation, entrepreneurs can simply find a way to create value in any situation. Although entrepreneurship lacks the perceived stability of a desk job, it more than makes up for it in upside potential, development of wisdom, and flexibility. While no entrepreneur can automatically weather all of the fluctuations in currency and financial markets that the world can give, they have a real shot at upside that most employees will never see, while not being a potential layoff candidate. Desk jobs provide a promise that can no longer be fulfilled. This is being recognized, and artificial intelligence will only make this more apparent. Artificial intelligence makes future payoffs less safe for the recipients of wages, and benefits those who control capital.…