Welcome Avatar! There was a popular chart on X that came out and it’s a good time to walk through the implications. Hint: ownership is the fastest way to wealth.
Essentially, the world is pretty inverted from the advice given out in the 1990s. You don’t get a home by saving part of your salary in a bank account and then dumping it all into a down payment.
It’s actually not like that at all (anymore!)
The people who end up becoming homeowners are consistently doing something entirely different. They create an equity upside (stock/private company they started), have that outpace inflation + housing costs then use the money to de-risk. Housing is basically better than a basic bank account and worse than stocks over a long time horizon.
In a particular year it might not be true. However. If you measure trends in decades what we noted there is generally accurate: Savings account goes up less than houses, which go up less than stocks (ignore leverage to avoid that long debate as well)
Part 1: Is This Fair and Right?
For fun we’ll answer the moral question. Our answer is actually yes!
Savings account = you are contributing nothing to society, the returns should be minimal
House = you are buying a consumption and an asset. It is a hybrid. If you spend $20K to renovate a bathroom, you are not losing $20K. Part of it will show up in investment return and if you’re ultra savvy the return will be higher than $20K! Not by much but it’s possible. Also. When you use it, the experience is significantly better. There is value created there
Stocks/Equity/Private businesses. You are defacto creating jobs/opportunities. This is not easy and is by far the most difficult skill you need to learn in 2026. You should get rewarded for improving the world with better products and services
Note, if anyone says companies are evil just “smile nod and agree”. There is no convincing these types of people. They are making a moral excuse to never try while drum roll… working for a company
Directionally, over decades, if the USA continues to be the best place on earth, the incentives are correct.
Part 2: An Uncomfortable Conclusion
If you rely entirely on someone else for your adult life, you are by definition making someone else richer. This is a simplistic explanation. We know that there are loads of back office type positions that add $0 to the revenue line. However, if you’re a brand new company there is essentially no need for a back office/non-production role.
“Would you hire someone who does not generate any value for you or the company?” answer of course is no.
If you agree with that broad and simple statement (doesn’t need to be perfect) then the below chart makes intuitive sense. Once KPIs came out to determine who was actually generating money for the Company, head counts went down while revenues stayed elevated. Unsurprisingly, the value of the company (IE. stock prices) go up in that scenario.
Weird Period Before 1990: Everything changed due to the computer, internet and software. Before all of that, the only way to scale was with headcount. This is why the older companies obsessed around the topic of hiring “people need to know we’re growing!".
After the computer/internet, the need for human labor dropped dramatically and is continuing to drop. One person can now do 10 jobs. Just give them the right tools and suddenly all the non-revenue generating roles are redundant. (this also helps explain the rise of people working multiple remote jobs)
If you worked for a large company (Bulge Bracket, Big Law, Large conglomerate - Coca Cola, J&J etc.) you would notice all of this pretty quickly. Tons of people are simply collecting paychecks while adding nothing to the top or bottom line.
To steal a line from BowTiedBroke “You’re an L on my P&L”
In this interview with Calvin (CEO of NOBS and probably the most famous biz originated from the Jungle years ago), he suggests that in big business most people are useless. Brutal language. Also true.
In the 2020s, you’re now in an environment where the CEOs know this. They know that their need for back office is declining. They know that there are people who can do 10 jobs for the price of say three. All of this is no longer theory but reality.
Tether Remains as a Poster Child
Part 3: No Guiding Force to Change This
Here is an uncomfortable question. If someone adds $0 to the revenue line, $0 to the profit line and does not contribute to the product being sold (at all) why should this person accumulate wealth?
Not a fun thing to say publicly (definitely don’t do that) ask it to yourself privately and make your own conclusions.
The way the world works now? If you are providing a service/product that improves the lives of people, you get rewarded 5x more than you did 10-20 years ago. Is that a bad thing? As you can see, we’re suggesting it isn’t a bad thing. It is only bad if you have no interest in creating a product/service that is of value to American people.
Guiding Forces
AI/Tech/Automation is simply getting better. This means any redundant task can be done with a click of a button. While you shouldn’t use AI to make major decisions, if you ask it to scrape the internet to find the cheapest place to buy a product… it is basically done
The same technology advances make the top 10% more productive. If you could get 10 tasks done in a day, that number is going to go to 15-20 tasks within a few short years
Companies no longer look at headcount as a vanity metric, the new metrics are revenue per employee and profit per employee. This changed over the past 3-5 years or so
Too much money printing already occurred and there is too much debt. The long-term outcome is more money printing which means an underlying bid for assets. There is no underlying bid for wages/wage growth because technology makes headcount go down (not up)
This only sounds like a bad thing if you’re expecting someone else to make you rich. If you’re a self reliant person, you will realize that you can easily be the CEO/CFO/COO/Product Person/Sales Person all at once if you’re starting a small business today. You don’t need to hire anyone. Even better? Once you start making your first $10-20K per month, you can freelance hire via 1099s! The people who think they can work to get rich will take side gigs working for you. As long as they are generating enough revenue/income to justify the cost, you can actually pay them a bit more than they expect (keeping your company ahead of everyone else when they decide who they will give their best hours to)
Part 4: If You’re One of the High Performers
Since we can agree that back office/non-revenue generating roles are going the way of the dinosaur, this means a good performer is ironically being groomed to leave. If you have a flatter headcount and smaller number of employees, it means that the high performers will know the ins and outs of the business. In fact, they will likely have at least two of the three Ps (People, Product, Process).
Keep collecting the large paycheck and start learning the third P. If you’re in sales and being asked to streamline the entire operations, you only need to learn the product side. If you’re the product person and constantly being asked to make the team leaner and more efficient, you only need to learn the distribution process side.
In a wild twist of fate, the top people are getting access to enough information to go out on their own. Instead of being in the dark on parts of the Company, if you’re well liked, you’ll be in the right rooms when all the important decisions are being made. Once you’re in that room, you will begin seeing product gaps and service gaps. That’s Lady Luck pulling on your shoulder saying “go create that…” (after a demand test of course! - It really is just math at this point)
You Can Quickly See the Snowball
After seeing all parts of running a business you are going to see how 1) decisions are made and 2) why business owners get richer much faster than stocks/bonds/savings accounts/salaries etc.
You see a company make $500,000 in profit
Next year it goes to $1M in profit
They set up to sell since they think the next 12 months will generate $2M and begin to flatline
Assuming the valuation is flat at say 4x earnings it means: year 1 it was worth $2M, Year 2 it was worth $4M and Year 3 it is worth $8M (life changing)
Now you can take this and compare it to your own set up.
You make $500,000. Rough math just say your total tax is 30% or $350K
You make $1M off a huge year. Rough math your tax goes up to say 35% and you actually made $650K
You make $2M off a lifetime best, over earning situation. Rough math your tax rate goes to 40% and you actually made $1.2M
After three straight years of earning, you are so far behind the business person that it hurts. The operator has income of $500K + $1M + $2M (at lower tax rates) and then also gets a long-term gain of $8M (or potentially 0% taxes from QSBS qualification)
We’re starting to get agitated with people debating all the rules at this point. The chances of a massive legal/tax overhaul is low. The rules are the rules and you just need to stack the cards in your favor.
If you know that you’re going to go into Entrepreneurship (huge chunks of society will be forced into it, if they like it or not!) then you need time maximization and adaptability. It’s the only way to give yourself the best possible shot at success.
Summary
If you’re the exception to the rule you already know it. If you’re asking if you should start the answer is already yes and it was yesterday. People who are up $10M+ off the latest hot tech IPO are not the norm. They already know they hit the lotto and are not asking if they should start something. The money is already in the bank, they knew they were the exceptions already.
For the rest of the world (99.9%), the question is if they want to accept the new economy/new reality or not.
We can pull up a million charts showing ownership is the path to Wealth creation and socio economic climbing. In fact, it isn’t even new. Uncle Felix was even more aggressive than us in his wording.
So, anon. What is the most likely path to making it, staring at these charts and praying a 80 year old Politician changes things? Or. Gearing your entire life to generate ownership/equity at all costs?
Think we all know the answer!
Disclaimer: None of this is to be deemed legal or financial advice of any kind. These are *opinions* written by an anonymous group of Ex-Wall Street Tech Bankers and software engineers who moved into affiliate marketing and e-commerce.
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