What will actually happen (AI, Jobs, Income vs Asset onwership)

[Seth Walsh]

If AI takes over enough that income becomes unreliable, the hierarchy changes:

1. Ownership beats salary
   Equity, real estate, productive assets, private business ownership, IP, data, distribution, licenses, and access to scarce infrastructure matter more than job title.
2. Low fixed costs become power
   No debt, low rent/mortgage exposure, liquid runway, and no forced selling. Survival optionality becomes alpha.
3. Control of scarce real-world assets matters
   Housing, energy, land, healthcare access, residency rights, trusted legal/accounting advice, and family balance-sheet structure.
4. Social trust becomes more valuable
   When synthetic output is infinite, verified human trust, reputation, network access, taste, judgment, discretion, and room access become scarce.
5. AI leverage matters more than “skills”
   The valuable person is not the one who “knows Excel/Python.” It is the person who can aim AI at valuable problems, verify outputs, allocate capital, manage risk, and make decisions under uncertainty.
6. Claims on surplus matter
   Pension, inheritance, equity, profit share, carry, trading PnL, advisory economics, business ownership, and asset appreciation beat wages.
7. Political positioning matters
   If labour income weakens, governments will respond through taxation, welfare, UBI-like transfers, housing policy, pension rules, and regulation. Being in the right jurisdiction and asset class matters.

Probability estimate:

Scenario	By 2030	By 2035	By 2045
AI materially weakens normal white-collar career income	45%	65%	80%
Graduate/corporate career ladders become structurally unreliable	35%	60%	75%
Ownership/platform/capital access dominates labour income even more brutally	40%	60%	75%
Literal AI “takes over” society/economy in a hard loss-of-control sense	3–8%	8–15%	15–25%

The IMF has already estimated that around 60% of jobs in advanced economies may be affected by AI, with some exposed roles facing lower labour demand, wages, or disappearance. OECD work similarly says AI exposure is concentrated in high-skilled white-collar roles, even though aggregate employment collapse has not yet clearly appeared. Stanford’s 2026 AI Index shows the split: experts are much more optimistic than the public, but labour-market effects are already showing up unevenly.


Blunt view: full AI takeover is not the base case. Income fragility is.


For you, the correct frame is:


Maximize ownership, liquidity, AI leverage, high-status network access, and claims on surplus. Minimize dependence on being “employed” by someone who can replace marginal cognitive labour with agents.

 

[Lyndon]

In fact, AI is booming in the healthcare sector. Professionals who develop algorithms for medical applications, such as analyzing MRI scans, CT scans, and X-rays, as well as detecting and localizing tumors and other abnormalities, are being very well compensated due to the growing demand for these...

Cool thread

 

[Seth Walsh]

Blackpill for wagedependentcels

Your income is not what matters. The surplus you capture from labour income, and convert to productive ownership (with persistent capital gains) is what matters.

Your "career" should be for.

1) Scaling salary
2) Reducing friction (WFH, nice manager role, secretly automating most of the work, or most importantly; a PnL linked or variable comp role
3) High finance, law etc. Increasing your network density is hidden, there's no $ number to it. But you need to treat it like a game. Becomign embedded, trusted, and more known and trusted within these elite rings matter more than the raw salary (i.e., if you were to make a higher salary doing some other random job like a datacentre engineer in Finland)
4) Ownership over upside, in all realms.

 

[Chadeep]

@Jason Voorhees

 

[eduardkoopman]

If AI takes over enough that income becomes unreliable, the hierarchy changes:

1. Ownership beats salary
   Equity, real estate, productive assets, private business ownership, IP, data, distribution, licenses, and access to scarce infrastructure matter more than job title.

1. Control of scarce real-world assets matters
   Housing, energy, land, healthcare access, residency rights, trusted legal/accounting advice, and family balance-sheet structure.

1. Claims on surplus matter
   Pension, inheritance, equity, profit share, carry, trading PnL, advisory economics, business ownership, and asset appreciation beat wages.

To add.
This process is already hapening for 40+ years now. The process of: "the labourer/worker" getting less, and "the owners" getting more.
Back in 1945 -1985; the worker starting from zero zould build up assets from his salary while living a decent nice life. Because the worker got good salary/compensation for his work. Since 1985, that is already in a really bad trend. Where the owners manage to pay less salary to the worker, and increase his assets into more value.

To add 2.
The only thing that might save "the worker". Is that workers might come into short supply for some period, because alot of old people (retired, work disabled) and not many young/working aged people.

1. If labour income weakens, governments will respond through taxation, welfare, UBI-like transfers, housing policy, pension rules, and regulation. Being in the right jurisdiction and asset class matters.

I wonder how this will play out.
Now, the worker is still the one bringing alot/most of the taxes. So how the government gonna get their tax money income up, if the amount of workers decreases alot? Are they gonna go after the owners, the companies, with higher taxation? Or are they gonna just print more money, for this? I dunno, tbh

 

[Seth Walsh]

To add.
This process is already hapening for 40+ years now. The process of: "the labourer/worker" getting less, and "the owners" getting more.
Back in 1945 -1985; the worker starting from zero zould build up assets from his salary while living a decent nice life. Because the worker got good salary/compensation for his work. Since 1985, that is already in a really bad trend. Where the owners manage to pay less salary to the worker, and increase his assets into more value.

View attachment 5148183

To add 2.
The only thing that might save "the worker". Is that workers might come into short supply for some period, because alot of old people (retired, work disabled) and not many young/working aged people.

I wonder how this will play out.
Now, the worker is still the one bringing alot/most of the taxes. So how the government gonna get their tax money income up, if the amount of workers decreases alot? Are they gonna go after the owners, the companies, with higher taxation? Or are they gonna just print more money, for this? I dunno, tbh

I see the only workers who can benefit non-linearly from pay are the following:

Front desk quant traders (latency infra, FPGA engineers, QRs) at HFTs
VP level and above at legit Private Equity / Private Credit mega platforms (think Blackstone, Apollo, KKR, Ares)
Podshop PM level and above (Point72, Balyasny, Citadel, Millenium)
New "leads" that emerge from AI. Basically an appointed VP equivalent level that can point AI at problematic dataflows in massive organisations and work with senior stakeholders so closely that their role may resolve to carry economics in the future
Actual sales people with revenue linked variable comp
Actual platform owners with subscription pay

Most other work will compress into some of the most brutal itemised cost-centre economics the world has EVER seen, at any point in history.

Linear labour is just that. I don't agree with there being a shortage of supply if people retire.

Everything else, completely agree. Own upside, fast.

 

[eduardkoopman]

I see the only workers who can benefit non-linearly from pay are the following:

Front desk quant traders (latency infra, FPGA engineers, QRs) at HFTs
VP level and above at legit Private Equity / Private Credit mega platforms (think Blackstone, Apollo, KKR, Ares)
Podshop PM level and above (Point72, Balyasny, Citadel, Millenium)
New "leads" that emerge from AI. Basically an appointed VP equivalent level that can point AI at problematic dataflows in massive organisations and work with senior stakeholders so closely that their role may resolve to carry economics in the future
Actual sales people with revenue linked variable comp
Actual platform owners with subscription pay

Most other work will compress into some of the most brutal itemised cost-centre economics the world has EVER seen, at any point in history.

Linear labour is just that.

Maybe a few unforseen new to be created "jobs" will also create non-linearly pays for people. Alot will be screwed for sure. I am afraid for many IT workers tbh.

I don't agree with there being a shortage of supply if people retire.

I am not sure on this one. But I though it could potentially a potential "saving" factor.

What do you think, about this counter argument. That I hear alot.?

"people thought many inventions in the past, would cause massive unemployment. But often it didn't, and created new unforseen jobs/work that needed doing"

For examples.
The (Steam) Engine taking over many physical work, Computers taking over tasks, Robotics in manufactoring taking over production work, the internet making information almost free, etc...

Everything else, completely agree. Own upside, fast.

Ownership is the way to go, for sure. Find the way, that you can get it.
the whole system is made, to benifit the owners. that's a fact. And worker cucks, are not based enough to relize it or to weak to rebel it. So it's there to stay, I think. That system we have now, that all the cards are stacked in favour of the owner, and against "the worker". Tbh, the created system is rigged against the common worker, but most all of those workers don't even see it that way