Pyramid of Prosperity
Five layers for distributing income to households after labor
How Do We Shore Up Household Income After Jobs Go Away?
AI, automation, and robotics don't break capitalism—they force us to double down on it. The Pyramid of Prosperity organizes hundreds of proven interventions into a coherent framework for broadening capital ownership.
Click any layer to explore
Layer 1: Universals
Foundation LayerGovernment-provided floor of prosperity for all citizens. This creates a powerful base that ensures no one falls through the cracks, but it's just the starting point—not the be-all end-all. You don't want all income coming from government because that concentrates too much power.
Real-World Examples
Layer 2: Collectively Owned Public Assets
Public WealthCapital we all technically own already by virtue of being citizens, but packaged as trusts, endowments, or funds that pay dividends or royalties. This creates scalable, appreciating, guaranteed asset baskets for all citizens.
Real-World Examples
Layer 3: Collectively Owned Private Assets
Cooperative WealthShared ownership of private sector capital through cooperatives, ESOPs, and DAOs. This layer creates a thicker cushion and allows everyone to participate in free-market capital assets—from farmland and forests to data centers and solar farms. Put them on a DAO, securitize them, run them with AI on the blockchain.
Real-World Examples
Layer 4: Individual Private Assets
Personal WealthPersonal investment portfolios. In the post-labor model, your "job" is to be an investor. You take proceeds from the first three layers and find the best places to invest. Everyone becomes a venture capitalist. This mechanism replaces wages as the primary distribution mechanism.
Real-World Examples
Layer 5: Residual Wages
Protected WorkAutomation will eliminate most jobs, but some human work will remain—clustered along the meaning-authenticity-experience-attention axis. Taylor Swift will always have a job. The cute barista at your favorite coffee shop might too. These remaining jobs need strong protections because they'll be in sharp demand (good for employers, bad for employees).
Job Categories That Persist
The Core Insight
Many economists already agree that a sustainable path to an abundant future is to "broaden capital ownership"—but that's easier said than done.
"How do you accumulate capital if you don't have any to start with?"
That's where the Pyramid comes in. The first three layers create the foundation that enables everyone to participate in Layer 4. It's not about government handouts forever—it's about building the infrastructure for universal capital participation.
The best part? All of these mechanisms exist today. Norway, Alaska, Singapore, India—dozens of countries have implemented pieces of this pyramid. We don't need to invent anything new. We need to implement what we already know works, at scale.
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