Working for others for a lifetime is a dead end because, from an economic perspective, wage growth is always the most lagging indicator.

After the US dollar detached from the gold standard in 1971, despite the rapid expansion of the global economy, the wages of ordinary workers clearly lagged behind productivity and overall economic growth (such as GDP).
Affected by inflation and increasing income inequality, ordinary workers failed to truly share the dividends of economic growth. This trend continued to worsen over the following decades, eroding the quality of life and economic security of many families.
The roar of the printing press seems to constantly dilute traditional virtues such as hard work, thrift, and self-discipline.
Before 1971, the gold standard system linked currency to gold, strictly limiting the money supply. However, after the dollar decoupled from gold, the world entered an era of fiat currency.
Since then, central banks have been able to flexibly regulate the money supply by printing money, purchasing government bonds, and other methods. The rapid increase in money supply has led to inflation, causing the purchasing power of money to decline.
Under the fiat currency system, commercial banks extend loans through deposits. While credit expansion has driven economic growth in the short term, these loans do not always flow into productive sectors.
A large amount of capital flows into financial markets and real estate, pushing up asset prices but failing to directly promote wage and productivity growth.
Meanwhile, driven by loans and investments, companies focus more on maximizing profits, and wage adjustments often lag behind. In other words, workers’ wages always increase the slowest.
The rapid expansion of money and credit has intensified inflation, eroding the real purchasing power of wages.
Although nominal wages have increased, in the context of inflation, real income has not significantly risen.
With the imbalance in the distribution of capital and labor income, the return on capital is usually higher than the return on labor, further exacerbating this dilemma.