Page 148 - Rich Dad's Increase Your Financial IQ: Get Smarter with Your Money

and had more wives, but basically, fire was fire and a cave was a cave. In
terms of money, there was only one class of people. Everyone was poor.

2. The Agrarian Age. Once humans learned how to plant seeds and
domesticate animals, land became the wealth. Kings and queens owned the

land, and everyone else worked on the land and paid a tax to the royals.
That is why “real estate” strictly translated means royal estate. With the
advent of domesticated animals, the royals rode horses and the peasants
walked. That is why the word “peasant” is a derivative of many words

broadly meaning on the land and on foot. Peasants owned nothing.
Socioeconomically, there were two groups, the rich and the peasants.

3. The Industrial Age. In 1492, Christopher Columbus and other explorers

went in search of trade routes, land, and resources. To me, that’s when the
Industrial Age really began. In the Industrial Age, resources such as oil,
copper, tin, and rubber were wealth. During this era the value of real estate

changed. In the Agrarian Age, land had to be fertile and able to grow crops
or raise animals. In the Industrial Age, nonagricultural land became more
valuable. For example, Henry Ford built his auto plant in Detroit because he
could buy large tracts of rocky, unfertile, nonagricultural land for a great
price. Today, industrial-use land has a higher value than agricultural land.

Socioeconomically, a new class emerged, the middle class. There were now
three groups of people: the rich, the middle class, and the poor.

4. The Information Age. This age officially started with the invention of
digital computers. In the Information Age, information leveraged by
technology is wealth, and very inexpensive and abundant resources, such as
silicon, produce the wealth. In other words the price of getting rich has gone

down. For the first time in history, wealth is available, affordable, and
abundant for everyone, regardless of where he or she lives.
Socioeconomically, there are now four groups of people: the poor, middle
class, rich, and super-rich. Bill Gates is the most obvious example of the

Information Age super-rich.