Policy as an Operating System

An Economy Built for the People

American prosperity runs on a self-reinforcing loop: Discover new technology through public research, Create companies to commercialize it, Produce domestically to secure the supply chain — and invest in the Care of the people who make it all possible. Healthy, educated, financially secure people don't just benefit from the economy. They feed back into it: curious enough to discover, motivated enough to create, capable enough to produce. The loop is: Discovery → Creation → Production → Care → back to Discovery. Break any link and the whole machine slows down.

Discovery

Scientific research laboratory with advanced equipment

Technological Discovery

Every transformative American industry traces back to publicly funded research. The internet (DARPA), GPS (DOD), mRNA vaccines (NIH), semiconductors (Bell Labs with government contracts). The private sector is exceptional at scaling technology, but it rarely invents it from scratch.

Well-funded public university research is the engine of technological breakthrough. When research funding gets cut, the country isn't saving money — it's surrendering the next generation of industry to whoever funds their labs.

R&D funding restored to 2% of GDP — that gap from 0.7% is the pipeline of industries that will employ you next decade
Streamlined lab-to-startup paths so breakthrough technology gets commercialized here, and the high-wage jobs follow
Basic research funded without commercial mandates — the internet, GPS, and mRNA vaccines all started as "no immediate application"
Academic freedom protected as infrastructure: you can't know in advance which discoveries will matter, so you can't mandate the results

China now
outspends the US

in total R&D investment — for the first time in history. The country that funds discovery leads the next century.

Creation

Diverse team collaborating in a modern startup workspace

Startup Commercialization

Discoveries only matter if someone turns them into products. Startups are the vehicle for converting research into economic value. But founding a company in America is harder than it needs to be — regulatory overhead, healthcare costs for founders and early employees, and a system that disproportionately punishes failure.

The goal isn't to pick winners. It's to lower the cost of trying so more people try.

One-day, one-form business formation nationwide — the friction that stops good ideas from starting disappears
Healthcare decoupled from employment: you can start a company without gambling your family's health coverage on the outcome
Bankruptcy laws that reduce the penalty for good-faith failure: the people most likely to get it right the second time aren't permanently disqualified from trying
R&D tax credits for companies under $10M — the policy advantage that large incumbents lobby for, made available to everyone actually building something

Production

Modern manufacturing facility with precision industrial equipment

Domestic Manufacturing

Design happens here, manufacturing happens overseas. That worked when global supply chains were stable and cheap. They're not anymore. Supply chain resilience isn't a slogan — it's industrial policy.

Bringing manufacturing back isn't about nostalgia. It's about economic security, middle-class job creation, and the strategic advantage of controlling your own production.

Advanced manufacturing infrastructure and workforce training — when there's somewhere for reshored jobs to land, they come back
Reshoring incentives for critical supply chains (semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, energy) — the inputs your life depends on stop being held hostage by foreign disruptions
Automation and AI in manufacturing so American workers compete on productivity and skill, not on accepting the lowest wage
Safety and environmental standards maintained: compete on quality, not by externalizing costs onto workers or the air you breathe

4.5M

manufacturing jobs lost since 2000 — the backbone of the American middle class, hollowed out by decades of offshoring.

Care

Care for the People

People aren't a link in an economic chain. They're the reason the chain exists. Discovery, creation, and production are tools — powerful ones — but they're only valuable insofar as they serve the people who build, work, and live in this country.

Care means more than sustenance. It means healthcare that doesn't bankrupt families, education that opens doors, housing people can actually afford, and a baseline of dignity that no American falls below. A nation of happy, healthy, educated people isn't just more competitive. It's the whole point of having an economy in the first place.

Public healthcare as a right and a competitive advantage — not charity
Education funded as the investment it is, from pre-K through public university
Housing policy that lets people live where the work is
Food security through domestic agriculture that serves Americans first
A baseline of dignity — no one should fall through the floor in the richest country on Earth

Position 01

Public Healthcare

Not charity. Competitive advantage.

Every other developed nation provides universal healthcare. Their businesses don't pay for employee health insurance. Ours do — $23,000+ per employee per year for family coverage. That's a competitive tax on every American business.

When healthcare is tied to employment, workers stay in jobs they hate (reducing productivity), founders can't start companies (reducing innovation), and small businesses can't compete for talent (reducing competition).

Decoupling healthcare from employment is the single biggest pro-business policy available.

$14,885

spent per person on healthcare annually — more than any nation on Earth, with the worst outcomes among wealthy countries. We pay the most and get the least.

Position 02

Negative Income Tax

Milton Friedman's solution to poverty.

The current welfare system is a bureaucratic nightmare of overlapping programs, eligibility cliffs, and administrative overhead. Billions go to managing the system instead of helping people.

A negative income tax is simple: set an income floor. If you earn above it, you pay taxes normally. If you earn below it, you receive the difference. One program. One form. No stigma. No welfare trap.

Replace 70+ welfare programs with one that actually works. Less bureaucracy, more help.

Position 03

Housing Reform

The housing crisis is a supply crisis.

Americans can't afford homes because not enough homes get built. Zoning laws, permitting bottlenecks, and NIMBYism have created artificial scarcity in every major metro. The result: housing costs consume 40-60% of income in cities where the jobs are.

This isn't a market failure. It's a policy failure. In places where building is allowed (Houston, Tokyo), housing remains affordable relative to income.

You can't have a mobile, productive workforce if they can't afford to live where the work is.

5–7×

the median home price relative to income today. In 1970 it was 3.2×. We didn't run out of land — we ran out of political will to build.

Position 04

Anti-Corruption

Not a moral issue. An economic one.

Every lobbyist carve-out, every regulatory capture, every backroom deal distorts markets and misallocates capital. Corruption isn't just unethical — it's a tax on the entire economy. It directs resources to politically connected companies instead of competitive ones.

Countries with lower corruption consistently outperform on GDP per capita, innovation indices, and quality of life. This isn't coincidence — it's mechanism.

Corruption is the operating system bug that makes every other policy fail. Fix it first.

$220

returned for every $1 spent lobbying in Washington. $4.4 billion was spent in 2024 alone. The ROI on buying policy beats any market in the world.

Position 05

Tax Simplification

Complexity is the enemy of fairness.

The US tax code is 75,000+ pages. Every page exists because someone lobbied for an exemption, deduction, or special treatment. The result: wealthy individuals and corporations hire armies of accountants to minimize their tax burden, while ordinary Americans pay full freight.

The solution isn't higher rates — it's fewer loopholes. A simple tax code with no exemptions collects more revenue at lower rates because no one can avoid it.

When the tax code fits on a page, everyone pays their fair share — because there's nowhere to hide.

3×

growth in the wealth share of the top 0.01% since the 1970s. The 70,000+ pages of the US tax code aren't accidents — they're exemptions written by the people who can afford to write them, shifting the burden onto everyone else.

Position 06

Safety Standards

Rules that make markets trustworthy.

Environmental, worker, and consumer protections exist because unregulated markets create externalities — pollution, unsafe products, exploited labor. These aren't burdens on business. They're the rules that make markets function.

Without safety standards, companies compete by externalizing costs onto workers, communities, and the environment. With them, companies compete on quality, innovation, and productivity.

Deregulation without standards is just permission for the strongest to exploit the weakest.