In January alone, U.S. employers announced 108,435 layoffs - up 118% year-over-year and 205% from December. It marked the highest January total since 2009. For millions of workers, the signal is clear: AI-driven disruption is no longer theoretical. It’s here, and it’s accelerating faster than our labor institutions can respond.
And yet - here’s the paradox - this may be one of the best moments in history to be an entrepreneur, even a solo-preneur.
AI has collapsed the cost of starting and scaling a business. One person, equipped with modern tools, can now do the work of a small team: build products, automate operations, market globally, and reach customers directly. Capital efficiency has never been higher. What’s missing isn’t talent or ambition - it’s access to capital.
The Wrong Response: Universal Basic Income
Universal Basic Income is often proposed as the humane response to job displacement. The intent is understandable. The mechanism is flawed.
Broad cash transfers do not expand productive capacity. In constrained markets - especially housing - they mainly pour money into consumer pockets only to have it siphoned off by large asset owners and private equity-backed landlords, who sit atop the supply like a vampire squid, extracting value the moment demand rises. The check arrives, rents adjust, and the transfer quietly completes. UBI weakens the link between effort and outcome, expands administrative complexity, and treats people as consumers to be stabilized rather than builders to be empowered.
Solo-Entrepreneurs Are Building With Less
Today’s founders don’t need factories or massive payrolls. Many need $25,000 to $250,000 - modest risk capital - to turn skills, ideas, and AI leverage into real businesses. These are consultants productizing expertise, scientists spinning out IP, engineers building vertical SaaS, creators turning audiences into companies.
Yet public policy still assumes innovation happens either inside venture-backed startups or through direct government intervention. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of viable founders are capital-constrained, even as trillions of dollars sit idle.
The problem is not a lack of ideas. It’s a lack of capital formation pathways that scale.
A Better Answer: Build America Market Match (BAMM)
We already have a powerful, underutilized infrastructure: regulated investment crowdfunding under Regulation CF.
Reg CF allows everyday Americans to invest - legally, transparently, and with real risk - into real businesses. Investors have skin in the game. Founders are accountable. Capital flows to ideas that persuade a crowd, not a committee.
Now imagine extending that system:
Build America Market Match (BAMM)
Instead of Universal Basic Income, the U.S. Treasury matches investments made by the crowd.
- A startup raises capital through a Reg CF portal
- Once private investors commit, a Treasury match is triggered automatically
- The match is deployed on the same economic terms as the crowd
When companies succeed, returns flow back to the Treasury.
This is not a grant. It’s not a subsidy. It’s co-investment.
UBI sends checks. BAMM builds companies.
Why BAMM Works
- Skin in the game: Public funds only deploy after private risk-taking
- Market discipline: The crowd vets ideas before taxpayer dollars follow
- No winner-picking: Unlike bespoke government bets, BAMM is rules-based
- No bureaucracy: No portfolios to manage, no agencies acting as VCs
- Capital efficiency: 100% of funds go into building businesses
- Fiscal upside: Successful companies repay the Treasury
BAMM is not the government choosing companies. It’s the government providing a market-following boost - amplifying private investment rather than attempting to outguess it.
Not Industrial Policy. Market Infrastructure.
Recent U.S. policy has leaned toward large, discretionary industrial investments - government attempting to pick strategic winners (example - the USG recently made an $8.9 billion investment in Intel common stock). BAMM takes the opposite approach.
It is neutral, automatic, and scalable. The government does not evaluate business plans, negotiate terms, or sit on boards. Matching is triggered through existing SEC-regulated intermediaries, using infrastructure that already exists and already works.
Add a partial tax credit for participating investors, and BAMM further strengthens long-term capital formation while reinforcing thoughtful investing behavior.
Funding Creation, Not Consumption
AI will continue to reshape work. That’s inevitable. What isn’t inevitable is responding by subsidizing consumption while starving creation.
In the age of AI, the real choice is simple:
- Do we send checks?
- Or do we help Americans build?
When the crowd invests, America matches.
That’s BAMM!
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Note: To help our lawmakers put this into action, I’ve drafted a Congressional Brief for this audacious new proposal.
Build America Market Match (BAMM!) — Congressional Brief
Purpose
To provide a market-driven, fiscally responsible response to AI-driven labor disruption by accelerating small business and startup formation through automatic public co-investment, rather than broad income transfers or discretionary industrial subsidies.
Rationale
Rapid advances in artificial intelligence are reshaping the U.S. labor market faster than existing institutions can adapt. Layoffs tied to automation and restructuring are rising, while the cost of starting and scaling a business has fallen dramatically. Millions of Americans now have the technical capacity to become founders or solo-entrepreneurs—but lack access to early risk capital. Current policy responses tend to emphasize either income replacement or large, discretionary government investments in a small number of firms. Neither approach scales efficiently nor broadens participation in innovation.
Build America Market Match (BAMM) offers a third path: capital formation anchored in market discipline. Instead of sending unconditional checks, BAMM matches private investments made by everyday Americans into small businesses and startups raising capital through SEC-regulated investment crowdfunding under Regulation CF. UBI sends checks. BAMM builds companies.
Program Design
Under BAMM, the U.S. Treasury would provide a 50 percent match on Reg CF raises, capped at $2.5 million per issuer. Private investors commit first. Once a raise closes, the public match is triggered automatically through existing SEC-regulated intermediaries. Treasury funds are deployed on the same economic terms as the crowd, ensuring pari passu participation.
When companies succeed, returns flow back to the Treasury, allowing public capital to recycle over time. The federal government does not select companies, negotiate terms, manage portfolios, or sit on boards. BAMM is rules-based, neutral, and automatic - a public boost that follows market signals rather than attempting to predict winners.
Scale and Authorization
To meaningfully support the AI transition, BAMM must operate at national scale. Congress should authorize $8.9 billion per year for ten years, aligning the program’s ambition with the scale of recent federal investment in Intel.
At this level:
- Public capital would support tens of thousands of companies annually
- Millions of potential founders would see a credible path to startup financing
- Innovation capacity would be distributed across regions and sectors rather than concentrated in a handful of firms
Unlike discretionary industrial policy, BAMM does not concentrate risk in single bets. It spreads capital across a broad base of market-validated enterprises while preserving fiscal upside through repayment and returns.
Why BAMM Works
- Market discipline: Public funds deploy only after private risk-taking
- No winner-picking: The crowd - not the government - selects investments
- Administrative efficiency: Uses existing Reg CF infrastructure
- Fiscal responsibility: Public capital participates pari passu and is repayable
- Economic impact: 100% of funds flow into business formation and growth
Conclusion
AI will continue to disrupt traditional employment. The policy choice is whether to subsidize consumption or finance creation. Build America Market Match aligns public capital with private investment, expands access to entrepreneurship, and strengthens the U.S. innovation economy without expanding bureaucracy or distorting markets.
When the crowd invests, America matches.
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This proposal offers a clear, market-oriented alternative to prevailing responses to AI-driven labor disruption. Rather than framing technological change as a problem to be softened through income replacement, it argues that the defining constraint of the current moment is access to early-stage risk capital.
The Build America Market Match (BAMM) concept is compelling in its simplicity: public funds follow private investment through existing Regulation CF infrastructure, deploying only after the crowd has demonstrated conviction. By operating as automatic, rules-based co-investment rather than discretionary industrial policy or unconditional cash transfer, BAMM preserves market discipline, broadens participation in entrepreneurship, and creates the possibility of fiscal upside for the Treasury.
The contrast with Universal Basic Income is intentionally sharp, but it serves to highlight a core policy choice - whether to prioritize consumption smoothing or productive capacity. As a public policy idea, BAMM stands out for aligning incentives across founders, investors, and taxpayers while leveraging regulatory frameworks already in place. It reframes the government’s role from picker or patron to amplifier of decentralized market judgment, offering a scalable approach to capital formation in an AI-accelerated economy.