Let's Build a David vs. Goliath Economy

An Economy Run by Small Business Owners, not the Corporations

Today's largest corporations are no longer engines of innovation or prosperity — they're engines of exploitation and subjugation. Driven by the relentless pressure to maximize shareholder profits, they destroy thousands of jobs through outsourcing, automation, and layoffs. They inflate prices, erode local economies, and treat workers as liabilities instead of assets. The result is a society hollowed out by corporate cost-cutting — a system where it is more profitable for corporations to damage our society than to serve the American public. It's not personal; it's just business.

By investing in small, undervalued businesses instead of large corporations, we can restore the economy as a free-market engine for social mobility and public service. Our society should profit from increased revenues to small businesses, not destructive corporate cost cutting. A thriving small business sector creates jobs, empowers communities, and proves that capitalism can serve the people — not just the powerful.

It's Time to Put the Small-Cap Value Premium to Work For Everyone

Let's Invest in Small Business Owners, not the Corporations Who are Ruining America for Profit

There is an extraordinarily powerful idea in economics that won a Nobel Prize in 2013. Any investment in systemically undervalued American small businesses will grow faster than investments in the largest corporations on Earth. Economists call this the small-cap value premium. I call it the American Dream.

But it's not looking so good for the small-cap value premium these days. Many economists are starting to ask: Is the small-cap value premium dead? Is the American Dream dead?

In theory, the profits earned by a business are supposed to roughly quantify the value they provide our society. But there has been a decades-long trend where large corporations make decisions that harm our society for the sake of boosting the bottom line. They ship manufacturing jobs overseas to China, lay off workers, and try to automate away jobs with AI to cut labor costs. They shrink the sizes of their products while charging the same amount. They degrade the quality of their products with cheap materials and planned obsolescence.

But in a functioning capitalist society, it should be possible and encouraged for businesses to profit by better serving the community. Luckily, there is a good alternative. Small businesses tend to increase profits from increased revenues, not reduced costs. Small businesses scale up, serve more customers, improve their products, and foster a sense of community.

So there's no excuse why our government keeps on acting on behalf of corporate America while crushing the dreams of small business owners. If we invest in undervalued small businesses, not only will our economy grow faster than before, but the growth will be from increasing the quantity and quality of valuable goods and services to Americans instead of the destruction of thousands of jobs.

We can nurture an economy that rewards the hard work, innovation, and growth of small business owners instead of protecting and enabling the CEOs in corporate boardrooms who are looking for the next opportunity to profit off the misery of millions. Only then, can we fully realize the greatness of American capitalism and revive its ability to allow anyone with the next million-dollar idea to achieve the American Dream.

Let's Supercharge Investments into a Small Business Economy

By Aggregating Small Business Loans into a High-Yield Bond Fund

To empower local economies and strengthen the foundation of American entrepreneurship, I propose aggregating government-backed small business loans into a new class of high-yield fixed-income instruments — all held within the American Societal Bond Fund.

Here's how it would work: The federal government already supports thousands of small businesses through loan guarantees administered by the Small Business Administration (SBA), including programs like 7(a), 504, and microloans. While these loans are underwritten on an individual basis, we can pool thousands of them into securitized bundles that resemble high-yield corporate bonds — but with one key difference: their proceeds directly finance real businesses in American communities.

It is noteworthy to state that this is not public ownership of small businesses — bonds are loans, not stocks; they don't confer ownership, control, or voting rights.

These bonds would be designed to offer competitive returns for investors worldwide, while remaining anchored in the productive real economy. Unlike junk bonds that fuel corporate buybacks or speculative acquisitions, these high-yield societal bonds would generate income from main street businesses that hire workers, provide services, and reinvest in their local regions.

The fund would be professionally managed and transparently disclosed, with strict creditworthiness thresholds and regulatory oversight. If successful, it would serve a dual purpose — stimulating grassroots economic growth while also diversifying and strengthening the asset base of the American Societal Bond Fund.

This is capitalism that works for everyone. Not just for hedge funds and large corporations — but for corner stores, startup founders, immigrant-owned bakeries, and small-town manufacturers. It's a bottom-up investment in the real American economy, powered by the same financial tools that Wall Street already uses every day.

Let's Increase National Resiliency With an Emergency Stimulus Fund

During the Next Emergency, We Can Be Prepared to Fund Stimulus Checks

In the aftermath of the pandemic, there was a K-shaped recovery; the rich and powerful recovered remarkably quickly, whereas ordinary people struggled to rebound. To prevent a K-shaped recovery from happening ever again, I propose we create an Emergency Stimulus Fund. This fund is where all interest income from the American Societal Bond Fund would accumulate. At the president's discretion, the emergency holdings could be liquidated to fund stimulus checks during a national emergency.

And the government should pay taxes on the interest, too. Once the Emergency Stimulus Fund reaches its annual target (like a standard deduction), we would divert a percentage of any additional interest income (e.g. 37%) from the bond fund into the Basic Income Trust Fund (which is like a Social Security payroll tax).

Let's Invest in the Millionaires of Tomorrow with Zero-Interest Loans

Let's increase funding to the Small Business Administration to offer microloans to aspiring entrepreneurs and small business owners at a 0% interest rate. I'm a really big fan of the zero-interest loans administered by Kiva, and I think that the federal government should do this on a much larger scale.

Let's fund this entirely through a targeted increase in corporate taxes for only large corporations, whether that be a 15% minimum corporate tax similar to the one passed in the Inflation Reduction Act, a progressive bracketization of corporate taxes, or some other method.