A No-Regrets AI Agenda for Workers and Low-Income People

I waited tables for six years. My mom worked in daycare for over a decade. Neither job gave us full-time hours, health insurance, or unemployment pay when our weekly hours fluctuated.

American benefits are built around one big, full-time employer. Many Americans are left out.

When people ask what we should do if AI upends work, we should do the things that make Americans’ lives more resilient no matter their employer.

AI hasn’t led to unemployment but might already be changing the nature of work.

Americans are starting businesses at record rates. There were 5.7 million new business applications in 2025. From 2005 to 2016 the number was about 2.6 million a year. More of these are in digital and expertise work, and more are one person alone.

Early-stage AI-first companies run about 25% fewer employees.

More tiny companies and solo workers, part-timers, people without one steady employer might be the future if AI transforms work more.

It’s also how millions of low-wage and middle class people already live.

This list also help prepare us if AI leads to large-scale unemployment.

I don’t expect AI to cause massive net unemployment. Translator jobs haven’t even declined. But these fixes help in that scenario too.

Most of these have support from both anti-poverty advocates and right-leaning groups.

Benefits shouldn’t depend on having one big employer

Our benefits need to be accessible regardless of your employer size or type. For context, the Affordable Care Act only requires companies with 50 or more full-time-equivalent workers to offer health coverage.

1. Help workers buy health insurance without a big employer. Since 2020, a business of any size can give a worker, full-time or part-time, tax-free money each month to buy their own marketplace plan. More than 20,000 businesses do this, covering over half a million people. Two-thirds of the small businesses using it offered nothing before. Right now it’s a regulation. Congress should make it a law.
2. Close the coverage gap in states that declined Medicaid expansion. In Florida, Georgia, my home state of Texas, and a few other states, low-income adults can earn too much for Medicaid but too little for marketplace subsidies. Congress could fund a public option or a dedicated plan for people in those states.
3. Stop taxing self-employment harder than employment. When your employer buys your coverage, it’s free of income tax and payroll tax. When you buy it yourself, you get the income-tax break but still owe self-employment tax on it. Same with retirement contributions and dental.
4. Stop penalizing irregular income under the ACA. Marketplace insurance subsidies end the moment you earn one dollar over a specific line. For 2026 that line is $62,600 for one person, $84,600 for two, and $128,600 for a family of four. If you earn more than expected in December and cross the threshold, you repay a full year of help. Phase the help out slowly instead, or at least cap what people owe back.
5. Make benefits portable. Paid leave, retirement, and disability coverage build up through one long-term employer. If you have uneven income, two part-time jobs, or are at a tiny business, you are often left out. Benefits should belong to the worker and follow them, paid into by whoever is paying you at the time. This is a big ask. The progressive Roosevelt Institute, the right-leaning Mercatus Center, and the libertarians at Cato Institute support it.
6. Make unemployment insurance work for everyone. Self-employed people, contractors, and gig workers don’t qualify because the program is funded by a tax on employers. Sweden’s version is simpler. Anyone who meets a minimum work requirement gets a basic tier worth up to about $54 a day. You can voluntarily pay in for a higher tier tied to your earnings. It doesn’t matter how many employers your income came from.

Fix our safety net

1. Get the child tax credit to the poorest kids. The credit lifted 4.1 million people out of poverty in 2024. But more than one in four kids under 17 get less than the full amount because their parents earn too little. A family with three kids and $30,000 in earnings collects about $4,125 of a possible $6,600.
2. Let poor people save. Supplemental Security Income cuts you off once you have $2,000 in savings, or $3,000 for a couple. That limit was last raised in 1989. Adjusted from 1972, it would be roughly $10,000. Some states apply similar tests to cash assistance, and a few to food stamps. Getting through a job change takes a few months of savings. We should want people to have them.
3. Make benefits easier to apply for. Medicare enrolls you automatically and mails you a card. Most other programs are harder, sometimes on purpose. In 2019, applying for food stamps in Louisiana meant an 8,350-word application requesting 13 kinds of documentation, including pay stubs, pharmacy receipts, and baptismal certificates. A 2025 tax law added work requirements and paid states to deny claims. SNAP enrollment fell by roughly 5 million people since July 2025, including 1.2 million children.
4. Make sure the systems can handle a crisis. Arizona’s food stamp system couldn’t absorb that 2025 tax law change, so many people were told about their required interview after the interview date had passed. During COVID, some states couldn’t send unemployment checks for months because software still ran on 1980s code. Fixing systems is boring and has no constituency, so it only gets done in an emergency, which is the worst time to do it.

Prepare for shocks in general

1. Fund job training that comes with a job. Programs that pair training with hiring commitments show earnings gains of 11% to 40% in randomized trials, some lasting a decade. They usually target critical fields that are short on workers: mid-level healthcare roles, cybersecurity and IT, electricians, advanced manufacturing, etc.
2. Make employee ownership easier. Publix, Wawa, and WinCo are employee-owned. If every private company were 30% employee-owned, median wealth for Americans without a high school diploma would rise from about $21,000 to $84,000. Tax breaks and a simpler setup process could nudge more owners to sell to their workers. (I’m actively investigating how feasible this is!)
3. Use data center revenue strategically. Loudoun County collects ~$900 million a year from data centers across 450,000 residents. That’s nearly $2,000 per person! Loudoun used it to cut property taxes every year for a decade, which helps homeowners but not renters. The money could fund housing the way another Virginia county did, upgrade grid and water infrastructure, or pay for something on this list.

Some of these are deep structural changes, but America has made deep structural changes before.

Coalitions can and should get behind these, even if they’re harder than narrow fixes.

This is a living post. I’ll keep adding to it over time.

If you have more ideas, let me know!