For Policymakers
Three problems in the U.S. economy, wages, health costs, and the direction of AI, share one broken incentive: a private actor captures the gain from a choice while the cost lands on everyone else. Below is each case and, for each, a single instrument that reprices the choice with no new spending and no price controls. Full papers are on SSRN; short briefs and one-pagers are linked under each.
Amir Goren is an independent researcher (Economics Ph.D., UC Irvine; M.S., MIT) and a macro investor.
- Steering AI without defining it: the Labor-Share Screen
The tax code now charges an employer roughly 25 percentage points more, per dollar, to employ a person than to replace one, and the 2025 tax law made that gap permanent. Firms are not choosing automation on the merits; they are paid to choose it. Washington's answer so far is two bills that tax the machine, a robot, a data center, which hit good and bad adoption alike and push displacement offshore where the tax cannot see it.
The instrument: tax the outcome, not the machine. A firm adopting AI faces a levy on its above-normal profit margins only if its workers' share of income falls. Keep the gains shared, pay nothing. No agency has to define "AI," audit algorithms, or count robots; the IRS already collects every number required.
Read: one-pager · brief, 7pp · papers: SSRN 7107538 and 7107558.
- Why health costs never fall: de-linking the middlemen
Nearly everyone with power over the health care bill is paid a percentage of it, so no one is paid to shrink it. National health spending is $5.3 trillion, 18 percent of GDP (2024); 2027 ACA filings ask a median 14 percent increase; the average family premium is $26,993 (2025). In February 2026 Congress took the first step, requiring Medicare Part D drug middlemen to be paid a flat fee that does not vary with the price of the drug, starting in 2028.
The instrument: finish the chain. Pay every middleman, insurers, brokers, the employer subsidy, in fixed dollars per member rather than a percentage of the bill, with a structure-contingent cap so integration is not an escape hatch. No rate-setting, no spending cut, just a change in what the industry is paid to do.
Read: one-pager · brief, 4pp · papers: SSRN 7106798 and 7106878.
- The inflation the Fed cannot fight: the Reaction-Function Ratchet
For four decades U.S. monetary policy has treated a hot wage number as a reason to act and a fat profit margin as a reason to wait. Over a full cycle that asymmetry ratchets labor's share down: the corporate profit share sits near 17.6 percent (2025 Q4) against a 1970-1999 average near 11. Suppress wages long enough and demand weakens, debt props up consumption, and the politics turns to tariffs and deficits, fiscal dominance, the one inflation a central bank cannot raise rates to stop.
The instrument: symmetry, plus a fiscal partner aimed at the distribution. Payroll relief that lowers the cost of a raise, financed by a tax on above-trend margins built around the margin, not the rate, so it deters the gaming a published tolerance rule would invite.
Read: papers: SSRN 7073658, 7102178, and 7102238.
Contact: Amir Goren, goren.amir@gmail.com.