The American Dream is capitalism’s killer app — and we’re giving it away for free.

Look at this:

It’s not just a tragedy — it’s a market failure of epic proportions. Her family scraped together $25,000 they didn’t have for smugglers, only to see her deported. Total bust.

That $25,000 — and more — should be flowing to American voters, not criminal cartels.

President Trump is on the right track with his $5M Gold Card idea. But he’s playing small ball (1m rich investors) when America needs a 21st-century global talent heist.

A National Strategy for Human Capital Supremacy

China has 1.4 billion people. We have 342 million. Assuming genius is evenly spread, China’s got 4x our geniuses. That’s the brutal math we face.

To win, we need a human capital supremacy strategy: concentrate the world’s best minds here and poach our rivals’ top talent. It’s how we won World War II. It’s how we crush China and claim the 21st Century as the second American Century.

The Soviets caged bodies with the Berlin Wall; China traps minds with the Great Firewall. America? Everyone’s clawing to get in. Let’s ditch the concrete and roll out a paywall — cash for citizenship.

The Most Coveted Prize in Human History

Both the left and the right miss the bigger picture: U.S. citizenship is the most coveted prize in human history. People risk death swimming across rivers to claim it. They wait decades in bureaucratic purgatory for it. They pay smugglers their life savings to get a shot at it.

We’re the Apple of nation-states, but our immigration system operates like the DMV. We’ve created something 1000x more valuable than the iPhone, yet we distribute it through a random lottery and black markets.

The market already sets a price for American access. It just flows to the wrong people.

The most tragic aspect of our broken immigration system is that would-be immigrants understand the economic logic perfectly. When a Guatemalan peasant family goes $25,000 in debt to smugglers, they’re making a calculated investment in America as an economic opportunity. They’re not dumb. They’re betting on future earnings against present costs — exactly the kind of calculated risk-taking that built this country.

Imagine how much greater America would be if we let the whole world place competitive bids for a limited number of seats? Instead of importing ~1 million randomly selected people and ~3 million scofflaws each year, we import the 3 million people who are most willing to gamble on their ability to earn legal income in the United States.

If you are willing to go into $25,000 debt to get here so you can work, maybe America wants you here. Just sayin’.

Getting Rich is the American Dream

America is where you can truly live.

America is where you can truly be who you are.

America unlocks you.

The American Dream is about getting rich. Rags to riches — that’s the American idea. Look at our scores of great immigrant success stories:

• OpenAI founder Ilya Sutskever immigrated from Canada after college — after being raised in Israel and born in Russia.

• Google founder Sergey Brin came as a refugee from the Soviet Union.

• NVIDIA founder Jensen Huang immigrated from Taiwan as a child.

None of them were wealthy elites when they arrived. They were strivers who created trillions in value after coming to America. Trillions.

The United States of America is a financial technology that unlocks human economic potential. This is who we are. This is what we make.

The American Gold Rush Proposal

Unleash American human capital supremacy with a market-driven citizenship system:

• Create an income-sharing agreement with new Americans. Immigrants buy into citizenship with a five-year “freedom tax” of 15% of income or a market-driven floor price, whichever’s higher.

• Let POTUS cap the number of immigrants. America’s President sets the total slots available.

• Set the floor price via weekly auction. Immigrants bid their max floor price through a smartphone app — think Robinhood for the American Dream. In a sealed-bid auction, the highest bids win each week’s slots, with the lowest accepted bid setting the price, floored at $5k. I’d bet the market clears above $25k.

• Pay Americans directly. Profits flow to citizens as a Freedom Dividend, delivered annually on the 4th of July — turning voters into shareholders. Congress gets nothing.

Free Money

Trump claims that selling a million Gold Cards at $5 million each would generate $5 trillion. But this misses the exponentially greater value of human capital:

• 55%. Immigrants founded 55% of America’s billion-dollar startups.

• $150b. Our broken lottery-and-black-market system transfers ~$150 billion/year outside the USA via remittances. This is more than Apple and Meta’s profits combined.

• $1,250. A market-driven paywall could yield north of $1,250 per American annually at steady state. If the market clears above $25k, this would deliver even more than $1,250 per citizen: $25k / immigrant × 5 years × 3m new immigrants ÷ 300m U.S. citizens. At the $5k floor, it’s $250/citizen.

Truth Machine USA

The Freedom Dividend isn’t just cash — it’s a political revolution. By turning voters into shareholders, it creates quantitative political accountability, a missing feedback loop in today’s broken system:

• A new information channel for democracy. Free markets thrive on information. This proposal gives voters hard data, not biased news narratives. If bad policies tank the number of bidders, the market-clearing price drops, and the dividend shrinks — $1,250 to $250. Voters feel it instantly.

• A shared sense of truth for America. The Freedom Dividend, paid every 4th of July, becomes an objective metric of success. No more subjective “my narrative, your narrative.” Voters see leadership’s impact in their wallets and respond at the ballot box.

• A revolutionary governance mechanism. This market-driven truth machine empowers 300 million shareholders to demand results — or vote out leaders who fail them.

American Acceleration

This isn’t just smart economics — it’s a geostrategic must. A market-based immigration system would turbocharge our economy and siphon talent from rivals.

Immigrants outpace natives in starting businesses, and those willing to pay ~$25k a year, as the market may set, for five years aren’t here to coast — they’re betting big on creating value. We’ve seen this play out repeatedly, from OpenAI to Google to Nvidia.

Yet our current immigration system is a Soviet-style wreck: decades-long family visas, capped employment shackles, a lottery with laughable odds, asylum backlogs, and temp visas to nowhere. It’s slow, random, and deaf to market demand, missing the boldest strivers and their worth.

Every engineer or founder we snag is one China, Russia, or Europe loses — while the “freedom tax” opens a new lane for those the system locks out.

This mismatch between America’s entrepreneurial spirit and its bureaucratic immigration system is holding back our economy. It’s time to accelerate.

The Most Popular Policy Ever

Mr. President: the Gold Card is a brilliant start. But the American Dream is about getting rich — not just already being rich. We are a nation of strivers.

You have an opportunity to give the American people Trump Gold Checks, paid for by waves of new Americans legally and willingly entering our country to build the future. Seize it.

($25k x 5 years x 3 million) ÷ 300m US citizens = $1,250 per citizen per year

Imagine: Free cash money. Paid to every voter. On the 4th of July.

Imagine: The smartest, most ambitious humans on earth outbidding each other for the right to become Americans.

Prediction: This will be the most popular public policy in American history.

Bring on the paywall.

Bring on the American Gold Rush.

This is America, baby. When people want what we have, we sell it.

—Matt Mireles

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This piece was originally published on Mireles’ Substack, Accelerate or Die.