Start Here
What I'm working on and why it matters.
I am a member of the American poor masquerading among the American elite.
I grew up in poverty and homelessness in Arizona. I went on to Yale on a full scholarship, earned a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, and completed a PhD in Public Policy & Economics. If you’ve read my About page, you know the longer version of that story — from my father’s departure after 9/11, to moving between thirty homes across the Phoenix Valley, to the moment my mom asked, “What is that?” when I called to tell her I’d won the Rhodes.
That page tells you why I write. This one tells you what I’m working on.
What I do
I study why America abandons the people it depends on. And I work with the people fighting to change it.
Right now, I’m the National Director of Strategy and Narrative for Living Wage For All, a coalition working to raise wages to a true living wage — at least $25 to $30 an hour — across multiple states. I coordinate labor unions, worker organizations, civil rights groups, and policy partners. The argument is simple. One job should be enough. If you spend your life sustaining this country, this country owes you more than survival.
I’m a Fellow at the Economic Security Project, where I’ve been working on an idea: what if cash support for workers isn’t charity — but recovered wages? Millions of people have already earned more than they ever received. Calling that support “aid” is a lie. Calling it what it is — money they already earned — changes everything about who owes whom.
And I’m a contributing author to a forthcoming book, What Has Democracy Done For Me Lately? (The New Press, 2026). The central thesis: if work doesn’t pay, democracy doesn’t work. We’re drawing on worker interviews, wage campaigns, and democratic theory — writing from inside the crisis, not about it from a distance.
AI is transforming every industry faster than policy can respond. The question isn’t whether to slow it down — it’s whether workers will have any say in what replaces them. Right now, the honest answer is: almost never.
I’m co-leading a project with Andy Stern, former president of SEIU, designing worker protections for the autonomous vehicle transition — not after drivers have been displaced, but now, while the rules are still being written. We’re trying to build something that doesn’t exist yet. Compensating workers for their ideas. Centering their expertise in designing policy solutions. Treating permission to operate as an opportunity to attach public obligations. If we get it right for rideshare drivers, we’ll have a replicable model for every industry AI transforms next. That’s the bet.
My PhD examined meritocracy — the story we tell ourselves about who deserves what. I analyzed 140 years of American political texts, and what surprised me was not that meritocratic ideas are everywhere — I knew that going in. What surprised me was how deep they go. How embedded in our politics and culture. And how much more philosophically and ethically rich they are than most critics assume. Meritocracy persists because it speaks to something real in people — a genuine belief in fairness, in effort, in the idea that what you put in should shape what you get out. It doesn’t have to be accurate to be powerful. You can’t just tell people meritocracy is a myth. You have to offer a better story about what people deserve — and why.
That’s what all of this work is: a better story about what people deserve, because stories become reality.
What you’ll find here
This Substack — American Dreams & Nightmares — is where the thinking behind the work becomes public.
Some of what I write here will be personal. I grew up watching my mother work essential jobs and receive nothing in return. I carry that story as a mandate. I know what it feels like to be told your family’s poverty is their own fault, and I know what it costs to cross from that world into rooms where people brag about the decor in their homes. I write about class, family, the body, and what upward mobility actually does to you — because those experiences aren’t just mine. They’re structural. And they’re evidence.
Some of what I write will be argument. I believe the story of deservingness — the one that says the successful earned it and the struggling deserve it — is the most powerful and destructive story in American life. I’m building the case for a replacement: structural equality. The kind that starts from the fact that people, through their work and sacrifice, have already built this country — and they deserve the benefits. We are the economy. It’s a claim about who has earned what.
Some of it will be research. I have original findings from my dissertation — from 140 years of data on how Americans actually talk about merit, effort, and fairness. I’ll bring that here, because I think it changes how you understand what’s happening in our politics right now.
Some of it will be about what’s possible. I’ve met people everywhere who show up for each other in ways no policy requires and no paycheck rewards. The will is not what’s missing. What’s missing is a system that honors it.
And some of it will be about the future. My mother’s employer used her own call center recordings to train the AI that replaced her. She didn’t receive anything for it. Neither did any of her coworkers. That’s not a hypothetical. It’s already happened. And it’s about to happen at a scale we’re not prepared for.
But here’s what I keep coming back to: if AI is the most productive technology in human history, then the question isn’t whether it creates wealth — it’s who captures it. If we get this right, we’re fighting for a world where the productivity gains from AI actually flow to the people who made them possible. A 20-hour workweek. Higher pay. Time to raise your kids, care for your parents, and actually live — not just survive.
That’s the version of the future I’m working toward. Not managing the damage — seizing the possibility.
Who this is for
I write to give people stories and ideas that explain what they’ve felt but couldn’t name.
If you’ve watched someone you love work their entire life and have nothing to show for it — this is for you. If you’ve been told the economy is working and you know it’s not — this is for you. If you’re tired of political commentary that treats your life as a data point — this is for you.
I am not interested in being left or right. I’m interested in being honest.
I have spent so long learning, observing, feeling that I wasn’t ready to speak and share. I am ready enough.
This is an act of love and care and trust. Hard times require our best selves, and I will do my best to give mine — openly and freely.
I’m glad you’re here.
Rayan
