audio version of the segment here > I'm all in for investing in our children's future
Jay Weber Show transcript 12-6-25
Monday, we talked about this stellar new program that is going to have corporate titans and the federal government teaming up to offer early savings accounts for newborn children…to be granted to them with a thousand dollars in federal seed money…with more promises to come from other private sector contributors-
Michael Dell and his wife got the ball rolling with a 6.25-billion-dollar donation on Monday. Over six billion. And that dell money is going to target limited and lower-income families, but the thousand-dollar federal offer, so far, is for all children born in 2025- thru 2028, at least…
And it’s a great way to encourage private saving. It’s a great way to help parents. And it’s a great way to put aside money for a child that will be indexed to the overall stock market and will grow over time.
The plan also allows the parents to put up to five thousand dollars a year into this account for the child. It allows the parent’s and ( I assume) kids-employers- to put up to 25-hundred dollars a year nto this account and the economists who are doing the math say that these accounts could be worth anywhere from 50-thousand dollars by the kid turns 18…to…hundreds of thousands of dollars by the time the kid turns 18…depending on how much additional donating is done….and how the stock market does.
But based on the stock market’s historical average, this will grow into a good sum of money that the young adult can then use in several ways: for college, for a downpayment on a first house, to start a business. It’s a great idea.
Wall St Journal editors agree and also make a point that i wanted to: that you can bet that once the democrats get back into control…and just…in congress over time…there are going to be attempts to tamper with the promises of this account.
You know that democrats are going to try to …oh…steer the investment options to investments that they favor as leftists, only…. And/or try to use them as another means of income redistribution…. etc. And so, it’s crucial that the accounts remain an individual property right that cannot be tampered with…. like your pension or your IRA.
Now that about 48 hours has passed since the president’s announcement, we are told that banks and brokers and money managers are scrambling…scrambling…to be a part of this.
And of course they would, wouldn’t they? They are eager to participate…and hopefully manage these accounts for parents….and create life-long customers for their financial institutions and services.Yes.
I saw ‘Temu Obama’.... Senator Corey Booker…. on social media…trying to take credit for this idea. He put out a video saying, ‘I’m glad we are finally doing my idea’.... etc. It wasn’t his idea.
If any senator can be given credit for having a role in this, it would be Ted Cruz, who has a friendship with Gerstner after a professional poker player connected them years ago. It’s a story i won’t get into…but it was literally just…this poker player running into Cruz in Las Vegas and saying…. hey do you know my friend Brad Gerstner?
That was his ‘in’ to the GOP/Trump circle…and pitching this to them…when Biden wouldn’t do it.
The point is- it’s the sort of idea that doesn’t need to be political: many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle find the value in this and found it to be a good idea…so…lets do it.
A listener emailed me Tuesday to say…but, but…the federal cost to taxpayers is going to be 40-billion dollars…
To which i responded: we just talked about that level of fraud being found in our food stamp and Obamacare programs…and no one found that particularly alarming. And so, if we can lose 40 billion to fraud without Americans blinking an eye…we can spend 40 billion to get tens of millions of children on the right path, financially. It sounds like a very worthy endeavor.
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