Can $1,000 at Birth Make Us a Country of Savers?

I think things that are named after the numbers in the tax code are actually like not great branding. That's fine. So 401 kids is out, Robin says, you're basic. Hello, and welcome to Optimistic Economy, I'm Katherine N. Edwards Economist, and I'm

editor Robin Rousy. On this show, we believe the U.S. economy can be better, and we talk about how to get there when problem solution at a time. Today, I'll not have to miss the economy. We're going to talk about one very special solution that will soon be renamed Trump

accounts. The title of this episode will not be Trump accounts, because that thing's not long for the world.

So first up, some announcements, we had two spiritual sponsors that I want to shout out

this week, but one wants to be anonymous, which reminded me to say, if you would like to be anonymous, we'll still take your money. Yeah, definitely. We also got a spiritual sponsor level donation for Marine in West Marine California. Thank you both of you.

Now we're going to have to redcon. Okay, redcon, which is where we reflect and talk about things we maybe should have brought up before or things that have come up since. Yeah, so after the last redcon, which was very long, I need to redcon quickly that I talked a lot about Bennet like Beckham at the start of the season, and said, in fact,

that I like to watch a movie that's based on the destination of the place I'm traveling to. My sister was like, that is absolutely my idea. You stole it for me. I even told you to watch Bennet like Beckham before you left for London.

You didn't give me any type of shout-out or hat to credit to your sister. So I need to give credit to my sister, you know, maybe she would prefer an adendum about all the good ideas I've stolen from her, but unfortunately, we just don't have the time. Okay, so we have to move on. Moving on, I got a lot of emails about Buffalo, strangely, about how Buffalo can be used

as an adjective, meaning like you are from Buffalo, the city Buffalo is a noun, but also then Buffalo as a verb, and anyway, so I did look at up in my OED, Buffalo is just American slang in terms of being a verb, it's not from the animal, or I mean, it might be related to the animal, but it means to overpower, over all outwit or perplex, dating from 1903, at least in the Cincinnati and Quarera.

“Okay, okay, terms and additions did you look anything up?”

I looked up two things this week.

First I looked up Calvin Ball, which I read in a column this week, and it would just

said they're playing Calvin Ball, I was like, am I supposed to know what that is? And it is a reference to Calvin and Hobbs, Calvin and Hobbs would play a game, and the rule is that the rules have to change every time you play. So this was a reference to, I think, the Supreme Court playing Calvin Ball. I mean, I really love that, because I think that was a good term, I need to absorb that

one. The other one I looked up was Identity Effect, which I was looking up in relation to the thing we're going to talk about here, but the Identity Effect is a theory that people hold sort of multiple senses of themselves, and that they decide to choose what actions to take based on what feels most congruent with their internal identity.

And it's used in the case of what we're going to talk about today as like having a college going Identity. Okay.

“Wait, can you with another example of an Identity Effect?”

Like you perceive of yourself as an athlete, and therefore you like buy a bunch of sports gear

even though you're really, you're really never going to use it.

So you're lazy. There's a million ways. It's a, it's a, it's a psychological theory, it's been around maybe 15 years, we'll talk about it in a minute. Maybe it's, plays into this whole idea of Trump accounts.

Okay. Well, in that case, let's take a break, and we'll come back. We'll talk about our centerpiece, and in the meantime, an enjoy our non-add ad grasp promo that we don't make money from, but we're no one who is. Or no one who is.

But we put it in the show. And now you get to listen to it. We'll be right back. Okay, we should probably talk about savings account. All right, is actually a really fun episode for our listeners.

“So I think we try to every week, talk about the economy in a way, try be in the”

operative where we try to talk about the economy in a way that will make you less depressed about it in our country. And it's like, it's actually quite challenging.

Not because of us, but because of you, she'll not be named, well, she'll name everything

after himself.

“She'll not be named unless it's named after him.”

Anyway, our podcast is not called Trump gas. There we go. So there was in the one big beautiful bill, which had so many awful things. It's polling terribly. So now they're supposed to call it like the tax law, the budget law, the whatever law, but

it's the one big beautiful bill signed on July 4th, 2025. If one big beautiful things happen, it included something called Trump accounts. Now, if you're anything like a casual follower of the current administration, or the man in charge, you would know that if Trump puts his name on something, it could be fraud. Like the Trump University, stakes from stakes, Trump University from casinos, like

the man's got a history picture. Yeah. So putting money into an account with his name on it has certainly the impression of like, or you could just walk out to the pier, throw into the water, because it sounds, it sounds too close to a lot of things that were scams or fake rubbed, yeah, I don't want

to get like libel. No. So I don't know how to say this. You don't want to get suitable. I don't want to get sued for libel.

Yeah. Thank God you're here, Robin. I wouldn't even know what I'm going to be sued for.

But Trump accounts are actually in a really amazing good thing, and there will be re-nane.

“And that's what we're going to talk about.”

We need to do some table setting. Table setting. Okay. So what is a Trump account? What is a Trump account?

Why don't you want to add it? Yeah. If you don't want to call them Trump accounts, you can call them 538s. 538s? Yeah.

So the college saves count. Because that trip's off the tongue. Well, it does not Trump. I mean, I'm doing what I can here. You just explain what they are.

Yes. They are an investment account that every kid in the country currently under 18 can open up, and they can contribute to it. Their parents, their parents, employers, philanthropists, possibly the government can contribute to.

And it's an investment account for children. They can't touch it until they turn 18. And when they turn 18, they can only be used for specific purposes like a house, education, kids, starting a business, but it is a way to give every child in the U.S. an asset when they turn 18.

So this is sort of like what we know as like, what are they 529 accounts, which are like college savings accounts, but they can be used for other things. And there are some other differences. Yes. They have different origins.

So in the beginning. Now, the individual retirement accounts is a tax preferred savings, an investment vehicle, that what you contribute to an IRA is not subject to the income tax you get taxed on the way out as regular income. So if I put $5,000 into an IRA every year, I invest that money, and in 30 years and I retire,

I take money out, I pay taxes on the income I get from the account, not the income that I put in. That's what makes it tax preferred. And the investment account is that it can be used to invest in the stock market, individual stocks, and index funds, what have you?

Eventually, IRAs got like a sibling, which was 401(k)s, and in that the employer opens up an account, similar concept, money is not taxed on the way in. So if you made $100,000 and you put $10,000 into a 401(k), you're only taxed on $90,000 in income. But when you do that, that $10,000 you put in is in subject to the income tax you're

taxed on the way out, and employers can contribute to it as well. What this is an IRA that instead of being tied to an employer instead of being used in retirements, it is given two children as early as birth to accumulates investments before they turn 18. But they can keep it until they retire or they can use it any time after 18.

So the way that the rules are currently written from the one big beautiful bill, the way that the rules are currently written is that you can't withdraw before 18 without a penalty.

And then once you turn 18, you can use it for down payment on your first house, education,

“on the occasion of the birth of a kid, and I think starting a business, otherwise it just”

accrues until retirement. Now, the logic behind this as well as IRAs and 401(k)s is that when you have a long term investment vehicle that's exposed to the stock market, you make the money off of time, not the market.

off the stock market. You can make a lot of money. You're just for a long time.

Yeah, so you're basically giving kids like a 20 years head start because or an 18 year

head start because you've set up an account for them at birth. It has 18 years to accrue and then they get that money and most of the money they've made is come from exposure to just how long the investment has gone on unless so the investment itself. Okay, a couple of quick questions.

Sure. One is the Trump accounts. This is a pilot program. They're piloting part of it. So right now, the way that the Trump accounts are structured, 530a, if that's easier.

But the way that it's structured is that any child in the US who's under 18 can sign up for one this year.

“I think the earliest they can contribute is July of this year, but they can open up the”

account this year.

However, for kids born in calendar year 2526, 2728, they are piloting that the federal government

contributes $1,000 as seed money. Okay, and the parents have to open the account, they're not automatically created. Yes, that is actually the fundamental problem with the accounts as designed right now. So let's go back. Okay.

Let's go back. Because I'm sure a lot of listeners are like, yeah, this was baby bonds. We've already, like, this was an idea. He stole. That was Cory Bookers.

That was Cory Bookers. We're going to go back way, way back to assets and the poor.

“We're going to go back to 1991, George H. W. Bush is president.”

The US is currently in recession and a professor at Wash, you St. Louis, Michael Sharadden writes the book, Assets in the poor, which is the big blue book I'm holding up right now. A new American welfare policy, it's such a good book. But what he proposes in this book is something called individual development accounts or items.

And he's trying to make the argument in the book that our current system of welfare, which even in 1991 still looks very similar to what we have now, is all income and consumption maintenance. You can't afford health care, the government will provide it for you. You don't have much money, you'll get money from cash welfare, which is still existed

when he wrote it. It helps you maintain your consumption, but it can actively limit your ability to have assets because for certain programs like food stamps or supplemental security income, if you have assets, you cannot get the cash.

“So he basically argues that the way to truly change poverty, that actually making poor people”

stakeholders in the economy as well as giving them a means out of poverty in terms of savings and investment would be to have individual development accounts that could start as early as birth for children. He outlines in the book how this would be useful for thinking about a new type of welfare and it's called asset-based welfare policy.

And what he points out is that the US has asset-based welfare for middle and middle-income people in high-income people. They don't have it from poor people because of how 401(k)s are gate-capped from employers and how IRAs require someone to be working. And so his point is if you set up a universal account that everyone can get and the federal

government contributes the welfare from the federal government is that they only contribute to poor people's accounts, this would radically alter what it means to be poor in the United States. And he writes this in 1991.

Now, if you think, while Cory Booker like he stole your idea, the first congressional proposal

in the 1990s, most of these proposals had a Democrat and a Republican sponsor, one of that some of them were only Democrats, some of them were only Republicans. So it starts off in the '90s with kids' save. In the mid-2000s, the Espire Act, baby bonds in 2007 and then plus accounts, young neighbors, accounts, Roth at birth, raise Act, 401(k)s, US accounts, American opportunity

accounts, baby bonds 2.0. The first baby bonds was Hillary Clinton, the second baby bonds was Cory Booker and then 401(k)s, the first 401(k)s was Schueler, the second 401(k)s was Senator Casey from Pennsylvania and then we get the Trump accounts. So this idea has been around obviously a long time and has been proposed over and over

it over again and it was just the force of Will of Donald Trump, like why did it take this long? Why did it take this long? Well, I'm trying to think of what is my best way to answer this, so that's sending sassy. So Charadden, he proposed this in 1991 and we almost immediately have proposals in Congress

to do something similar but we have states that have adopted this and his institute at

So it's not successful in the federal level until now, but there were lots of states policies that informed this.

“So one of them was seed okay, that's Oklahoma, that's Oklahoma, those kids are, I think”

they're 18 now, if they're not having time, they're not 18, they're close.

They set up the seed okay was basically this, you know, baby bond 401 kid, Trump account

538, whatever you want to call it, he called them individual development accounts, but now they're, but they were also CDAs, child development accounts, child development accounts, yeah, and CSA is child savings accounts. See, this is very confusing. Well, they get every time someone, every time someone wants to claim it as their thing,

they get it. It's just what we just need to name it, you know what, we're going to rename it and then tell people it was our idea, but it was originally individual development accounts. Oklahoma, they set it up as a randomized control trial, and they had two groups, the treatment and the control, the control group was given the option to opt into the savings account,

the treatment group was opted into the account and was given the option to disenroll. And they could follow these two sets of kids for 17 years to see how much, see how much they had saved. I don't think that this should surprise anyone, after 17 years, 100% of treatment group children still hold the asset building accounts compared to 6% in the control group.

6%? Mm-hmm. So the parents had opt in, only 6% do, but if you created automatically, no one leaves. Or they had closed the accounts beforehand, so maybe they signed up, but then like took the money and didn't bother putting anymore in because they didn't see the point of

giving or didn't have the money for it, but auto enrolling kids and putting a thousand bucks into it, 100% of them still had the assets 17 years later. So those seed okay kids for Oklahoma, the okay kids are either 17 or 18, and the next stage of this research project is on what they're going to spend the money. Yeah, what they do with the money, which they got a thousand bucks, you know, when they

were zero years old, and were opted into this account, and 100% of them still have it.

“I think when I read the paper, they said one person opted, like one family opted their”

kid out and everybody else stated, mm-hmm, okay. So that was Oklahoma. There also was one in Rhode Island that started in 2010.

They did a incredible amount of messaging, had seed money, but you had to sign up, and

they got just over 50% of kids enrolled, Maine started up as an opt-in as well, but they switched to opt-out because it worked better than it was much cheaper to administer. California and Pennsylvania are starting their own child savings account, and they are both opt-out. So it's taken a while for federal policy to come in, and I should say his proposal was really

successful in other countries. Oh, really? Yeah, and other countries have thought, we're like, this is a great idea. We should do it. America's like, wait a minute, but have you thought about pulling yourself up at your bootstraps and not helping poor people and giving them a systemic disadvantage?

Have you thought about that?

“And they're like, no, we haven't, we're just going to start it.”

So other countries, like lots of other countries have started these accounts, not the US. And I should say, like, I don't really love the name Trump accounts, but Sheridan, at the start of this year, the Hill, the newspaper that follows what's going on in Congress. He wrote an opinion in the Hill that said, every kid needs one, and you can make this good.

This isn't incredibly good policy. You just have to do it right. I guess one of the reasons why I wanted to tell optimistic about this is that there is such good policy out there proposed by people who don't let like politics and pride get in the way of pushing for a good policy.

And it feels like we are in a political quagmire where nothing good can ever happen. But if you go down a level, you'll find a lot of people who are fighting for very good policy. And they don't have like loyalty to party first or like, if it doesn't come from a Democrat, it's not going to happen and we won't support it.

People who care about policy don't always operate the way that people who care about politics

do. And they will balloon policy above politics, whereas political leaders will put politics above policy. So I wanted to bring this up to say that they're like really good people fighting for very good things that would help America and I can't imagine writing in a proposal in a book

in 1991 of like, hey, we should have this child development account. We should have savings accounts. We should do this for kids. We should asset build and change poverty. And then 35 years later have Trump, don't like, it's my account, I put my name on it.

great. This is okay.

“Like those people exist and we're going to get really good policy from them.”

And here's a part that kills me. Ted Cruz is like instrumental in getting Republicans to care about this and that one cuts real deep. I do not like Ted Cruz. I have met him.

He's a person. I don't know.

But he got basically like Republican Silicon Valley people were like, this is a great

way to expose Americans to like the real economic mobility, which is the stock market. Okay. Beyond the visceral response that Trump putting his name on everything just sort of creates it be, I have to say I'm kind of, I have felt dubious about this idea for a number of reasons. And I am not an expert and I am not an economist, but it's not that I don't think that

the federal government should be helping children or that they shouldn't be helping people who are poor. But first of all, I just kind of like I kind of creeped out by the idea that we want to show all this money into the stock market and create little investors. That's getting back to the notion of the identity effect.

So the identity effect piece of this when I was reading about it is that if you create these accounts, there's a question of research question as to whether it creates in the child

a sense of identity that they are a college bound and that these accounts, particularly

the 529 college savings accounts are most effective when you are trying to sort of push on both buttons, you're creating the accounts and the money, but you're also creating the identity and so that those two things work in parallel. There's a question like if you give the kids money, do they begin to think that they are a college bound or is it because the families think that their kids are a college bound

and so they open these accounts? You know, interestingly enough, college savings accounts in these 529s where these are investment accounts, they're like retirement accounts, but for college, those accounts have a separate origin story which they came out of state governments trying to come up with ways to help students in their state afford college tuition and then they were given

like broader mandates in 1990, '6 or '7'. But I get what you mean if you give every child an investment account at birth, what are they like when they turn 18? What kind of expectations does it know does that what you mean? Well, I get there's that, but I also think that in our sense of who we are as Americans

and our national identities, it's constantly like we're consumers and you know, I don't know that it's any better to be like, "Oh, we're inherently investors." You know? So, holding out the book, shredd and says it builds the identity of being a saver. And that even in the '80s, there was evidence that you kind of build the idea of saving

into a kid and that savings is how you--and that the--investment in the stock market is

“like a secondary part of you have to save in over a long time.”

I mean, right now, the Trump accounts are limited, they can't be invested in stocks. They have to be invested in an index fund and it has to have an incredibly low cost.

They basically can have no maintenance fees in order for it to be eligible for a 5/30 investment.

It has to be a low cost index fund. But it could go into--it could have gone into touch of bonds or something, right? Yeah, they could have done something safer. The notion of an index fund is that it's a cheap way to invest and you basically gain when the market gains as opposed to betting on the success of a single company, or kind of betting on long-term the success of the

US stock market. All right. You know, something that I think about all the time is people who are basically in an asset building welfare program for rich people who talk about how poor people need to understand personal finance.

And they say, like, anyone can get an IRA, anyone can do this, like you just need to understand personal finance and you could be rich, too, even as they are being hand-held through asset building. Exactly. They've got their employers, where they have little seminars for them to open their 401(k).

Yeah.

“Like here's what you should put your 401(k) is.”

Not for nothing. 401(k)s were also quite unsuccessful as retirement savings vehicles until they became opt-out instead of opt-in. And now the majority of 401(k) offerings of, like, your employer starts a 401(k) for you unless you explicitly tell them not to.

That's right. That's fairly recent, right? Yeah. That came out of, like, a lot of the 80s and 90s, there was a ton of opt-in opt-in research for 401(k)s.

So I know that people who take pride in their own financial ability and literacy will say, "I would opt-in," but, like, stats to say, it's not sure bad.

Shradden brings up this really fascinating example of what makes someone a saver.

And he talks about the US versus Japan. And during the Great Depression and into World War II, the US had really high savings rates. And Japan was a country that had very low savings rates. But after World War II, we didn't have a Marshall Plan for Japan.

We weren't going to help them rebuild. And they needed access to capital. So they changed their income tax structure to move to a high income tax state that gave tax rates for interest from savings accounts. And they became a very high-saving country.

So he kind of pokes this notion of, like, cultural thrift. Some countries save better than others. The French are such great savers. The Americans are not because we care about consumption. And he's, like, you know, a lot of this is very structural, structural of just what,

what are you encouraged to do and how are you helped. So we don't know if Americans are good at saving because we do a lot of things to tell them not to save. And we tell them to spend, yeah, and we don't give them the same type of structural support for savings that other countries have.

And it's like, all of these things are manipulable by policy. So, you know, the identity effect, I guess, is ours for the taking. We can make it into, this is a savings, like, we're a country of savers, you know, granted there's, like, an equal high chance that someone turns 18 and, like, caches that out right away.

But though there's a penalty right now, there's a, well, yeah, if you don't spend it on certain things.

“So there's some, there's some nanny state of, you have to spend it on, like, qualified”

investments. But, you know, there's going to be calls, yeah, there's things that we mentioned. Yeah. Only kids who turn 18 and buy a dumb house, more, that will happen. They might buy dumb house, or they might take the penalty and buy a car.

Yes, like, they'll do something like that. But I guess the, the point of the policy is to give them an asset and let them determine how it is returned, or how it is ultimately serves your, like, long time financial life. And I think the, the stigma that poor people have is that they don't know how to save

it at best when the reality is that they are very much limited from doing so and the way

that you are very much encouraged and can do so easily when you're richer. Are you worried at all about this, actually, I don't know, kind of making wealth inequality worse? I mean, I can sort of see, it's like a new, additional way, in addition to, like, 529s for wealthy parents to sock away pre-tax money for their kids, for grandparents to contribute

for employers to contribute where people who don't have employers who are going to contribute, don't have generational wealth, don't have, I mean, they're going to have something, but it's going to be fractional. Yeah, I'm very worried about it.

“I think that just like how it's, if it's not opt out, this won't work.”

I mean, it'll do something, but it won't work to counter income inequality. It won't work to connect the poor to our society via asset building. That none of that happens if it's opt-in, it has to be opt-out in order to really be successful because it's a little confusing about the opt-in opt-out, but like, how about automatically enrolled?

Automatically enrolled. Yes. Do your parents have the chance to enroll you or do they have the chance to disenroll you? That's even worse.

That's okay. Because it voluntary versus mandatory. That's worse because it's not mandatory. You can always opt-out. They hold on, auto-enrolled versus auto-enrolled versus, you know, choice to disenroll.

Auto-enrolled versus voluntarily enrolled. Yeah. Auto-enrolled versus not that. What does it, what does it work? Let's workshop this.

It adds an input, auto-enrollment of our individual development child saving account baby bonds for one way.

“I know, but I think just saying, if it's opt-out, it's good.”

You're like, "No, wait. I thought opting out is bad." Auto-enrolled versus self-enrolled, so-fi. I like so-fi for the win. So-fi for the win.

Thank you, production, make us sound good and smart. Yeah, so like the success of these accounts will hinge on auto-enrollment versus self-enrollment. It has to be auto-enrollment to really make a difference. That's part one.

The second part is conditional on having auto-enrollment where do the contributions come

from? Yeah. You know, the original vision was the government contributes into the accounts of poor children. Right.

That's not what's happened this time. It's a one. It's everybody. It does. It does.

Yeah. The pilot. It's $1,000 for everybody. Otherwise, up to $5,000 per year.

It's five grand a year.

That's, that anybody else can put in.

Yeah. Some exceptions for big charities or whatever. Yes. But I think the real question comes down to how will the federal government tilt the scale in terms of the investment that it makes?

Right. And I think that will change how this account works because there's no, like there's no really like clipping the wings of very wealthy children, like their parents, their grandparents, their parents and employers, possibly even their grandparents and employers would start contributing on their behalf and they will, it's like a trust fund for the middle class, which is great.

But that's a voluntary trust fund because they can afford it. It's what can we do for people who can't afford it.

“That's I think the real long term key is what does the federal government do to actually”

build these assets? Yeah.

I mean, I read that some of the companies that were right were out of the gate saying, they

are going to contribute were like, oh, Chase, black rock. That was like, yeah. That's going to happen. Yeah. But I mean, they're, you know, one of the things that Trump accounts have said that they would

take like philanthropic contributions. So Michael Dell of Dell computers has pledged that he will invest in accounts for people in his community. So you can make a nation wide. Like 250 bucks to every kid or something, it's some crazy kind of money.

And those computers are just okay. The current administration is leaning towards like philanthropic, you know, supplements. Someone like Michael Dell comes in and you can do that in your local community of like all the kids in Houston who are in an HIS to the Title I campus, we're going to donate to their Trump account.

Right?

Like, they're setting it up for philanthropic contributions, which are never as generous,

never as reliable, never as fair as the federal government given it to the lowest income. So I think that it's a fair question of what we want this policy to accomplish. If we want it to accomplish, truly changing what it means to be poor and grow up poor, and what kind of advantage as kids have when they're rich, it comes down to these types of decisions.

So the thing to keep in mind is that none of this is set in stone. Like we could have 10 years of people doing like, well, so it turns out philanthropies are, you know, very good at finding lower income kids, but not good at finding poor kids. We need to have the federal government step up. Right.

“I mean, I think about the birth of philanthropy and parts of rural America, right?”

Like it's, you know, there's there's wide gaps and holes, it's not a, it's a whole filled blanket. It's the, it's the quilt, right, the quilt that's torn to shreds, America. Well, and that's not after this. We have got to workshop these metaphors, but I mean, I guess there's one way to think about

philanthropy and related, we have yet to raise philanthropic funding and get someone to sponsor the show through a big foundation gift, but it is really like a teacher's pet situation. They like you. They decide it's worth it. They will give you money.

If you can imagine someone who's not a pet doesn't get to be the one that they like, you know, you could end up with people being left behind. So this system can be designed to leave people behind or it can be designed to not leave people behind. That is a policy choice.

It's also one that we can change, like getting this started is one thing, making it better as another.

“I think frequently of the Social Security Act of 1939.”

There you go, like daily, as you make breakfast and drink coffee. Yeah, the Social Security Act of 1939 is my Roman Empire. The Social Security Act of 1935, which is when the program begins, that program was just wage insurance for only workers, didn't cover their family. And before they even started paying out benefits for Social Security, the 39 amendments

dramatically altered the program to be a truly insurance program for the family who lost a worker. So you didn't have spousal benefits, you didn't have child benefits. It was just when it started in 1935 and there's got to add it in 1939. And the program that we know in some of the features that have made it truly transformative

for families in America is not just that it helps a worker in retirement, but that it helps families who've lost a worker. And I think about this was something like Trump accounts of like, "Hey, y'all, we don't gotta keep it like this." We can 1939, I'm just hearing this.

These Trump accounts are 29, just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

So right now, it is self-enrollment, and it's a form that you can fill out. You can add a checkbox on your taxes. But as, as, you know, they've discussed this, why taxes are not like the way all sorts of policy should be done as a mechanism. Yes, roughly 10% of children live at a non-filing household.

So if you're self-enrolling Trump accounts through the tax system, you are at a minimum going to miss 10% of kids. Now they're opening up other ways to do it not through taxes, but again, like we had stimulus checks, as Sherrad and brings up in his op-ed and the hill where he talks about these accounts.

We had stimulus checks during the pandemic that roughly 10 million people didn't

claim because they didn't have a regular tax filing and they didn't know to go get them. So like the government offering you money, you didn't get, because you just didn't know to fill out the form, add that to a, like, investment account because I have any money in it, like you're not going to enroll.

And it's called a Trump account, which is going to turn some people off. Yeah. So gather if a kid is auto enrolled, but their parents just don't ever do anything with this account. How are they to know that it exists even when they're 18?

How are they going to get it? It's fair question, right?

“You should get statements mailed to you.”

It'll be tied to your social security number, not like your parents address.

So it's the, the counts in your name. Yeah. I think it's, it's broader messaging, right? Like you tell high school period. Your peers all have one.

I guess that might help. And there's also, like, lots of things that happen when you turn 18, like, we do motor voter, because when you go get to driver's license, you register to vote. So like you do a motor voter of like, okay, you're 16 years old. You're a motor voter, saver, and here's information about this account that you'll get

in two years. There's lots of ways to do information interventions and educational interventions for kids as they age.

And then, of course, if they don't know about it, and they don't touch it, and they wake

up in their 35.

“And they're like, oh my God, did you guys know that there was an account, but I had one?”

And the money is just waiting for them having a crude and some index fund. It's not like a user to lose it at 18. Some of the projections on this are like, this is actually just a way to get people retirement, and they can retire really early. So yeah, I'd be nice, good for them.

I am very optimistic that this policy will be good. Yeah. A couple of reasons. One, a Republican passed it, and he put his name on it. So it becomes a little bit of a, like, their body into it.

The Treasury Department release is like, they've tied it to the 250th anniversary of the country. And whatever it's called the, I was looking at a lot of the quad by 10-year-old quad. Quad journey. They were like the duo says quit to take, yeah, I don't know, why don't I do a call?

A 250th anniversary. semi-quintennial semi-quintennial. So they've made this, like, the release from the Treasury Department was like, this is the crowning achievement of the Trump administration's semi-quintennial celebration. And you start contributing to the accounts on July, I think it's July 4th, 2026.

So it's, like, they have, they have absolutely claimed this as theirs, which is like, you know, what that's like, totally fine, but we're going to change the name and like make the rules better in the Democrats who have been working on this for like 35 years, and also the Republicans who have been working on this for 35 years can make this better. It's, you know, the getting past can sometimes be the hardest part, but it doesn't policy

doesn't end there. Yeah. You know, it's funny, this reminds me a little bit of something you said last season about isn't it better to know the policies and that you want to support and push for a policy not a politician, you know, you know, there's something that's good despite the politician

and despite the name. Yeah. Yeah. I was about to say, yeah, exactly, but you were telling me something I said, so I don't be like, yeah, exactly what I said up high, high-five to this girl from this girl, we

go. Yeah, I didn't want to do that, but I think that that's, but you did, I did exactly. My sister is going to be sitting here. I'm, I'm envisioning her eating popcorn being like, this is so, you know, exactly what I said, it's like the good things, so exactly.

And she's going to make me, she's going to be so much, for this, however, I mean, I did say, you know, it's helpful, but I guess optimist out there don't take the part about me quoting myself as the takeaway here and referring back to like, see the things I said

“before for what you need to know, but I think that this is a great example of good policy”

beating bad politics. I don't know if you're not in the policy circles, if you would have known that this was proposed at 1991, that has been through iterations across various

on it.

The name and the origin can be so ephemeral to how the thing actually plays, so, okay.

Listen, we would love to hear your questions about this and I know for effect that if you optimist have any questions, in particular for Charadden and the team in St. Louis that are still actively working on this, I know for a fact they're listening because I emailed them before the episode. Yeah, I just like, well, there's a guy who works there who I've known for a while and he was

like, well, semi the episode because I want to make sure we all listen to it, so they're going to listen to a lot of corrections and send me corrections, so we'll do a retcon of this episode for all the things that I got wrong that the, the team at St. Louis was Charadden Friends points out, it's called the Center for Social Development, really great people at Washington St. Louis, but if you have questions for them, for me about this, you know,

please send them in because this is something I truly believe that we have a lot of ability to exercise as voters that you tell your member of Congress like change the change and auto enroll.

That's a really like niche thing to call your member of Congress about, but this is something

that can make a big difference anyway. Right. So yeah, email us at [email protected]. All right, we're back. We end the show with executive orders.

Sometimes petty sometimes meaningful ways that we would change the world in a relatively anti-democratic way because it just comes from us so Robin, what is your executive order this week? Well, it's not mine, it's from Tamara Doreau of Corona, California, who wrote in with her anti-shrinkflation executive order.

Her order was an ingredient items, now she includes meat. I think meat can be whatever way it should be, but that canned foods, yeast, anything you're cooking, which should come in some sort of standard sizes, like not one in three quarters cups of chocolate chips or 15 ounces of ricotta cheese. This happened to me actually in reverse the other night I was making dinner and I was

like am I crazy or is this an enormous amount of spaghetti sauce? And it wasn't just the Costco made me buy two jars. They made me buy two jars that are 28 ounces instead of 24 standard sizes, please.

“And if you're doing a shrink-flation, you can do that, but you have to call it out on”

the packaging and big, like at the big sticker for six months. Okay, so I'm going to rename this the deli rule and it's got, it's got to come in one of the containers. It's, you know, you've got four sizes of deli containers and that's all of the food you get in a deli comes in one of those containers, everything has to come in a deli container.

You just, you've got four sizes and it's all you can do and then maybe something else for tomato paste, because like, who needs a can of wood? The two, I think actually works quite well, but I don't know how you, so you can freeze tomato paste. And you can forget about it and leave it in there and then they fall to the bottom.

And then the bottom of your freezer is red and you've wanted a few murdered someone for God about it, but turns out you just had tomato paste and then a little bit of

a leak and then you never do it again, so a lot of options.

A lot of options. I've never done what you're executive order. My executive order is that air machines for tires at gas stations need to accept a form of payment. That's not quarters.

What do you mean, like, for like, yeah, an air pump? Yeah, you have an air pump.

“Yeah, you need to put air in your tires and it's like, here is a metal box that you put”

quarters in and allegedly, after putting in a certain number of quarters, this machine will turn on. You have no way of knowing if it works unless it says like broken. Also, how long it's going to take? How long or how long it goes or like, how much time do you have exactly right?

If you've ever run around your car, like trying to hit all four wheels, which is absolutely eaten. Like over the, like just, like, like, I don't have any more quarters. I, I put in so many in the machine, I don't even remember how many it took. It just at some point chugged on.

And I'm running around like an idiot trying to put, yeah, trying to put it to my tires. Costco does sell you overly huge things of tomato sauce, but they do have free air pumps. Costco made me do it. Casco for the wind. Yeah.

Costco for the wind. My other executive order is going to sneak in to keep up our Olympic steam. Is that during the Olympics, you can't play bad sports TV in bars and restaurants. Yeah, just Olympics. No, just Olympics.

No, just Olympics. Why is this so far? Is this going to be possible, or MLB TV reporting on, like, when, for training in the world start in a month, and I'm watching MLB talking about, like, potential starting pitchers for two and a half months from now.

And I was like, I'm sorry, can I watch a person tell themselves down a nice scoop, skeleton, please? What is going on here?

“You have to put on the Olympics during the Olympics.”

I also think, okay, this makes, just reminds me of my other executive order, which is

the Olympics.

“I know people pay to get a broadcast rights, et cetera, but we should just all be able”

to watch everything. I'm telling you, kiddo Olympics, and kiddo Olympics is also a good idea.

Okay, finally, time for spiritual sponsors as we have made multiple references to.

You don't have any financial sponsors for our show yet. So we get through the week with our spiritual sponsors, Catherine. Do you have a spiritual sponsor? My spiritual sponsor is the US Women's Bob Flood Team, who took home golden bronze, but I just happened to be watching Bob sledding.

And then when they won, I was crying harder than they were. The most I've ever cried is whenever the last time I watched the Olympics. Like, it just, it brings, it absolutely hits whatever they're going for. They bring it out of me.

“I saw her kids were there, both of them had kids there, and I was like, is that okay?”

So maybe my spiritual sponsor is just watching people, at least it's kids watching people

win at the Olympics. It doesn't, like, it's fun when they're from the US, but even when they're from another country, just watching people, like, did you watch that skater from Kazakhstan? Yes. Oh my God.

The part where he's just, like, looking, and he looks confused, and then has, it dawns on him that he's going to metal, and he's like, and then when he went to the gold, it's just, like, breakdown crying. Yeah.

And also, I thought that what's his god, now I'm not going to remember his name.

Ilya, Malanin. Yeah.

“I thought he, he, class-act, you know, he had a horrible performance, and he walked right”

up to that guy and congratulated him, and I thought he handled himself with a lot of grace. Sportsmanship. I love when people from other countries hug and they know each other, and I'm like, look, they're friends. Yeah.

Yeah. More people hanging out without me. Yeah. All the hugging, the athletes from other countries, and they know each other, and they're on their tour to get out, everything.

My spiritual sponsor, once again, is just the Olympics, I just tried to make it, something else. But the Olympics again. It's the Olympics again. What's your spiritual sponsor?

My spiritual sponsor is the Pacific Surflander, which is the Amtrak train that runs from San Diego to San Luis Obispo, which I took last weekend up to San Luis Obispo, treated ourselves to business class, has a great snack box that they hand out, and you just sit there and watch the ocean go by. It is 1,000 times better than sitting on the freeway.

Wonderful. Thank you, Persephic Surflander. It's so fun. Good. Yeah.

That's great. So, if you have a chat on a subscriber chat on Substack and of course, thank you to everyone who donated to keep our editor and producer paid. We are at optimisticonmy.com, [email protected], and that's the end. I don't remember what I say at the end anymore.