Claire Cain Miller

speaker

184 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 24 Jul

Claire Cain Miller’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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The Daily · Could ‘Trump Accounts’ Actually Close the Wealth Gap? · 24 Jul 2026 podcast

There was 99% or 100% participation.

There are a few reasons.

It's a huge task to take on for all the children in the United States.

There is a small fee associated that the government has to pay with opening these accounts.

There are also some privacy issues.

There are laws about sharing information, identifying information across government agencies, which would need to be done between the IRS and the Social Security Administration.

And another reason seems to be that despite these accounts being available to anyone under 18, they are most beneficial if you invest early, if you're a baby or a toddler when you start investing.

Right.

And so there is some concern in the Trump administration about opening accounts that some families might never invest in or which the children are older and they might not have as much time to see compounding returns.

The risk is that it could do the reverse of what these are aimed at and actually widen the wealth gap.

Because the parents who are financially sophisticated, who are already investing in the stock market on behalf of their children, who are hiring tax accountants to help them with their income taxes, those are the people who are going to sign up, the people who can afford to contribute to these, who maybe work for big white-collar employers who are also going to contribute.

And if the poorer families, the ones who are not already in the stock market, are the ones who aren't signing up, these could end up widening the wealth gap instead of shrinking it.

That's the concern.

And I will reiterate that the Trump administration has told me in several ways that reaching low-income families who would benefit most is a top priority.

I don't think the goal here is to leave them out.

But as of now, those are the families with the least awareness and perhaps the least comfort with opening these accounts.

Right.

That's the big concern here.

So worst case scenario, this program just becomes another way for wealthy families to invest in the stock market on behalf of their children.

Or if it is successful in the way that many policymakers imagined it,

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