Jared Bernstein

I think the problem is that it's not at all targeted and that it will exacerbate intergenerational inequality.

you're allowed to contribute, your family members are allowed to contribute $5,000 a year tax-free to these funds.

I think it's tax-free.

Obviously, the seed money, you don't pay taxes on until you take it out.

You can't touch it for 18 years.

And so who's going to be able to make those contributions?

Not low-income people, high-income people.

So it's going to exacerbate inequality over the long run.

And I think that's problematic.

I would have targeted in a different way so that instead of giving money to savers who are going to save anyway, which, you know, my kids are, your kids probably are targeted to families that don't have the resources to make that saving and add to it over time so that it can build.

Yeah.

So that is a much more targeted approach.

And, you know, I think a better one.

I don't know that we can count on philanthropy to get us where we need to go on this.

So, I mean, this is why we have a progressive income tax.

So you can say, boy, cross my fingers.

I hope there's some really generous patriots out there who will provide us help where we need it, like fund the military.

Or you can say,

We're going to progressively tax people.

If this economy delivered you billions, hundreds of billions, trillions, we're going to definitely take some of that back and we're going to use it for things that the electorate decides through their elected officials is what we want to spend money on.