But what if all our effort to improve education has been focused in the wrong direction?

Perhaps the missing ingredient has never been another “better” educational mandate, infrastructure, or yet one more “investment.” Perhaps it is giving students a tangible purpose to learn.

One of the more intriguing ideas to emerge in recent years is the creation of Trump Accounts—investment accounts established for children that can grow over time, replete with a Silicon Valley-built app to monitor growth. All children who are American citizens and have a valid Social Security number born between January 1, 2025 and December 31, 2028 qualify to receive a federally funded, one-time $1,000 seed investment. All children 18 and under at this years’ end may set up and gain the benefits of Trump Accounts but not receive the $1,000 seed if born outside the aforementioned time window.

Trump Accounts introduce something education has historically lacked: a visible connection between today’s efforts and tomorrow’s rewards. And herein lies these accounts’ power to turn education, and quite possibly the economy, around.

Young people naturally pay attention to things that interest them. They care about the score in a game because they have a favorite team. They are fascinated with social media because followers, likes, and views provide them quantifiable feedback about popularity.

Trump Accounts will offer something similar. Just as kids track points in a game or likes on a TikTok video, kids can now track the growth of their investment. And it really is theirs—not their parents’ money, and not some mysterious account buried within the government’s financial bureaucracy.

Imagine children logging into their personal account every few weeks and watching it change in value. Suddenly mathematics is no longer just arithmetic on a worksheet. It becomes the language that explains what is happening inside their own savings account. All of a sudden, percentages, multiplication, graphs, and compounding matter. Without realizing it, children now have a personal and tangible reason to learn mathematics.

Reading could get a similar boost.

A curiosity about how investments work could prompt many children to read about financial markets, about economic concepts, company reports and press releases, and investment summaries. This, in turn, expands children’s vocabulary. They become curious about words like inflation, dividends, debt, stocks, productivity, competition, trade, entrepreneurship, budgeting, accounting, and cash flow because those concepts relate directly to something they own.

Interest in civics could also increase.

How and why does the government create policies that can influence “my investment returns”? How do we, as citizens, achieve the type of representation we want? What kind of government is best for people and why?

Then there’s economics.

Why does a market economy create more value for people than socialism? How does innovation drive economic growth? What’s the role of productivity, and what’s the role of investors in driving innovation?

Even history could gain relevance.

Students might want to better understand the genesis of free markets, and how innovation within a free market has historically led to greater overall prosperity. They may grow curious about the forces that caused the 1929 stock market crash and subsequent Great Depression, and what they can learn about investing during different periods of the economic cycle.

Interest in financial literacy will waterfall into a greater interest in education overall. It won’t happen overnight, but it probably won’t take long for their desire to learn to increase.

A healthy society must educate its children. But from there, a hunger to succeed has to take over to turn that education into productivity and self-sufficiency.

Many young people today struggle to transition to adulthood because they’ve been told a good future is unobtainable. The climate is doomed. College is outrageously unaffordable. Homes are too expensive. Having children is too expensive. And now, AI is coming for all the jobs. Why bother? Easier to stay in mom’s basement and retreat into arrested development.

Trump Accounts may chip away at this malaise, and from an early age. To own wealth is to want to protect and grow it. To grow it requires setting goals and working hard to reach them. Trump Accounts may restore a widespread desire to set goals and achieve. It may resuscitate that American Dream hunger that built the largest economy in human history, which is presently flagging and fueling support for socialism. Trump Accounts may actually arrest and reverse that trend.

Another benefit of these accounts is their ability to teach young people about the rewards of patience over instant gratification. They can’t access the money in these accounts until they are 18 years old. So for a number of years, young people are going to learn about delayed gratification.

The Marshmallow Test, and several subsequent studies, famously found that individuals who learn to delay gratification experience stronger educational, financial, and career outcomes. These accounts reinforce exactly that lesson.

They also provide opportunities for productive family conversations that may catalyze more savings and improve parent financial literacy. Financial competence may become part of everyday life for more families.

Most of us remember the feeling of earning our first meaningful paycheck or watching our 401(k) or IRA grow. These positive feelings inspire a desire to keep working, keep creating, keep contributing to society, keep earning, keep saving, keep doing. Trump Accounts can create this same feeling, but from a far younger age than any paycheck ever could. Whereas most entitlements are Band-Aids at best or fill gaps, sometimes in ways that demotivate, this one is an investment. It’s an investment in children and the American Dream.

Arguably these accounts are arriving right on time, at a moment when kids are disengaged from school and feeling hopeless over their futures. For those fortunate enough to access this investment in themselves, they should feel more motivated to be productive and maybe even inspired to do something great. Now imagine that hunger to build and do cascading across a generation and the economy.

These accounts have a transformative potential beyond their growth potential. If successful, the next president must find a way to continue them.

Case in point: American workers just took home the smallest share of capital since 1974. And we are experiencing a record divide between corporate profits and worker pay.

For several decades after World War II, innovation largely focused on improving daily life. New household appliances saved time, reduced labor within the home, and increased convenience, giving these technologies mass appeal and adoption. The wealth that cascaded from these technologies spanned far beyond the companies themselves, raising living standards broadly, putting homes in reach for more people, and spurring the Baby Boom.

Beginning in the early 1980s, the nature of innovation changed. Whereas companies had previously focused on conveniences and quality of life improvements, new innovations became increasingly focused on transforming the production of goods and services.

Advances in automation, computing, and global communications dramatically increased corporate efficiency and profitability. This marked the beginning of an era in which capital expanded its advantage over labor. Whether through automation or the relocation of manufacturing to lower-cost countries, labor gradually took a back seat to capital. Since then median wages have struggled to keep pace with inflation, yet trillions of dollars in wealth have been created.

The concentration of economic gains becomes especially clear when examining profits per employee—an ever-changing metric that, at a given time, can reveal a lot about the differences among industries. Here’s today’s snapshot:

• Apple has 166,000 employees worldwide and generates around $600,000 profit per employee annually.

• Alphabet has 194,668 employees worldwide and generates around $400,000 profit per employee annually.

• Microsoft has 228,000 employees worldwide and generates around $300,000 profit per employee annually.

• Ford has 169,000 employees worldwide and generates $24,000 profit per employee annually.

• GM has 156,000 employees worldwide and generates $62,000 profit per employee annually.

The disparity is even more pronounced when measured by market value. Apple, Alphabet, and Microsoft each command more than $15 million in market capitalization per employee. Ford, at $350K market cap per employee and GM, at $470K, lag very far behind. This shows the extraordinary ability of software, intellectual property, and digital platforms to create wealth without a proportionate increase in labor.

In the current economy, technological innovation allows capital to scale far more efficiently than labor.

A steel mill, automobile factory, or appliance manufacturer requires large workforces to generate profits, while a software platform can reach a global market with a comparatively smaller number of highly skilled employees. The rewards flow disproportionately to investors who own the underlying intellectual property and digital infrastructure, as well as to the specialized technology workers who help create it and employees whose compensation includes some form of ownership.

The result is what economists call the “K-shaped economy.”

Those at the economic top are growing greater wealth. Some in the white-collar middle, most particularly financial and technology workers, are also increasing their incomes and wealth. At the same time many, in the white-collar and blue-collar middle are falling further behind. As more families struggle, the burden falls on the government (read: taxpayers) to support basic lifestyles.

History suggests that innovation typically produces a period of job destruction followed by job creation. Perhaps it is more accurate to describe this process as a rotation from the jobs innovation eliminates to the jobs innovation creates.

The challenge today is that our leading technology companies can scale up with significantly fewer workers than our legacy goods production and services economy. In addition these new technologies also seem set to reduce jobs in those traditional industries. Consequently labor’s share of economic gains has been losing ground to capital since these new technologies began penetrating our economy in the 1980s. AI suggests this trend will continue, and quite possibly with even greater momentum.

If labor continues to be disadvantaged, one of two outcomes appears likely: Either owners of capital will voluntarily share more of the gains innovation creates (there’s some evidence of this potential), or workers will increasingly push politicians to redistribute those gains.

When economic imbalances become sufficiently large, the ballot box often becomes the mechanism through which society attempts to restore equilibrium. Mayor Mamdani’s win in NYC last fall, followed by socialist candidates unseating progressive incumbents across several states in recent primaries signals many voters have reached a point of demanding dramatic change.

As Newton’s Third Law says, for every action there will be an equal to and opposite reaction. Labor…voters in a free society…are going to voice their opinions. Expect a rise in socialist support should technology continue to threaten people’s economic security.

Freedom is never really won. You earn it and win it in every generation.
- Coretta Scott King

The Fourth of July is, as we all know, a celebration of our Declaration of Independence. It’s also a commemoration of this nation immigrants created—not because we were a common people but because we held a common idea.

Immigration isn’t just as American as apple pie. It’s a global phenomenon. Over the course of human history, people from all over the world have assertively sought opportunity elsewhere. Or those from oppressive, tyrannical, or war-torn nations have sought peace and freedom.

Whatever the cause, the modern global record on immigration is mixed.

Europe is experiencing an immigration backlash after opening the floodgates to millions of immigrants, many from the Middle East. European cultures are so deep rooted that immigrants don’t assimilate easily. And some immigrant cultures choose not to assimilate.

In Asia, countries with even deeper-rooted histories like China, Japan, and South Korea bring immigrants in for work; but, like Europe, there’s no expectation that immigrants will assimilate. No one really wants to immigrate to the Middle East or Africa. These have been very harsh environments for immigrants.

And then there’s the United States.

From day one, the United States has been a nation of immigrants. A nation born from that first collection of colonies, which were built on the idea that people from different backgrounds could come together to create something new. Unlike older nations rooted in shared ancestry, America was founded on shared ideals.

America’s pull has always been about individual freedom, rights protecting that freedom, and the chance to build something for yourself. People fleeing poverty or oppression come here because they believe in what this country stands for. And many don’t just hope to fit in—they want to fit in. Becoming American means more than getting official citizenship. It’s about pursuing the American dream and the pride of calling yourself an American.

So strong is the lure of this opportunity that people will risk life and limb to cross our borders. They will leave families behind, work tirelessly to earn more than they could at home, and send money back to their families so even they may benefit from a slice of the American Dream.

Why does this successful story of immigration almost exclusively belong to the United States? Why have we been so open to immigrants, and why have they been so attracted to us? What’s our secret sauce, the sauce that almost no other nation has been able or willing to replicate?

Most countries are built on thousands of years of expanding and contracting empires, deep and proud cultural histories and traditions, and wars fought to spread and preserve their cultures. By contrast, our culture is an idea, one that was entirely novel to the world when it was introduced— the idea that anyone can come from anywhere and join our culture of freedom and opportunity. The requirement is not that you give up who you are but that you agree to believe in and passionately pursue that uniquely American idea.

In recent decades, there’s been a war on the American idea. It began in the ivory tower, with roots that trace back to Marxist and postmodern ideas, aimed at dismantling societies in pursuit of utopias that never arrive. Using levers like multiculturalism, identity politics, and victim culture, these concepts spilled out of classrooms and into corporations, government, institutions, and most every facet of public life. Along the way, and by design, they have sown division, weakened our sense of national unity, and are threatening the very thing that made us unique to history.

Of the many American ideas in our current culture war’s cross hairs, immigration and assimilation has been a prime target. The culture warriors enabled millions of illegal immigrants to flood in—unvetted in all senses including a desire to embody the American idea. The process of assimilation was almost completely abandoned.

Once seen as a cornerstone of American success, legal immigration and assimilation have been labeled oppressive and even racist, yet one more extension of white supremacy. These clashing tensions are fracturing not just our country but also the fragile yet vital ideals that unite us and make our country work.

This isn’t the first time America has faced deep tension over immigration. And if history is any guide, it won’t be the last. But if we want to survive this stretch, we need to return to one of our founding ideals.

The melting pot, once central to our shared identity and to the unprecedented success of our nation, must be restored to its rightful place. Not a melting pot of different cultures with different values, but a melting pot of different cultures with the same values that made this country what it is—the shining city on the hill for all the world to see.