For decades, Americans have searched for the secret to improving education. We have rewritten curricula, expanded testing, dropped testing, reduced class sizes, introduced new technologies, debated everything from phonics to standardized exams, all while constantly increasing spending. Yet despite the enormous effort and ever escalating costs, today’s test scores tell us most of our young people lack reading and writing proficiency, mathematical competency, and perhaps most importantly, the motivation to learn.
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.
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