Friday, September 28, 2007

Cha-Ching!

Hillary Clinton wants to give every child born in the U.S. a $5,000 bond to be cashed out when they turn 18.

From the article: "I like the idea of giving every baby born in America a $5,000 account that will grow over time, so that when that young person turns 18 if they have finished high school they will be able to access it to go to college or maybe they will be able to make that downpayment on their first home"

Or they could blow it on a motorcycle, breast implants, or a really awesome birthday party, but hey, I don't want to rain on her parade with stuff like reality.

In a further display of blind optimism, "Clinton said such an account program would help people get back to the tradition of savings that she remembers as a child, and has become harder to accomplish in the face of rising college and housing costs."

I don't understand how giving free government money to people in exchange for being born teaches them anything about saving, but then again, I'm not insane. At least a matching program (up to $5,000) would ostensibly teach the kids something about saving.

I tried to figure out how much this program would cost per year. Unfortunately, my iPhone's calculator program ran out of digits. No joke. Anyone know what 2.000000000e+10 means?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This seems like a great idea. As long as its retroactive. And includes interest, based on investing in a top performing hedge fund from the late 90's.

If you disagree, then you're probably just a capitalist pig. You should be down with socialism...its the future baby.