With the “flip of a switch,” the Trump Administration has turned “Trump Accounts for children” from voluntary “gifts,” into mandatory ownership of stocks, with no ability for families to sell them for at least five years; and therefore into gifts from ordinary citizens to corporate billionaires and Wall Street.
The “Trump Accounts” not only violate the privacy, autonomy, and economic future of American households; they even violate Congress’s terms for the “One Big [Ugly] Bill” which authorized them.
Since that Big Ugly bill enabled these accounts to be shoved down families’ throats—who could still reject them—six months of commercials, promotions, “service announcements,” and media stories have been able to enroll just 7.2 million children and parents into “Trump Accounts.” Frustrated, and with an election approaching, at the end of September the White House simply ordered them to be made mandatory accounts for 60 million families which parents cannot refuse. And, where they were previously to be cash donations of stock index funds, limited to $5,000 per child and fungible, the White House opened them up to donations of stocks in specific corporations, by corporate billionaires using their charitable foundations (Elon Musk’s SpaceX reportedly made the first one), and compelled the families not to reject or choose other stocks, but to hold, for at least five years, whatever stocks corporate foundations give them.”
The Wall Street Journal, in its must-read-it-to-believe-it article, had the temerity to start listing how this could work:
“Executives could combat policy proposals by invoking the effects on their child shareholders. If every 9-year old owned two shares of a bank, a corporate-tax increase or tightened regulation would hurt the kids.
“A CEO whose company wants to build a data center in a county could put stock directly into accounts of the area’s children as an inducement for support or a reward for approval.
“An ideologically-minded donor could make families own shares in companies they might oppose—giving stock of firearms makers to Manhattan’s 4-year-olds or casino company stock to Utah’s 8-year-olds.
“People with legal or ethical prohibitions against family ownership of individual stocks—like employees of regulatory agencies—would own them unless the government allows exceptions.”
I’m sure you can think of worse. One the Journal wouldn’t mention, is the obvious fact that Trump is attempting yet another, much bigger bribe for votes, just before a national election.
When I first reported this corrupt scam earlier this year, I joked (so I thought) that children would now be able to imitate the President in the number of bankruptcies he has already been through in his real estate career (seven). But it was not a joke at all.
No East German Communist dictator ever tried one like this.
