Trump Accounts, the Collapse of Local News, and Conversations with Your Parents

**Scott Galloway** (0:01)
Support for the show comes from Section. The recent joint ventures from OpenAI and Anthropic point to the same thing. Enterprises are not going to get value from AI by just rolling out licenses. If you're deploying AI and you want real ROI, you need to invest in changing how people work. If you want to do this fast with a team who actually knows what they're doing, you should talk to our company, Section. This is actually a paid ad, but it's a little bit weird, full disclosure. I'm an investor in Section as I feel that the part of AI that most under invested is what I call the adoption layer, and that is helping companies upskill their employee base to better leverage AI. Anyway, Section has helped Nike, Autodesk, NASCAR, AVMBEV, and Publisi, and a hundred other firms get value from AI. They can do it for you. Get in touch at sectionai.com. That's sectionai.com to learn more.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:57)
We've all been there, you pop into the shop for five minutes, and all of a sudden, you've forgotten where you parked.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:02)
Car, car.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:05)
Unfortunately, that lost feeling is what it's like trying to manage your policy with other insurers.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:10)
Here, car, come out, come out, wherever you are, please.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:14)
With Geico, you can use the app to easily manage all your policies in one place.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:19)
Did this parking lot have a waterfall?

**SPEAKER_2** (1:21)
I think you've wandered too far, mate. It feels good to find what you're looking for.

**Scott Galloway** (1:25)
It feels good to Geico.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:27)
When you finally find your thing, you want the whole world to know about that thing. So you use a thing called Canva to make it an even bigger and better thing.
Whether you want to create flyers for that thing, make presentations for that thing, or design merch for that thing, you can do anything. So people can see your thing, feel your thing, love your thing. The next thing you know, it's a thing. Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing.

**Scott Galloway** (2:03)
Welcome to Office Hours with Prof G. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, pick tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind. If you'd like to submit a question for next time, you can send a voice recording to officehoursforprofgmedia.com. Again, that's officehoursforprofgmedia.com, or post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit, and we just might feature it in our next episode. Plus, you can now call or text us a question at 201-472-3656.
That's 201-472-3656.
Let's bust right into it. Our first question comes from reddit user TheGChocIce.
Hey Scott, you're a big proponent of the Trump account's idea, minus the name, even as a replacement to social security. This seems to be a deeply flawed idea to me, as essentially you are taking money mostly from the working class via taxes and putting it into the stock market, which is overwhelmingly 93 percent owned by the top 10 percent of wealthiest Americans. I don't see how this doesn't simply wind up as another scheme to enrich the top 10 percent. I'm interested to hear your defense. Okay, so let's just look at some data here. Trump accounts give every child born between 2025 and 2028 a $1,000 government deposit with families able to contribute up to $5,000 a year invested in stock index funds. So what's the math problem with Trump accounts? $1,000 at 8 percent annual return with zero additional contributions is $4,000 at age 18 That's less than a year of community college tuition. The millionaire kid projections require maxing out at $5,000 a year for 18 years. That's 90,000 contributions from families who statistically, many of them can't afford it. A wealthy family can build $150,000 nest egg by the time their child is 30 A low-income child ends up with around $2,500. Who's paying for this? The $1,000 in seed money is indeed taxpayer money, but the total pilot cost is estimated to be around $15 billion by 2034, which really is almost rounding around the budget. The bigger subsidy is the tax deferral on gains, which is similar to a 401k or 529 account, is worth more than the higher tax bracket because it's growing tax deferred. So again, more, to your point, benefits flow upward. In December 2025, Michael and Susan Dell announced that they would be donating $6.25 billion to the program. I think Ray Dalio did something similar. Okay. So you're saying that if there's an additional surge of purchases in the stock market that they'll take the stock market up and the primary beneficiaries of the top 10 percent or 90 percent of stocks. Okay. No doubt about it. But if you were to say, give people money to buy housing, then housing stock would increase in value, and it's mostly rich people in their own home. So yeah, you're right. But I do think there is value to letting, trying to get everyone to participate in the demographics and productivity that typically take over the medium and long-term in the markets up and to the right. I think we need more people invested in the success of our economy, especially some of these high flyers. So I like the idea, I would have gone much bigger and been more paternal. What do I mean by that? If you give every kid $7,000, which would cost, every kid born $7,000, which would cost say $100 billion. I thought it was $40 billion, but I guess doing their math would be closer to $100 billion. By the time, and then I wouldn't let them touch it till they were 65, and they'd have a million bucks when they retire. Then in 30 years, I would announce we're doing away with Social Security, and the budget deficit is going to go way down, and interest rates would start to come down, and the cost of servicing our debt would more than pay for this. In other words, the thing that's going to gut this economy is the fact that we're now spending 40 percent of our federal budget on programs for seniors, Medicare, and Social Security, and all these basically old people vote, and the DN democracy is working too well, and we keep transferring money from young people who are more productive, to old people who are less productive. So, how do we do away with the transfer and the cost of transferring money from an anxious, obese, and depressed generation to the wealthiest generation in the history of the planet, and that is baby boomers? I think savings accounts, $7,000 every baby born, can't touch it till you're 65, low-cost index funds. And then, again, you might be able to do away with what is the second largest line item in the federal budget and then social security. So, I like this idea. I would supersize it. I don't think it's about 18 I think it's about until they're 65