• adarza@lemmy.ca
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      1 month ago

      put into an index fund over the last seventeen years, that $5k is now $30k. it was not a terrible idea.

      • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        Of all the people who are so strapped they could receive $5k and not immediately blow it on visa bills and rent, parents aren’t even close to the list. $5k into investments? Most of them are either flirting with bankruptcy or engaging in some heavy petting in a corner booth.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Not on its face, no. I think it’s still a band-aid attached to a bigger problem of generational inequality. Public housing, education, and a large competitive public hiring sector would have gone much farther in rectifying poverty in the US.

        But the extra insulting aspect of “Baby Bonds” is that they’re an idea dangled over a public hungry for economic reforms which never actually gets delivered. When liberals lose, they get to nag centrists and insist “We had all these good ideas but you were too racist and stupid to accept them”. When they win, we get an earful about how the federal courts, the super-majority Senate, the prior administration’s mid-level bureaucrats, the state legislatures, and two dozen of DC’s biggest lobbying firms all have to agree to go along with it or the reforms can’t pass.

        Seems like Republicans are getting in on the same act, now that kitchen table liberalism is experiencing a popular resurgence.