$250 per child, at 5% interest rate, compounded in 18 years, you'd get $601.65.

Even in today's money, I wouldn't call it a "head start"

Trivial for a lot of people, sure, but imagine the difference between not knowing what an investment account is and knowing that you've got $250 in one that you can contribute more to.

A little help for millions likely ends up mattering for some of them. It’s a head start in that it removes a single minor issue, shows the value of compound interest in a more tangible way, or possibly gets them to retirement weeks/months earlier.

Obviously many people are happy to spend whatever, but with 25 million people you’ll see a wide range of personalities and life situations. Imagine an otherwise identical life without 600 dollars of credit card debt, that’s a worth quite a bit over time and will likely apply to some of these individuals. Perhaps a musical instrument or similar purchase will end up really helping someone kid, you never really know.

If you add in the 1000$ that treasury plans to invest starting next year, that is $1250 compounded at 5% annually after 18 years to $3008.27. It's probably still not a "head start" given that inflation is assumed to nominally rise at 2.5 to 3.5% annually and will take a bite out of what the real value is worth in 18 years. Good intentions but misplaced as others have stated. Investing in other ways to provide upward economic mobility will provide much better ROI for the society than allowing most of the wealth to accrue to a handful of people

Enough for one college textbook.

one of my kids is a senior in high school. they'd be quite content to have an extra $600 in their pocket. also...

> beginning next year, the U.S. Treasury will contribute $1,000 to the Invest America account of every baby born on or after January 1, 2025

hopefully more people/organizations will decide to contribute as well.

If that’s all that’s ever added, but keep in mind the idea is to provide the foundation for making easy, low-drag contributions going forward.

For a single kid, maybe.

But what if 10 or twenty of them want to start a company? Maybe they have some savings or can get parents to chip in or a grant, but they can’t open a store and work it, or start a landscaping business or a software company.

If there was a wealth tax on every billionaire, it could be a factor of 100 or 1000 higher.

I mean you could buy books your first semester of your $75k/year freshman year of college though! Think of all the new Calculus that'll be in the 23rd edition of the standard textbook that costs $150. /s