Billionaire Investor, Bill Ackman, Proposes Giving Every Baby Born In America $7000 At Birth Which Would Be Worth $1.1M At The Time Of Retirement. Someone Point Out The Flaws

If you've accidentally woken up on the couch with CNBC on TV after falling asleep watching the Olympics the night before then you might recognize this hedge fund billionaire, Bill Ackman. Ackman is worth an estimated $3.4B and has been in the hedge fund space since the 90s and has been making TV appearances for what feels like my entire adult life. Seems like a smart guy, obviously as a Harvard MBA billionaire, with some radical ideas like making everyone in America a millionaire when they retire. I like the sound of that. 

I will say though, this type of thing is a real blind spot for me. Conceptually I can understand how compounding interest for 65 straight years would turn $7000, but like...don't ask me to fact check this or do math because I am incapable of that. If it's true then I don't understand why we aren't writing this into law immediately. $20B/year to invest in our own people is practically free, especially when money is actually fake until you need it. We spent $2.3 TRILLION on the 20 year war in Afghanistan and it largely feels like we didn't miss it. Reports on the internet say that we have given Ukraine over $70B. That's 3.5 years of baby future millionaires. Seems like setting up a safety net for every child born in America that would help them, in theory, avoid generation poverty, would be a good thing. Feels like something we should be able to find a few crumbs for in the budget. ]

Like I said above though, this is a blind spot for me. When Wall Street types say something like this that sounds too good to be true...it is. I can't easily see the downside though. Would it cause massive inflation because you'd have a generation of older people instantly have a slush fund to spend on MyPillows and condominiums in Del Boca Vista? In theory I could see this being something that makes it impossible for young people to own their own homes. It's hard enough as it is without the government making every grandpa a millionaire each and every year. 

This is where I need to turn it over to people smarter than me though. And by people smarter than me I, of course, mean the 19 year-olds taking economics over zoom in the comment section. You guys, and then people like Large and Tyler. We'll start there. First glance I am on board with this even if I won't ever see a penny of it because I am too old. Do this, make higher education costs of public institutions in line with the percentage of GDP from 1971, and a few other things and maybe we can get back on track.