The Wealth Gap Starts at Birth. Here’s One Fix.

David Radcliffe: The trust in government is at an all-time low, oftentimes. In some of the families who we’ve talked to in Connecticut, when they hear about baby bonds, there’s sometimes a reaction, “This is too good to be true,” or “If I get this, what will you take from me?” We are often so conditioned that government comes in as a punitive, as a finger-wagger, that what are you doing wrong?

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Amanda Renteria: Welcome back to The Government Fix. I’m your host, Amanda Renteria. I’ve worked on Capitol Hill, in the classroom, on Wall Street, and now I’m the CEO of Code for America, an organization focused on using tech to improve public services and make government work well for everyone. This season, I wanted to sit down with experts and experienced leaders to get really specific about ideas that have become true fixes for big problems.

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It’s no secret that there is an extreme and growing wealth gap in America. Here at Code for America, we are always looking for ways to level the playing field and make that gap smaller. We ask questions like, who is getting left behind? What roadblocks stand in the way of families meeting their basic needs? When does this cycle of inequality start, and how can we disrupt it? Today, we’re going back to the beginning, speaking with someone who is thinking about how we can work to close that wealth gap, even before someone learns to talk or walk.

This week, we’re exploring baby bonds. It’s a policy that automatically grants every baby born into a low-income household a lump sum of money. It grows over the course of one’s childhood and then sets them up to enter adulthood with some financial savings to tackle whatever comes after high school. I spoke with David Radcliffe, who worked at the Connecticut State Treasury, where he helped implement the first baby bonds policy in 2023.

Together, David and I chat about how he gained bipartisan support for the program, why Trump accounts are not baby bonds, where he sees the possible expansion of the baby bonds program beyond that influx of cash at birth, and much more.

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Amanda Renteria: David, I’m so excited to have you here because it’s not often I get a chance to talk to another small-town kid. I think many times I still think of myself in many ways like that, coming from rural America, although your town is smaller than mine, from where you grew up. I think sometimes when you go through and you hear this great idea, some of the hard thing is, how do you take these ideas that you know can reshape the places you come from, but then how do you actually make it happen?

So much of what you have done over the course of your work is bringing a good idea to life. Here on The Government Fix, we like to focus on what made this happen and where are we in the process. Let’s begin with, how did this all come about baby bonds?

David Radcliffe: The idea started a while ago. In fact, in 1797, Thomas Paine proposed a version of what would become baby bonds quite a few years later. Even then, there’s a recognition that if you were in a family through no choice, no fault of your own, that maybe didn’t come from resources, that you started at a disadvantage. That disadvantage would often follow you through the course of your life. While we’ve, in fits and starts, have tried different policy proposals to create and sustain the middle class, to grow a prosperous community, that always often has left out a number of our neighbors.

This notion of baby bonds was popularized more recently by economist Darrick Hamilton in a 2010 paper that he co-wrote. The idea was really in recognition that we have an extreme wealth gap in America. That matters not just for individuals who happen to not be on the wealthy side of the equation, but it has an effect on our communities, our families, and our economies.

The notion was, what if we were to create and fund publicly seeded accounts that would be managed by the public sector, that would invest significant seed capital in young people so when they came of age, they would have the resources they could use to engage in wealth-building activities like buying a home or starting a business?

Amanda Renteria: How did you come across it? When you first heard about it, and you were like, “Yes, this can work”?

David Radcliffe: I was looking for a work gig. I’d been at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston looking for my next thing, and I saw a posting through the Office of Connecticut State Treasurer. The work was to implement this new thing called baby bonds. Two things interesting about that, I said, “What is the state treasurer, and what is baby bonds?” At the time, it was this out-there, nerdy idea that really wasn’t in popular conversation at that point.

I ended up serving as policy director for State Treasurer Shawn Wooden, who had heard about a federal proposal that Senator Cory Booker and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley had put forward that would create a federal baby bond program. Shortly after the murder of George Floyd, the state treasurer I ended up working for was looking for bold, transformative ideas. Beyond the bread and butter of state treasurer offices, what might be some opportunity to drive economic security for people who are often left behind?

He modified the federal baby bond proposal for the state context, and with a lot of organizing and support from stakeholders, was able to win and fund the first baby bond program in America. My work was to help implement it. In Connecticut, one of the wealthiest states in the country, almost one out of every two births are born to Medicaid. 50% of [unintelligible 00:05:56] are born into poor circumstances. Each one of those babies are automatically enrolled in a baby bond, which means it’s $3,200 that’s invested and managed by the state treasurer’s office.

With interest earnings, that $3,000 becomes $11,000 to $24,000, depending on the age the young person takes their share from the trust account, so between the ages of 18 and 30. That young person can then, with some financial education support, use it for one of four wealth-building activities. Could put it towards whatever follows high school, so post-secondary, college training, trade school. Could buy a first home in the state. Could put it towards business or entrepreneurial activity. The fourth activity is retirement. One of those four research-based wealth activities.

In fact, in July 1st here in 2026, we’ll mark the three-year anniversary of Connecticut baby bonds, and 48,000 babies have been automatically enrolled in this program.

Amanda Renteria: That success, from the concept to putting it into place and then to actually having it in place for folks in an investment fund, is huge. These are the kinds of stories that begin movements that really do shape people’s lives at scale. How do you make sure people know about it? There’s one aspect of it, which is, how do you put the implementation plan together, but then how do you build awareness around it so 48,000 people know to do whatever they have to do? What do they have to do?

David Radcliffe: I’ll answer that in two parts. One is that the enrollment is automatic. There’s nothing that the family or the baby have to do to become a baby bond trust account holder. The awareness, though, is not automatic. That’s where it’s important. The treasurer’s office is leading by engaging trusted community partners who have relationships with baby bond-eligible families, letting them know at different points along the life course about this opportunity, the choices, the opportunities, the risks, and all the things so the young person, when they reach adulthood, are in a position to take advantage, in the best possible ways, of the resource.

The other thing, we found it really interesting to talk about wealth as something that we can do something about from a policy domain. We very much often focus on the income side of the equation, which is really essential, but income and wealth are not the same. We want them both. Income helps us afford our lives, like the flow of resources into a household so we can buy the things we need and hopefully live comfortably.

We are rightly focused on trying to do better at that because, as we know, there’s this affordability crisis, which is this slow-rolling, everlasting crisis for a large segment of our country beyond the extreme situation we’re in currently. If we are only ever focused on helping people just to get by, we don’t get to where we can help people thrive. That’s where young people who are in families who don’t have the benefit of an inheritance or a trust account don’t have access to that capital, which can put them in a position where they have a reserve of resources to weather rainy days or economic shocks or pandemics.

Do they have the means to put a down payment on a home or the capital to start up a business? That’s where baby bonds comes in. It’s on this wealth side of the equation to democratize wealth for those who aren’t born into it.

Amanda Renteria: There’s so much in what you just said right now, that underlying hope of the future. The underlying hope of, it’s just not about this degree, but someday I can own a home. I think about even how proud my dad was when I bought a home for the very first time. He was like, “Mija, you finally have a piece of land.” I didn’t have all those signals of that’s what “wealth” meant. I didn’t learn it in school. It was so fundamental, and now, being a parent, so fundamental to how you think about as your kid gets older or thinking about their future and trying to teach that at a much younger age of, there’s something you’re working towards.

I think one of the things that gets me excited about things like baby bonds is, you’re right, it changes the discussion from the day-to-day, which for a lot of families that Code for America serves, it’s hard. This idea to be like, there is something out there, and we’re trying to create that path just a little bit easier to get to that future. I want to have our audience understand a little bit more about what happens when they reach the point where they want to buy a house, or they want to go into that job training program. How does that work?

David Radcliffe: The program in Connecticut, at least, is three years in, but there is an urgency to get it right because we know that the work that’s happened with baby bonds of Connecticut has been motivating and inspirational for other places. There are a lot of eyeballs on can we get this right. It’s really important that we do, not just for the policy implications, but for the benefit of the families. We want this to be without friction, without hardship, and hassle. That’s not easy because here comes the government, we’re here to help sort of thing.

The trust in government is at an all-time low, oftentimes. In some of the families who we’ve talked to in Connecticut, when they hear about baby bonds, there’s sometimes a reaction, “This is too good to be true,” or “If I get this, what will you take from me?” We are often so conditioned that government comes in as a punitive, as a finger-wagger, that what are you doing wrong? In this case, the idea is that, “No, we see you and believe in you and want to invest in you and your family so that you can have that security that you might not have otherwise. Oh, by the way, that will have a benefit to local and state economies.”

That also is another benefit of it. [unintelligible 00:11:46] to your question, I’m baby bond eligible, let’s say, at 18. My account’s worth $10,000, $12,000, $15,000. I’ve been able, through a website mechanism that’s about to launch, to see what the value of my account is so I can check in and see how that’s appreciating with time and interest. There’s written into the legislation a requirement for some sort of financial education experience before I can take my share of the baby bond trust account. What that looks like is still to be determined.

The hope and belief is that we don’t want to wait until just the young person is 17 or 18. This is an opportunity to engage young people, and when they’re too young, their families, to have a conversation about household economics and finance, including this opportunity of baby bonds that’s coming down the pike. The hope is then, by the time the young person comes of age, they’re well-positioned to take the best advantage of the resource. There’s some pilot projects I can talk about that’s helping inform some of the challenges that we believe young people might have so they can make the most of the opportunity.

When I’m 18, as I say, I want to buy a house. Well, the hope is that I’m supported to know what would I need to get into that house. What is a credit score? What is a down payment? What are the other implications and pros and cons of homeownership? I’m well-informed, in addition to having the resource so I can make the best choice. Then, when the time comes to deploy the capital from the state treasurer’s office, the current design is that the baby bond actually does not go directly to the individual. It goes to the third-party use.

That’s important for two reasons. One is that the guardrails that focus the eligible uses on wealth-building activities are meant to keep the resources focused on the problem we’re trying to solve, which is wealth in America, and in this case, Connecticut. If the resources might go directly to an individual, there’s a risk of predation and extraction and folks trying to intercept, which will be a substantial sum of money at that point.

The other implication, we think, for the better of this design choice, is that having the resources go to the third party reduces, and we believe eliminates, the risk of taxing or benefit implications. If this is a named account, I might lose other public benefits that I could be eligible for, or there might be a taxing hit because this resource is coming in, or it might be counted against my financial aid if I’m going to college, for example.

That’s the process I say I want to use it for homeownership. I verify my birth was covered by Medicaid. I’m a resident of the state, which is also important. Then, once the eligible use is confirmed or verified, the resource would go to the third-party use.

Amanda Renteria: David, what’s surfacing for me is we are listening to you talk about an idea right as you’re in the middle of it. I think when most people think about fixing government or systems, they often think about the before, the big idea and the vision, and then the after. Did it work? Did it not work? What you are talking about right now is what you actually have to do to get it right, which means you’re iterating as you go along.

You’re finding what are people going to need to know before this comes into play, before they reach 18, and what kind of conversations does it spark that really does move the country in a different direction? I think a lot about when I was a high school teacher. We took a couple of days to talk about what credit cards meant, what interest rate was, and why that mattered. We talked about how expensive it was to have a baby and what that budget looks like. I think now, to the conversation that baby bonds are starting and that we’re talking about here, which is this now changes that conversation.

From a high school economics teacher that has now an opportunity to say, and you already started, let’s talk about what that looks like and what that means for you. In developing this program and following it along, how are you iterating with those parents, those teachers, all the mechanisms of who is training students who are eventually going to have the sum of money to use in one direction or another?

David Radcliffe: That’s a great question. Again, the building is still under construction. We are learning from other policy efforts that are similar in other parts of the country. The state treasurer offices have really been so strategic and smart about engaging what they call 100 community-led organizations, ambassadors they call them, so baby bond ambassadors, folks who are read in and have an appreciation for, and also a clarity of the baby bond program.

When a family comes in for some other service or support, if it’s healthcare, heating assistance, et cetera, they also will have a conversation around this baby bond. Even if my child is still very young, the idea is that this conversation will get repeated in different places over time. The young child at the postnatal visit will hear about baby bonds. Then in preschool, potentially. Then in kindergarten, through the school system, as you talked about. Potentially the after-school program.

All these are the touchpoints that are engaging with these families along the way to reinforce that this is a thing that you should be paying attention to. How that conversation is actually, and we’ll be rolling out, is still in the works. There’s also some interesting research actually led by Yale that’s engaging parents who have baby bond-eligible children here in Connecticut. The interests of this research are a couplefold.

One is to help inform the state treasurer’s office and community partners on what we are hearing from parents about how to talk about this in a way that will be sticky and trusting, but also to let us understand what are the early-years effects of just knowing this baby bond exists. You can imagine the out-year impact of having the substantial seed capital for wealth-building activity. There will be efforts to evaluate and measure what that actually looks like.

We also know through literature that there are important implications of wealth on one’s health outcomes. What effect does knowing this account exists have on health and well-being, on stress, anxiety, maternal and infant health, and things that in the early years will be important to note and measure? We can show that not only is this out-year economic benefit, but the early years we’ll see effects for the better for maternal, family, and infant health, that that will also have an economic benefit, but also, importantly, a benefit on the well-being of the family. That should be an important part of the conversation as folks are talking about this in other parts of the country.

Amanda Renteria: Connecticut is now the only state to have put this into place. I think I’ve heard you say that 20 states have legislatures considering it, and there’s 10 pilots around the country. I think that’s where we are now. Tell me a little bit more about where the movement of baby bonds is at this moment.

David Radcliffe: There are a lot of great ideas in the world. Sometimes they don’t get beyond the idea stage. What’s been so inspiring about the Connecticut example is that it was an academic paper. There are lots of great academic papers by the guy I now work for, who’s Darrick Hamilton. This is an idea that’s actually policy. It’s policy that is investing significant resources in real humans, like real babies who are being born every day in this state.

When that happened, when the policy passed and then was fully funded, folks really took notice in other parts of the country, including, importantly, peer state treasurers who are among our most trusted elected officials. They tend to focus on a long-term time horizon, stewarding public resources. Connecticut, I should note, passed with bipartisan support, so it’s an idea that conservatives should love and progressives should love. Talking about innovation, there are now 10 baby bond pilot projects that have popped up in 9 different states, red, blue, and purple.

What these pilots are doing, they all do it in different ways, have made different design choices. What if we were to engage, rather than babies, young adults like 18 to 25-year-olds? What if, in addition to a baby bond, we also provide a direct cash stipend? Mindful that, as amazing as baby bonds are, if baby bonds don’t put food on the table today, they don’t pay the light bill, and if for folks who are struggling in the moment, the combination of direct cash and a baby bond, and this is a Georgia-style pilot project, what can we learn from that to inform eventual state, and also, importantly, federal policy?

One more example, on the pilot domain, in the state of Vermont, there’s this really powerful idea that takes direct cash and baby bonds, so the Georgia-style, and adds two more elements, providing diapers directly, which can be a huge stressful expense for young moms, particularly in poor circumstances, and also maternal health supports through an evidence-based effort called the MOMS Partnership that was developed by Yale.

This maternal health super bundle, they call it, First Steps Forward in Vermont, will launch later this year, philanthropically funded, and will serve young people in the three most remote, rural, and poorest counties in Vermont. Now that there are economic implications and benefits for that model, the focus on maternal health and well-being is really next level, and it blends together and really shows what’s possible. There’s no reason it has to stop at those four dimensions. You can imagine intentionally building in other supports. That could really supercharge the eventual baby bond investment.

Amanda Renteria: That’s fantastic. I am guessing, as it’s going through this process, that you’re coming across misperceptions that are out there right now. What are the big ones as people are signing up or as other states are asking Connecticut about it? What are the big misperceptions that you’re having to run into?

David Radcliffe: One is just this notion that, “Oh, we can do something about wealth? We thought it was just a thing that wealthy people do, and it’s something that all of us can or should have access to, and we can choose policies that can improve that.” As we introduce the idea of baby bonds, folks, blue and red and purple and all colors, I think this seems like a no-brainer. We should be doing this.

Now, getting from that to actually doing it, that’s a harder conversation because, again, in these times where there are choices that are being made about food support, urgent current needs which are right on, versus this longer-term time horizon initiative, how to actually bring it to life in a place is more challenging. Just this notion, which is surprising, “Oh, we can do this.” There’s very little pushback. There’s a feeling that there’s so many reasons this makes sense from a family perspective to address potential out-migration as a way to keep young people in the state.

If we’re focused on wanting families to be and do their best, resourcing them from the start is a way to get there. Often, poverty concentrates in geography. We’re deploying capital in substantial ways that it gets reinvested in place, through homeownership, through small business. These things come to mind as people are getting their head and hands and heart really around the power of baby bonds. Now, having additional states and localities come on is the work of the moment.

Amanda Renteria: Here in the United States, we have the Trump accounts, 530A accounts. How has what Connecticut is doing shaped that? How are you involved in it? What do you think about it?

David Radcliffe: That’s an interesting dynamic that’s popped up in the past year. Trump accounts, we call them 530A accounts, which is where they nest in the tax code, were part of the H.R. 1, so-called big beautiful bill that passed last summer. The idea of Trump accounts are to seed $1,000 for every baby born between 2025 and 2028 and to allow outside contributions to those accounts so that it accrues in value and can be used for a couple of purposes. Some of the features of this are still in the works, but it could include homeownership and education.

Interestingly, oftentimes, some folks in media and even in the administration might compare this to baby bonds and say that this improves on baby bonds. What’s heartening is a conversation happening at the highest levels, in the White House, in Senate, and congressional chambers, and not just on the blue side of the aisle, but red as well. This has really broadened the conversation in potentially important and powerful ways. It also is shining a light on that, oh, by the way, government can do something about it, that there’s a role.

Unfortunately, the way that the 530A Trump accounts are designed, it really focuses on an ability for a family to save, versus the Connecticut and the federal baby bond proposal, which focuses on the trust, the endowment, substantial public capital that’s publicly managed. In the example of the 530A accounts, it really, beyond the $1,000 seed, relies on the ability of a family, of employer, of philanthropy to save and contribute to that. If you were in that position, you can max out your account at $5,000 a year.

It could be worth upwards of $200,000 by the time you’re 18. That sounds pretty sweet. Who wouldn’t want to sign up for that? On the other end of the dimension that if I’m in poor circumstances, can I make rent this month? Can I put food on the table this week? As much as I might love to save and contribute to something like a 530A account, it might be really hard to be able to do that. What I’m left with is a $1,000 seed, with investment earnings that might accrue to be $2,500 or $3,000.

We started talking a little bit about the wealth gap. In the example of the 530A accounts, we have the family in poor circumstances with an account maybe worth $3,000. Remember, this is in 18 years too, so $3,000 is not nothing. In 18 years, we’ll have less purchasing power than it does in the moment, versus a $200,000 account for a wealthier family where they can add those additional resources. In its current design, it is really a rich-get-richer program.

Amanda Renteria: You’re bringing up a good point about how people apply for 530A accounts or whatever mechanism of baby bonds. We take a lot of care in our getyourrefund.org platform to make sure that people are aware of how to apply for Earned Income Tax Credit or the Child Tax Credit. As we think about any new programs at the federal level right now, the 530A accounts, because they’re right in the middle of it, an important aspect is, as we’re building that out, how are we educating families of, what are the benefits of it, and what are the things to worry about, and what is it really?

Like you, we are carefully monitoring it and trying to figure out how do we utilize this moment to educate people on wealth and actually use it for financial education. I do think it is sparking a conversation, and we’ll see where it goes. What you’re pointing out is, the details of implementation really matter. They really matter, whether it puts a family on this big step function to buying a house someday or whether it’s a nice addition. Where do you hope this baby bonds movement goes? Where do you hope 530A accounts go five years from now, and what would you love to see?

David Radcliffe: Again, states are leading the charge, and we’re hoping the experiences and learning from the states will inform better federal policy. It would take a lot to fix and improve 530A accounts so that they are more democratized to really allow everyone to have a fair start rather than just resourcing those who already have resources. Having a federal baby bond proposal as a complement to, or something within that structure might be a way to go.

Again, the key features of the Connecticut model and the federal baby bond proposal are not features of 530As currently. We would want automatic enrollment. Right now, 530A account-interested people will have to go through an application process. The more steps there are to do a thing, the less likely it is to do it, particularly if you’re not plugged into the financial system or don’t have an advisor to help you make choices on the pros and cons and so forth. Even automatic enrollment for 530A accounts doesn’t make them fair.

There would need to be limitations on outside contributions, we believe, additional public funding that would provide additional investment and resource for lower-resource households, just so we’re not in a position when we’re looking back on this in 10 or 15 or 20 years or 50 years to say, ” Wow, what an interesting idea, but the wealth gap is worse than ever.” With the wealth gap comes a concentration of power and decision-making that excludes even more people from the choices that affect our daily lives.

Treasury Secretary Bessent himself and Senator Cruz have talked about this as a way, and not shy about it, to privatize Social Security. Some of us are concerned about that. This is a promise that we made to folks at the end of their working lives. The management of these accounts by the private sector is also a concern, versus the Connecticut model, again, which is publicly funded.

There are a lot of elements of not just implementation, but of design that are fundamentally, we believe, flawed in the current form. We’re hopeful as time goes by, if those can’t be improved, there could be a complementary policy that could fill in the gaps that 530A accounts create.

Amanda Renteria: What are the design elements that you would add to the 530A or that you would change? Of course, in Connecticut, it’s automatic enrollment for Medicaid-eligible folks. That’s one avenue, because the federal government, to some degree, could do that because IRS has tax data. What are other ways or other elements that should be thought of as 530A gets implemented because it’s yet to be fully implemented?

David Radcliffe: Great question. There’s a long list. I’ll hit some of the highlights. Some of these are things that could be done administratively, so through the IRS or through US Treasury. Others would require congressional approval to actually change the bill to build this in. Trump accounts are universal, which again sounds pretty cool, but that means the great-grandchild of every billionaire is going to get a Trump account. It’s the same amount that the young person born into poor circumstances gets.

I think what’s appealing about the federal baby bond bill that Senator Booker and Congresswoman Pressley put forward a couple of years ago, and also is a feature of Connecticut, is that lower-resource families get more. For a lot of folks, it probably makes sense to get your $1,000 for 530A, but if you’re undocumented, you might give pause given the administration’s engagement with folks who maybe weren’t born in this country.

There’s also a data-sharing arrangement between the IRS and federal immigration agencies, which might give one pause to fill out forms, at least for now, but maybe in subsequent administration, it might be a safer environment to do some of that.

Amanda Renteria: There, you’re talking about some protections around the data more explicitly?

David Radcliffe: Yes, for sure. Yes, those are some of the highlights.

Amanda Renteria: A lot of the baby bonds efforts are decentralized right now. You’re right. There’s 20 different states, 10 different experiments, all happening at the state level. What role should the federal level play?

David Radcliffe: At the end of the day, it is only the federal government that can do a baby bond-style investment at scale and have the durability it needs to last. We can and will continue supporting and applauding and fanning the flames of local and state efforts, but a lot of that is to get to the point where we get federal policy. We can think of state-level examples in other policy domains that have inspired and motivated the federal government to do something. The Affordable Care Act started at the state level. Marriage equality.

There are lists of things that start with innovation at the state level. That, I think, has got to happen at the federal level. When you zoom out over time, the federal government has been actively involved in helping invest in the middle class. You think of the Homestead Act way back in the day, they were providing land, investing land in people, which is a way to accrue and accumulate wealth. More recently, still a few years back, the GI Bill after World War II, government playing a central role in designing and rolling out policy.

Now, those examples also show how design can keep some people out. We want to do federal policy that ensures a fair start for everyone rather than favoring one group over another.

Amanda Renteria: One thing I’m appreciative about this moment and about this movement is that it really is that 50-state experiment that the federal government can now take a look at. The more progress Connecticut is making, the more progress these other states and the more pilots that are out there. It really does give a view of working out some of the kinks. So much of a good government fix requires a space and place to work out the kinks, and how do you centralize and customize all at the same time?

I appreciate the path that Connecticut has laid down in order to start doing it, and that you all have opened up, or Connecticut has opened up, an ability for all other states to say, do it in your way, customize in your way, and hopefully, as we think about five years down the road, that you have a federal government that takes a look and learns from those moments and says, this is the best way for now the federal government at its scale to help in this movement or to create this centralized scale of doing this that’s really investing in the future.

To me, that’s one of the most exciting pieces of this conversation. What, to you, is one of the biggest questions that you have about the success of a national baby bonds policy someday? What do you think we are answering or trying to answer right now in order for that to happen someday?

David Radcliffe: I think we’re in it now. There’s so much attention on the affordability crisis, which is right on. When you zoom out, why do we care about the affordability crisis? It goes back to this notion of the vision that we have for an economy that works for all of us, that we want to be able to live our lives, to have freedom, to be able to breathe, to be able to have choice, to spend time the way we want to. In this country, at least in this moment, that requires a base level of resources.

Income alone, for a lot of folks, won’t provide that base level of resource. If we’re not looking at the role that wealth can play and building that economy that works for us, then we will forever be in this position of under-investing in the most important part of our communities and our economy, which is us, people who we want to be thriving.

Amanda Renteria: Yes. That’s what I’m excited about too is this is a big idea that has a real potential to change not just people’s lives individually, but change how we think of the good life in this country. All right. We ask all of our guests this question, and it’s our final question, which is, if you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about how government works, what would it be?

David Radcliffe: It’s a version of what we’ve been talking about, that we get to choose. This government, the rules, the laws, the policies, these are creations of humans, not folks from outer space or whatnot. These are all design choices. We need to remember and be reminded and drive forward this notion that we can choose another, better way. If our economy is not working for at least half of Americans, which is so, maybe more, that’s our choice, and we don’t have to accept that.

The notion that [unintelligible 00:36:10] like baby bonds are a way to unlock this human potential, and again, a really elegant, more fair-minded way, is something that we can do because Connecticut has done it and other places are doing it. Go government. Let’s do it.

Amanda Renteria: [laughs] Well, thank you for joining us, David. I leave this conversation hopeful about what that future looks like.

David Radcliffe: Thank you so much for having me.

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Amanda Renteria: After talking with David, I was inspired by the way he is thinking beyond the act of just giving a lump sum of money to babies at birth. He’s building policy that goes beyond granting money and is actually designing a real system so that it truly empowers people. He spoke about expanding financial education for baby bond recipients, inspiring a conversation about wealth as something that exists separate from income.

In this country, it is so hard for people to just get by, but in talking to David, it’s easier to envision a future where more people don’t just have to settle for scraping by but can really thrive. As of this recording, the first 13,000 babies who received baby bonds are turning 4 this year. I know they won’t see that money for a while, but they and their families have a little bit more security knowing that something is waiting for them once they turn 18.

With thoughtful folks like David turning the right gears in the background, it gives me hope that this government fix is just the beginning of a powerful movement, and the message is key to the rest of the country and the world. There is work that can be done to ease the burden for folks who don’t have the luck of being born on third base. That’s all for today on The Government Fix. See you next time.

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Amanda Renteria: This podcast is brought to you by Code for America, the country’s leading civic tech nonprofit for over 15 years. We believe that government can work for the people, by the people, in the new digital age. We work with government at all levels across the country to make the delivery of public service better with technology. We partner with community organizations and governments to build digital tools, change policy, and improve programs. Our goal, a resilient government that works well for everyone. Learn more at codeforamerica.org. 

Want to learn more about how government can actually work for everyone? Like or subscribe to The Government Fix wherever you get your podcasts, or visit us at thegovernmentfix.org.  

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