Jul 12, 2026 · 23 min · 15 segments
Roundup of the Week's Top Stories in Economics and Freedom - Trump Unleashes the 401(k)’s - The AI Bailout Machine - The Billionaire Tax Mousetrap - AI Girlfriends are Taking Over - “Regime Change”…
Donald Trump wants to open 401ks to the same alternative investments used by rich people trusts and university endowments from pre-IPO companies to real estate trusts, which could boost the average middle class 401k by $150,000.
Democrats naturally are blocking it because the current two-tier system keeps the good stuff for their donors and rains fees on the law firms who run the velvet rope.
In March, Trump's Department of Labor proposed a rule change, so-called PTE-774, to allow regular people to invest their 401ks the same way as millionaires accredit investors.
Democrats pounced Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren recycled the standard line that normies are too dumb to invest.
Despite the fact 401ks have been around for 40 years and those normies have generated an average 5x return $10 trillion while the government alternative social security was going bust.
So the background here is current 401k rules were written in the Carter administration in a world where the good stuff was generally in public markets.
So you could buy Microsoft for $21 in 1986, watch it go to $8,000 split adjusted, and hand your kids generational wealth even if you did not start out rich.
The idea was keep normies out of the weird stuff since the good stuff is in the stock market anyway.
The problem is that all changed with two big laws, the 1990s Markets Improvement Act that made it easier to raise money as a private company, then the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act that made it much harder to be a public company.
Combined, these led to an explosion of private equity and a collapse of new listings on the stock market.
To illustrate IPO's initial public offerings when a company first lists on the stock market, dropped by almost two-thirds as a percent of GDP, Worse, when companies do list, they do it much later.
You're not buying startups, you're buying a mature company that has already been pre-chewed by the rich for a decade.
Nowadays, institutional investors and millionaires are legally reserved almost all the juice.
So what's next? Wealth inequality is exploding in America with the richest 10% now accounting for half of spending.
Donald Trump wants to open 401ks to the same alternative investments used by rich people trusts and university endowments from pre-IPO companies to real estate trusts, which could boost the average middle class 401k by $150,000.
Democrats naturally are blocking it because the current two-tier system keeps the good stuff for their donors and rains fees on the law firms who run the velvet rope.
In March, Trump's Department of Labor proposed a rule change, so-called PTE-774, to allow regular people to invest their 401ks the same way as millionaires accredit investors.
Democrats pounced Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren recycled the standard line that normies are too dumb to invest.
Despite the fact 401ks have been around for 40 years and those normies have generated an average 5x return $10 trillion while the government alternative social security was going bust.
So the background here is current 401k rules were written in the Carter administration in a world where the good stuff was generally in public markets.
So you could buy Microsoft for $21 in 1986, watch it go to $8,000 split adjusted, and hand your kids generational wealth even if you did not start out rich.
The idea was keep normies out of the weird stuff since the good stuff is in the stock market anyway.
The problem is that all changed with two big laws, the 1990s Markets Improvement Act that made it easier to raise money as a private company, then the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act that made it much harder to be a public company.
Combined, these led to an explosion of private equity and a collapse of new listings on the stock market.
To illustrate IPO's initial public offerings when a company first lists on the stock market, dropped by almost two-thirds as a percent of GDP, Worse, when companies do list, they do it much later.
You're not buying startups, you're buying a mature company that has already been pre-chewed by the rich for a decade.
Nowadays, institutional investors and millionaires are legally reserved almost all the juice.
So what's next? Wealth inequality is exploding in America with the richest 10% now accounting for half of spending.
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