Trump Accounts: Iowa Should Put Its Money Where Its Kids Are

 

Iowa has tried just about everything to keep young people here.

 

We’ve run advertising campaigns, handed out tax incentives, built industrial parks, and spent millions making our cities more attractive. We’ve added bike trails, skate parks, breweries, apartments, and entertainment districts. Too many young people pack a U-Haul and leave.

 

Maybe we’re attacking the problem from the wrong end.

 

We wait until someone is 22, diploma in hand and a job offer from Denver or Seattle, then suddenly explain why Iowa is a great place to live. That’s like trying to sell a house after the moving truck pulls away.

 

Trump Accounts give Iowa a chance to try something different. Instead of waiting until young people are ready to leave, we should start investing in them when they’re kids.

 

Trump Accounts are investment accounts for children. Eligible children born from 2025 through 2028 can receive a onetime $1,000 federal contribution if their parents make the required election.

 

After that, parents, relatives, employers, and certain other groups can add money under federal rules. Employers can contribute up to $2,500 a year to the account of an employee or an employee’s child through a qualifying program.

Think of it like planting a tree.

 

The government plants the first seedling for eligible kids. Parents, grandparents, and employers help water it. The stock market provides the sunshine, rain, and occasional Iowa hailstorm.

 

Then you give it time to grow.

 

A thousand dollars doesn’t look like much today. Give it eighteen years of investment growth and it looks more interesting. Add a few hundred dollars every year and the numbers get bigger.

 

Iowa should ask itself: How can we use these accounts to give kids a bigger stake in their future?

Because Iowa has a people problem. We’re getting older. Many rural counties are losing population. Employers can’t find enough workers. Hospitals struggle to recruit doctors and nurses. Schools lose students, and small towns slowly lose the businesses that depend on those families.

 

Meanwhile, Iowa spends eighteen years raising kids. We build schools, coach their ball teams, teach them to drive, and send them to college. Then another state gets the finished product.

 

It’s a little like raising cattle, paying for the feed and vet bills, then opening the gate and letting the neighbor haul them to market. Another state gets the worker, taxpayer, and homebuyer. Eventually, it gets the next generation of kids too.

 

Iowa can’t stop everyone from leaving. Nor should it. Young people have always left home to see what’s on the other side of the hill.

 

The problem is the one-way traffic. Too many leave. Too few come back.

 

Trump Accounts could give Iowa employers a new tool. Imagine a manufacturer in Clinton trying to hire workers. It can’t match salaries in Chicago. Clinton doesn’t have mountains, an ocean, or three professional sports teams. So the company offers something different.

 

Work here and we’ll put $500 a year into your child’s Trump Account. Stay five years and the company has invested $2,500 in your kid. Stay ten and it’s $5,000, before investment growth.

Call it the Iowa Stay Account. It’s not really a separate account. The money goes into the child’s Trump Account. The name is just a wrapper around the idea.

Iowa employers already offer health insurance, retirement plans, vacation time, and signing bonuses. Why not offer a benefit built around an employee’s kids?

 

It hits differently than a signing bonus. Give someone $1,500 and the money disappears into everyday life. Six months later, nobody remembers the bonus.

 

Money invested for your kid is different. It’s like planting a cherry tree in the backyard. You watch it grow. Years later, you remember who helped you plant it. Every time a parent checks the account, there’s a reminder.

 

My employer helped build this.

 

Iowa isn’t going to out-Denver Denver. We can’t build mountains outside of Ames, and nobody is confusing the Mississippi River with Miami Beach.

 

That’s okay. Maybe Iowa should stop trying to compete on lifestyle and start competing on family.

 

Hospitals could use Trump Account contributions to recruit nurses. Manufacturers could offer them to machinists and technicians. Banks could use them to attract young professionals.

 

The contribution doesn’t have to be $2,500. Maybe it’s $250 or $500 a year. Maybe it increases the longer an employee stays. Come work for us. We’ll invest in your kids. Iowa has spent decades calling itself family friendly. Here’s a chance to put a few dollars behind the slogan.

 

The same idea could be taken to college campuses. Every spring, Iowa employers set up tables at career fairs and hand out pens, water bottles, stress balls, and cheap tote bags. Then they wonder why students aren’t excited.

 

What if companies showed up with a better pitch? Build your career here. When you build a family, we’ll invest in your kids. A 22-year-old may not have children. That’s okay. The benefit still says something about the company.

 

There’s a big difference between saying, “We need a worker,” and saying, “We want you to build a life here.”

 

Iowa could create a statewide designation for participating companies. Call them Iowa Future Employers. Put the logo on job listings and promote them at career fairs. Create a statewide list of employers offering Trump Account contributions. That’s not another slogan. It’s an actual benefit.

 

The accounts also give Iowa an opening to teach kids about money.

Most students graduate knowing how to calculate the length of a hypotenuse. That’s useful if a rogue triangle attacks. Ask them how compound growth works, and things get shakier. Ask what an index fund is. Ask what owning a share of a company means. Ask why the stock market drops and why investors don’t always run for the exits.

 

Too many kids enter adulthood without understanding the basic machinery of investing. Trump Accounts could become a classroom tool.

 

Imagine a middle school class following a fictional $1,000 investment for three years. Students watch it rise, fall, and recover. They compare someone adding $25 a month with someone who does nothing.

 

Compound growth isn’t hard to explain.

 

It’s a snowball rolling down a hill. It doesn’t look like much at first. Every turn picks up a little more snow. The bigger it gets, the more it picks up.

 

Time is the hill.

 

The problem is most people don’t start rolling the snowball until they’re 35 or 40. Trump Accounts give it a nudge when they’re kids.

 

Iowa should understand this better than most places. Farmers already know the idea. You plant in the spring because you expect something bigger in the fall. You don’t eat the seed corn. You plant it.

 

Iowa communities could get involved too. We love rankings. Best schools. Healthiest counties. Fastest-growing cities. Highest taxes. Lowest taxes. And best tenderloin, which we’ll fight about until the sun burns out.

 

Why not add another number? Which Iowa county invests the most in its kids?

Imagine Clinton County businesses, banks, and foundations organizing a campaign to help fund eligible children’s accounts within federal rules. Then Scott County does it. Dubuque jumps on the bandwagon. Sioux County decides everyone else is doing it wrong and builds a bigger program.

 

Publish the numbers every year. Show participation rates and investment per child. Recognize employers making contributions.

 

For decades, Iowa’s economic development has focused on landing companies. Towns put together incentive packages and hope a factory or warehouse picks them. Maybe economic development should also mean investing in the people already here.

 

Then there are the Iowans who left.

 

They grew up here, graduated, and took a job somewhere else. At 23, Denver or Nashville sounded exciting. Now they’re 35. They have two kids. Housing is expensive. Traffic is worse. Grandma and Grandpa live six hundred miles away.

 

That’s when Iowa needs to make its pitch.

 

Come home.

 

Not with another commercial showing a cornfield at sunset while somebody plays an acoustic guitar. Give them something concrete. Move back to Iowa. Work for a participating employer. Your company helps invest in your children’s Trump Accounts. Buy a house. Raise your kids near their grandparents. Build something here.

 

Iowa can’t force people to come back. But it can keep a porch light on.

 

Iowa’s banks and credit unions could help too. For generations, they taught Iowans to save. Open an account. Buy a CD. Put something away for a rainy day. Those are good habits, but saving and investing aren’t the same thing. Saving is putting grain in the bin. Investing is planting part of it so that you can grow more.

 

Banks could hold family investment days. Show a nine-year-old what $1,000 might become over time. Show teenagers what happens when regular contributions are added.

They could frame risk in language people understand. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Don’t dig up the seed every week to see if it’s growing. Don’t sell the farm because corn prices dropped on Tuesday.

 

The goal isn’t to turn twelve-year-olds into day traders. It’s making long-term investing normal. Imagine an entire generation of Iowa kids reaching adulthood already comfortable owning financial assets and understanding how money grows. That’s a cultural change.

 

Iowa’s biggest mistake may be timing. We wait until young people graduate from college to ask them to stay. By then, their friends are leaving, recruiters are calling, and the adventure is somewhere else.

 

Trump Accounts give Iowa a chance to start earlier.

 

A child has an investment account. The family contributes. An Iowa employer contributes. At school, the child learns how investing works. By eighteen, that they understand assets, ownership, and compound growth. More importantly, Iowa has spent eighteen years sending a simple message. We’re investing in you.

 

Will everyone stay?

 

Of course not.

 

Some people want mountains, oceans, or cities with more than one decent bagel shop.

 

That’s life.

 

Iowa doesn’t need to keep everyone. It just needs to stop losing so many people by default. For years, we’ve tried to solve tomorrow’s problems with yesterday’s economic development tools. Tax credits. Industrial parks. Recruitment campaigns. Tourism slogans and ribbon cuttings.

 

Trump Accounts give the state another option. Invest in kids. Teach them about ownership. Give employers a new tool to keep workers and families another reason to stay.

 

The question isn’t how Iowa stops every 22-year-old from moving to Denver. By then, the U-Haul may already be packed. The better question is how we spend eighteen years giving Iowa kids a financial stake in their future and a reason to believe they can build that future here.

 

Trump Accounts won’t solve Iowa’s population problem. But the seed is already in the bag. Iowa just needs to decide whether we’re going to plant it

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