This TED Talk features economics and policy professor Derek Hamilton, recorded live at We the Future, presented by Ted, the Skoll Foundation and the United Nations Foundation.

There's a narrative, an idea that with resilience, grit, and personal responsibility,

people can pull themselves up and achieve economic success.

In the United States, we call it the American Dream.

A similar narrative exists all over the world.

But the truth is that the challenges of making this happen has less to do with

what we do and more to do with the wealth position in which we're born. So I'm going to make the

case that the United States government, actually that any government should create a trust account

for every newborn of up to $60,000 calibrated to the wealth of the family in which they are born.

I'm talking about an endowment. Personal seed capital, a publicly established baby trust,

what my colleague William Darity at Duke University and I have referred to as baby bonds,

a term that was coined by the late historian from Columbia University, Manny Marable.

The reason why we should create these trusts is simple. Wealth is the paramount indicator of economic security and well-being. It provides financial

agency, economic security to take risk and shield against loss. Without capital, inequality is locked

in. We use words like choice, freedom to describe the benefits of the market, but it is literally wealth that

gives us choice, freedom, and optionality.

Wealthier families are better positioned to finance and elite, independent school, and college

education, access capital to start a business, finance, expensive medical procedures,

reside in neighborhoods with higher amenities, exert political influence through campaign finance,

purchase better legal counsel if confronted with an expensive criminal justice system,

leave a bequest, and or withstand financial

hardship resulting from any number of emergencies. Basically, when it comes to economic security,

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