Economics Explained

Why This Billionaire Wants To Give Every Baby $6,750 to Solve The Retirement Crisis?


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This is Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund manager of Pershing square capital. 

Bill has been featured on this channel a few times before, most notably because of his trade made in early 2020 which netted him over 2.6 billion dollars in profit. 

Since then he has become a bit of an internet darling which is just great for him because a lot of his trading strategies require him winning over hearts and minds to change people’s opinions on a stock, bond, cryptocurrency or whatever else it is that he has some kind of vested interest in. 

Now this is nothing new, influential stock traders have been trying to create news stories that suit them ever since there were stock markets and newspapers.

But this most recent announcement has been a little bit different. 

Ackman along with a selection of business leaders and economists have started advocating for a plan that would give everybody a few thousand dollars in cash on the day they are borns all in order to solve the retirement crisis. 

It sounds crazy, but there may be more merit to this whole plan than you think.

Most advanced economies around the world today are dealing with aging populations and declining birth rates. A future where the dependent elderly far outweigh the productive young is fast approaching, current pension infrastructure may just not be able to cope. 

We may see a future where the quality of life for elderly citizens rapidly declines, or young people are taxed very heavily in order to support them, neither of which sounds particularly appealing to anyone, so perhaps radical solutions are what we need. 

And to understand this plan we are going to need to look at a few key areas. 

  • How would handing out money to babies solve problems amongst the elderly?
  • How would nations afford this?
  • And is this actually a sound idea? Or just another scheme by a savvy businessman to profit off front-page news.
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