Dear Editor:
The recent letter about Elon Musk and SpaceX shares for kids took a pledge that hasn’t happened yet and built a whole conspiracy on top of it. A lot of it doesn’t hold up.
Start with where things actually stand. On Oct. 19, Musk posted on X that he’ll give every kid in America a SpaceX share next year, and the White House says it would go through the new Trump Accounts. So far it’s still a promise. No donor agreement has been approved, and no shares are in anyone’s account. Cash in these accounts has to go into broad U.S. index funds. Treasury recently made a narrow exception that lets a charity or a government give publicly traded stock to large groups of kids, but only with Treasury’s sign-off. Companies can’t just drop shares in.
The scariest claim is that one share could knock a struggling family off food stamps or Medicaid. That isn’t how it works. Kids’ Medicaid eligibility is based on income, with no asset test at all. Trump Accounts are legally a type of IRA, which SNAP doesn’t count, and Social Security doesn’t count them as a resource while the child is a minor.
The college aid worry falls apart too. The FAFSA doesn’t count retirement accounts as assets. Even if a roughly $146 share were counted at the 20% student rate mentioned, that’s about $29 less in aid, which is hardly enough to push anyone into student loans. As for the penalties, the reporting falls on the bank or brokerage holding the account, not the family. I couldn’t find anything about the IRS charging families $500 a month.
It’s fair to be skeptical of billionaires and of new government programs. I am too. But scaring families about losing food assistance and getting hit with fines that don’t exist doesn’t help anybody here.
Kevin Fricke
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