 There was a lot of information delivered today from up here. And believe it or not, there's more in the book. There's a lot of material, a lot of facts and analysis and even policy discussion. So I invite you to dig in online. Take a copy with you on your way out. Anyone listening watching us online, it's all available on the New America website with interactive tables and charts even. And yeah, we're going to have a policy discussion here. I think one of the reasons why wealth matters, just looking at some of the implications, is that we've had a shift of responsibility of who's handling the risk in society. And increasingly over the last 20 years, it's been individual families and households that are responsible for managing our own retirement savings, putting their children to school, investing in education, health care costs. And so that risk shift placed a lot of burden on these households. And if the resources aren't there, as we've seen for this kind of rising cohort, well, the implications are severe. And it raises a lot of questions about generational fairness and equity and reciprocity. And if the prime generation that's working and raising families feels like they don't have the resources to meet their responsibilities, well, it's going to challenge a lot of assumptions about how the society is all put together. So in that sense, we're all in this together. And it's a collective endeavor. And so that's one of the things I wanted to open with for policy remarks. We're going to hear from Liz Hipple and Ray Bechara with their comments. In the final chapter of the book, does have a list, a menu of ideas about a policy response at scale to try to respond. And it's divided up into the categories of what do we do for the current cohort that is realizing these financial pressures and very important to deal with the millennial balance sheet. How do we repair the balance sheet going forward? And I think it makes sense, given the evidence we've seen today and in the book, that a large scale response is needed. And whether it is some loan cancellation or some other kinds of opportunities that are created or changes in tax policy. And then there's another set of ideas that are about what do we do with the next generation coming up? How do we fix the systems? How do we create these new pathways to progress so people can move on these pathways, upward mobility and don't find themselves in the same kind of situation? So I invite you to look at the book. There's some ideas about housing. There's some ideas about retirement, security, savings, and also pathways for about maybe some new opportunities to create some leveraging shared ownership among the rising generation. So that's kind of what I wanted to open with my frame, but Liz, I'd like to hear your remarks. Then we'll hear from Ray and then we can have a discussion to close out the day. Yeah, sure. So my name is Liz Hipple. I'm Senior Policy Advisor at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, where I lead our work on economic mobility. And so my perspective on the political and policy salience of the millennial wealth gap is very much influenced by that perspective that it's economic resources don't just matter for today and people's outcomes today also has implications for intergenerational outcomes in the future. And I think a lot of the comments today that we've already heard in earlier panels really illustrates this point. But I would kind of put the policy implications of the millennial wealth gap into a couple of buckets. One is that it means that there's less financial resources for investment in tomorrow's generation. So it's not just an issue for millennials ourselves that we have less wealth than prior generations. It also matters for our kids and their outcomes. We know that financial resources, both income and wealth, have really important implications for educational attainment, for educational completion and in turn in earnings in the future. And so if families today have less money to invest in their kids' education and skills acquisition that's gonna have implications for their kids' earnings potential in the future. I think this also gets to one of the themes that we've heard today too of the issue of luck of the draw. We can't build policy on luck of the draw. And if folks today have, if you have less income yourself to save out of, whether that's for down payment for a house or whether that's for your kids' future education, that's gonna mean that the importance of your parents' wealth and whether they're able to kick in anything to help you make those investments for yourself and your kids in the future are gonna take on a larger and more disproportionate impact. And that has real equity implications, some of which we've already talked about today. That means that racial wealth gap is even more exacerbated going forward because we know that black Americans were systematically shut out of the housing market in the United States. And so they have less housing wealth themselves to be able to then draw on to help their kids go to college or put a down payment on their own house. And then I think the other issue when it comes to exacerbating existing economic and racial inequalities too, there was an excellent question from the audience earlier about the implications of, yes, there is an aging baby boomer population with, as we saw from Anna's presentation, a tremendous amount of wealth. And that wealth being passed along to those lucky millennials who happened to be their kids, again, we get back to this issue of you just have luck of the draw. And I think this is not just like runs counter to basic fairness and equity concerns. I think it also has real political implications. We already, I think, are struggling with the country to kind of understand and find a shared sense of responsibility for one another. And if folks are seeing outcomes being increasingly dictated by who was lucky enough to have a parent who was able to send them to college or help them buy a house, that's gonna really further exacerbate that lack of social and political cohesion. And the final policy implication that I'll note too is this also has implications for our overall economic growth going forward. If folks have less money to be able to save and invest in themselves, they have lower potential spending in the future. They have less money to invest in their kids, as I've already mentioned. And we also are foreclosing the opportunity for example, the smart, bright kid who has a really great idea and isn't able to actually get that idea off the ground and launch the next Google because they themselves don't come from a background that gives them the startup capital that they need. And that means that our economy is missing out on a lot of great opportunities and ideas that could really propel new innovation and dynamic economic growth. Thank you. Reid, congratulations on the book and it's great to be sharing a stage with you after working with you for 14 years. I had the good fortune of hiring Reid right out of the White House. One of my first hires, one of the best hires. And it's great to be back. So thank you and congrats to all the authors as well. Reid did invite me to contribute to the policy chapter and we put our heads and our pens together over the summer. Unfortunately, my name didn't end up on the chapter because the Fed has a hard time getting policy recommendations out the door, understandably. That's part of the deal when you work at the Fed. And any of your views expressed today do not reflect the type of position. Well, I was gonna get to that, yes, yeah. So that, yeah, my views definitely don't necessarily reflect the views of the Fed and are my own views. But I am gonna highlight areas where I think there's alignment between what the Fed would recommend based on the research that we've done and what Reid ultimately included in the chapter, okay? So I've kind of two buckets here. What do we do for current millennials and then what do we do for future generations is the way I'm thinking about it. And so I would just also point out that at the Fed, Anna and I and our colleagues study racial, the racial wealth gap, educational wealth gap and the millennial wealth gap, I think these recommendations would actually impact all three, not just the millennial wealth gap. So these are important regardless of what gap we're trying to take on. So I think for current generations, let me just mention five things very briefly. I don't need to cover them since they were covered before, very much picking up on Genevieve's excellent research at the Bureau and now at Aspen. Cash reserves are critical. There's four or five bodies of research suggesting that sufficient cash flow, liquidity is critical not only for resilience, but for upward economic mobility and these cash shortfalls are very real, especially for a generation working in a gig volatile economy with flat wages. So very much endorse efforts to do that. The second is something that picks up from Neil Irwin's, The New York Times columnist, new book called How to Win. And it's really about lifelong learning, but it's about what we should be focused on in lifelong learning, which is this idea of sort of adaptability throughout the life course. The job you need to prepare for is probably one that may not even exist and that could be changing and could be a constant, I'm sorry, throughout your life. And so team-based work is really important. And so we have to think about preparing ourselves for adaptability more than a particular job. And I would just note that in other work, we've looked at the 529 College Savings Platform as actually an ideal vehicle. For that it's a tool through which people could make investments in somebody's lifelong learning and skills development. The third, really, I mean the rising cost of college and reliance on student loans, I don't think I need to say anything more than that other than to highlight research that Anna did, showing that student loans do in fact impact wealth premiums going forward in particular for people of color. So there are real consequences to student loans among the many other things that folks talked about. Fourth, something that June mentioned in her presentation, I think we really have to think hard about housing affordability and past to sustainable home ownership. This is critical throughout the country. People do want to be homeowners, they can't afford it for a whole range of reasons. So it's both affordability for people who aren't ready to own homes, but then sustainable home ownership for those who are. And then finally, and this one's a little more out of the box I guess, I think we have to think of new sources of income and wealth and new sources of ownership going forward. I think great work at Aspen where I'm a fellow has found that the historic link between work and wealth has been broken. You can't assume that earned income is sufficient to build enough savings and wealth for resilience and mobility. So what do you do in that world, right? What do you do in that world? I mean we had this idea in the US which is not necessarily true in other countries that you can accumulate enough wealth privately that you can kinda get by without the state necessarily. And so we've created a, you know, we have a country where you have to have the ability to accumulate quite a bit of private wealth in order to manage your lives and your kids' lives. Well if that world isn't necessarily true for probably the majority of American sound, certainly for millennials, we have to think very creatively about other sources of ownership and income. And so for some people that might be the basic income work that many folks talk about for the work that I'm interested in and doing through Aspen is thinking about what are some other assets that could be monetized, claimed as an asset, monetized, and then used as a source of wealth. So organized around table for next month, you know, trying to bring together folks around the idea of the data dividend. You know, could you claim your own data as an asset and then be paid for it? Peter Barnes has talked about, you know, the carbon absorption capacity of the sky. You know, there's a whole range of assets that if we just claim them as public assets could be a source of revenue and actually help with things like climate change, data privacy, data ownership. So I'm really, really interested in this, you know, ESOPs are another part of this shared equity home ownership which Signe-Marie has done some great work on in Caroline. So anyway, the point is we have to get out of this box that earned income is simply enough. So let me just close with two very brief thoughts on future generations. You know, I think, of course, the work of Chetty is really important but what the big takeaway there is the investments that happen locally really matter a lot. So if you really want to affect the trajectory of a kid's life, make investments in place and more so necessarily than the national investments, although those are really important too. And then finally, I would be remiss if I didn't talk about early education and early assets. Huge fan of baby bond, child development accounts, put 20 years into that. Reid and I worked on some bills here in Congress back in the day. They're happening all over the state and I don't think there's a better way to address equity, inclusion, savings, financial inclusion than, you know, starting each kid fresh with some savings and assets. So, yeah, and let me just close with an observation that Phil Longman made, former colleague. He said that for many, you know, through most of American history, the gap between the generations was growing and large, large and growing but for really good reasons is because each generation was doing better than the last. Starting in about the 70s, the gap continued to grow between the generations but for the opposite reason is because kids are doing worse, right, than their parents. So it always struck me as really profound. So I think the wealth gap is not only a threat to the American dream. It really is, it's a threat to the social contract too and that's my final point and it's just picking up on something Reid said. The social contract when it was largely put in place in the New Deal and the great society was premised on the idea that we would have rising productivity, broad wealth distribution and sharing prosperity so that future generations could in fact afford to pay for previous generations retirement and security. Well, my goodness, if the future generations aren't prosperous anymore, then how does the social contract even work, right? So I really do think this is a question of generational equity, fairness and sustainability as Liz talked about. So I'm in favor of some kind of a, like a generational adjustment in the social contract and I would have to think hard about how that would work but I think we have to think along those lines. Thank you. Thank you. Some of those ideas are woven into the last policy chapter and that challenge of how do you readjust the generational, the deal and what the fairness looks like with if there's not going to be kind of growing prosperity who's gonna handle that responsibility and something that we haven't talked about today but it's in the last chapter is the essential need of a program like Social Security which is there as a backstop at the end or for other families experiencing vulnerability throughout the life and how that's gonna need to be not only supported but probably expanded upon. So yeah, definitely interested in some comments and feedback of the room since there was a lot of information today so if there are questions or comments, we'll move the mic around. I'll also say that reinforcing housing as this other concept that we've talked about today, one of the slides that Jung presented that maybe you can see better online is to show that when the importance of home ownership essentially to predicting future wealth outcomes and trajectory and when that even, when it doesn't occur a real divide but if it occurs later or delayed or with more leverage, the impact of undermining wealth long-term is really important. So therefore what are the alternatives? How do we jumpstart responsible home ownership? What are some of the alternatives to kind of this binary rent to own? And I think that there's some ideas about how to create some other space, shared equity, home ownership, cooperatives. And then as Ray talked about and there's more in the paper about these ideas and I think we wanna do some more work on them is yeah, what are some other alternative things that can be leveraged? Other sources of new income, new wealth that we haven't tapped yet. I mean Alaska has a permanent fund where they give a dividend to all their citizens based upon the mining of their resources. So that's something that I think that we need to put on the table as big ideas. Okay, let's start here. We only have a few minutes left but yeah, let's flag me if you have a comment. Thank you. Connie Malone, a retired member of the New York State Union of Teachers. In all of this discussion, I have to refer back to Brent Cohen and the extreme veracity, the wonderful way you expressed what was promised your generation and what has not been delivered. The gig economy, even if you have a professional degree, you came out with six figure loan and you were okay with that because you expected that you would be able to pay that back because after all, if you could get a six figure loan, then you were in a category that would be able to pay that loan back. No, no, it was a big, big lie. And now these kids who are holding back on having kids, and I hate to sound like a cattle breeder, but they're the ones who have the best gene pool, okay? And they're the ones not having the kids because they can't afford them are in a gig economy. So where do any of you stand, and have you addressed the importance of supporting the rebuilding of unions to support the rebuilding of the United States? Yeah, thank you. That actually isn't in the final chapter, but I have written about that in other venues and I think the decline of being able to have kind of collective bargaining has been a big driver in growing inequality in the country. So it is something. And I wanna give a shout out. I personally do not work on unions or research into monopsony, but I have a colleague, Kate Bond, at Equitable Growth who does amazing research on both the decline of workers bargaining power and also more generally the rise of monopsonistic markets where there's only one employer and so that can have not literally one employer, but limited number of employers and so that drives down your options as a worker and depresses wages. So you should check out Kate's research on this, yeah. There was an underbelly of some of this work is also about the pressure it puts on families and the challenges of having children and the expense of that and how just when families are really feeling the most financial pressures, when they have children is also when they're in the kind of prime of their work years and it's where we need to think harder about some other ways of supporting them so that it's not as a big of a sacrifice. I would just add that Genevieve pointed out the systemic nature of these inequalities and the institutional nature of it. This is one of the important institutions in stemming that rising inequality. Any final other questions here? Okay, in the back. Hi, Robert Schrader with International Investor. I came in late, so forgive me if you've covered this. I don't see it. I just picked up a copy of the report. There's going to be a vast transfer of wealth, too, from the older generation to this younger generation. That's, I imagine, is going to exacerbate the wealth gap. You've already discussed this, I guess? Well, it was raised. I mean, I think that there is a lot of wealth that's accumulating. I wonder if the Federal Reserve or anyone has done research on that. Can you guide me there? Yeah, I mean, Sigmund Mary had some comments about it. I mean, clearly there's wealth accumulating to the oldest households, and we know you can't take it with you. So what's gonna happen? And we think it's going to increase inequality in terms of how it's distributed. It's largely white, well-educated older households that have the wealth in the first place and the ones that are in a position to transfer the wealth. So I think you're right. It's likely to exacerbate wealth inequality. Very much so. I just got a comment on this, because it's not just, you already see it in terms of education, clearly. The parents who can afford to step up and help their children makes an immense difference. But when that transfer really takes place in the coming 10, 20 years, you're gonna see those who come from well-to-do families sitting in a very nice position and those who aren't are going to be worse off than ever before. So I think you're gonna see extreme differences here. I mean, it is true and it is worrisome, but I'd also say that most wealth transfers happen throughout life, not at the end of life. And so we have to be as concerned about those transfers, like paying for a home or an education. That's actually where most wealth transfers happen, although we should be concerned about those transfers as well. And also, it is certainly a moment for public policy. I mean, to step in and change how we do kind of tax and distribute those resources. So certainly something to... Can I just add on to Ray's point about the influence of wealth throughout one's life course. Sociologists at University of Michigan, Fabian Pfeffer has a really great phrase for this, which is that the end of life transfer is just the cherry on top of a lifetime of wealth, both buying a lot of advantage. It buys your school district. It buys your college education. But it also subtly influences people's decision-making process throughout their life. There's a big difference between contemplating job X versus job Y. One might be really secure, but lower paying. One might offer a lot of great opportunity, but be riskier. Depending on what kind of family background you're coming from, you're gonna have a very different risk calculation about what life path it makes sense to take, knowing that you have that safety net to fall back on versus you don't. And so absolutely agree that when end of life transfers happen, that especially given the quantity, it will be profound. I think it's important not to lose sight of the fact that wealth and equality plays out throughout life. Yeah. But just a final comment on that. We talked to a lot of financial advisors. And I'll tell you how extreme their point of view is. They look for the last surviving parent of a wealthy household to seek out the children who are about to get that wealth. Because during the course of that lifetime, the parents might well be saying, we don't wanna spoil our children. We'll give them what's necessary, but we're gonna hold back the substantial portion of our wealth. When that second parent dies, it's a big difference suddenly in that life of the millennial in this case. Yeah, thank you. All right, well, this was a big topic. There's a lot of information in the report that we covered. And yeah, please dig in. Tell your friends, certainly, interested in any feedback along the way. And thanks for your time and engagement today. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.