You Can’t Bribe a Baby Boom

Why Trump's apparent plan to give $5000 to new parents is breathtakingly impotent

America’s birth rate is in decline—and MAGA Republicans think they’ve found the solution. Donald Trump is apparently proposing a $5,000 check for parents who have a baby. On its face, this is not just performative—it’s offensively stupid. It fails to address the economic crises afflicting tens of millions of families, and offers an impotent idea (pun intended) that will do nothing but increase poverty and suffering. Meanwhile, it ignores the actual and proven solutions to ensuring healthier American families. Let’s Address This.

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Why $5K Is A Farce

First, let me remind the reader that the Trump regime is actively engaging in Structural Eugenics, which is particularly targeting Black and brown communities, as well as low income communities. The MAGA movement has long feared the demographic change in America in which white Americans are expected to become a minority by 2045. There’s an argument—a very good argument—that Trump’s attempts to increase the birth rate with a $5K bribe is part of the fear right wing white conservatives have of becoming a racial minority again in America.

To which I ask—why, are minorities mistreated or something in America?

But we’ll revisit that argument at another time. For now, let’s look at the math of having a baby vs $5000, and I think you’ll see that the math isn’t mathing.

The average cost to have a baby in America is somewhere between $20,000 and $30,000, and up to $50,000 if you don’t have health insurance (which 20 million women don’t have). The average annual cost of childcare is $20,000. And the median home price is $419,000. Donald Trump thinks a one time $5000 check should be enough to cover all of the above. Meanwhile, MAGA Republicans refuse to enact actual economically just policies to facilitate the stability and growth of healthy families. For example, MAGA Republicans (and some corporate Dems to be sure) refuse to:

• Raise the federal minimum wage (stuck at $7.25/hour since 2009)
• Increase taxes on billionaires or large corporations
• Make the Child Tax Credit permanent
• Fund universal pre-K
• Cancel student debt or pass any kind of tuition reform, period
• Build affordable housing
• Pass universal healthcare
• Protect reproductive freedom (which has been proven to increase life expectancy for children and mothers)

In other words, they want people to give birth in a nation that actively punishes them for doing so—and hope no one notices their band aid solution is a farce.

The Silent Generation Didn’t Need $5K for the Baby Boom—They Enjoyed Good Policy

Trump’s $5,000-for-a-baby plan isn’t just absurd—it’s ahistorical. The U.S. had its most significant baby boom when the top marginal tax rate was between 77% and 91%. That tax structure wasn’t a burden. It was a design feature of an economy that invested in working families. And it worked.

For those who argue that no one actually paid those high tax rates, you’re inadvertently making the case for why they were so effective. The wealthy structured their accumulated wealth in ways that avoided extreme tax liability. How? By actually doing what the trickle down scam claims to do, meaningfully reinvesting in society:

1. They paid their workers a living wage.
2. They offered real retirement pensions.
3. They provided comprehensive health benefits.
4. They kept CEO salaries in check. In 1965, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio was about 20:1. Today, it's over 350:1.
5. And the higher tax rates allowed the Federal Government to build the national highway system, electrify America into its rural areas, afford the GI Bill, and afford subsidized housing via the FHA. (Granted the latter two were disgraced with Jim Crow legislation that excised Black Americans).

This isn’t economic nostalgia—it’s economic literacy, it’s proven American history. The United States created a thriving middle class through public investment, strong labor laws, and equitable taxation. None of this was accidental.

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MAGA’s Baby Bonus Is a Distraction

What Trump and MAGA Republicans are offering isn’t a solution—it’s a distraction. A $5,000 bonus in an economy where parents are spending $53,000 before a child turns one is a cruel joke, not serious policy. It’s a bribe dressed as a band-aid on a system they’ve broken and continue to further tear down.

And worse, they have no intention of addressing the root causes of the problem—growing wealth and income inequality. Why? Because that would require taxing billionaires, regulating predatory industries, and investing in workers—things MAGA Republicans are ideologically and financially opposed to.

The Real Solution? Structural Reform

If we actually want to address falling birth rates, we must confront the systemic economic barriers young people face, so that they can make the choice to start a family if and how they wish, without economic pressures devastating their futures. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Universal healthcare so pregnancy isn’t a financial death sentence
• Affordable housing so people can raise families without being rent-burdened
• Paid parental leave so parents don’t have to choose between bonding with their newborn or losing their job
• Free or low-cost childcare so both parents can work if they choose
• Tuition-free college and student debt cancellation so families aren’t crushed before they begin
• Living wages and strong labor rights so workers aren’t working three jobs to stay afloat

If we want a baby boom, we need an economic boom for working people. And that requires courageous policy—not shallow gimmicks. All of the above is possible for two reasons. One, because we’ve done it before, and we know it works. And two, because taxing billionaires and billion dollar corporations doesn’t hurt our economy, it expands our economy by growing our middle class and strengthening local communities.

Final Thought: Stop the Billionaire Bootlicking

Every time someone defends the ultra-wealthy by saying, “But they don’t even pay those high tax rates,” they miss the point entirely. The point of high marginal tax rates wasn’t to force collection with no alternative—it was to incentivize reinvestment in the working class as the preferred alternative. It forced the super wealthy to grow companies by investing in workers, rather than to grow their bank accounts by hoarding ill gotten wealth.

When the top tax rate was high, the super wealthy did not so easily hoard wealth. They spread it—to workers, to communities, to infrastructure—and it worked. It built a society where having a family wasn’t an act of economic masochism. It was a basic human right afforded to ordinary working families.

If you want to solve the so-called "baby problem," tax billionaires fairly, invest in people, protect healthcare, make living affordable, and stop coddling corporate greed. Ensure young people have the economic stability and freedom to choose when and how to start a family without the dread of medical bankruptcy, illness, or death hanging over their shoulder should something go wrong. Families cannot survive, much less thrive, with a one-time check that barely covers the cost of pregnancy, let alone birth.

So let’s stop pretending otherwise.

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