Renewing America’s Belief in Capitalism

Opportunity begins when children have agency abundance.

This year, the Cato Institute and YouGov found that 62% of Americans under 30 view socialism favorably. Less than a decade ago, that figure was nearly 20 percentage points lower at 43%. The median age of a first-time homebuyer today is 40 years old. A current total of $1.8 trillion in student debt has expanded balance sheets more than opportunity. “Affordability,” the political buzzword of 2025, is emblematic of our generation’s frustration with a system that isn’t sustaining the American Dream.

As someone who grew up working-class attending lower-income public schools in Atlanta, I empathize with people seeking an alternative. My mom is a bedside nurse, and my dad got an associate’s degree in his fifties to become a lab technician. While wealth floated in cocktail glasses a few miles into Midtown, my classmates and I lost a friend to gang violence by age 12. Some drifted from truancy to dropping out by age 16. By high school graduation, I believed that the system wasn’t broken but designed to fail.

Over time, however, as I’ve traversed different socioeconomic settings, I’ve come to realize that the capitalist system is not inherently cruel; it’s indifferent. Capitalism rewards judgment and punishes ignorance. When some are never handed the playbook, the indifference is what engenders cruelty.

To make capitalism function upstream, we need to democratize the cognitive foundation that allows flourishing in it. We need to ensure that everyone can attain the knowledge and resources to form choices — which is what I call agency abundance: the capacity to imagine and decide between multiple futures.

I’ve seen this abundance most clearly at HBS. While many students are from high net worth families, also walking around campus are first-gen students, who make up 11% of the Class of 2026. Agnostic on whether we summered in the Hamptons or survived the streets of Compton, our shared privilege is high agency abundance. Some inherited it through family networks; some developed it with the support of a teacher who advocated for them or a mentor who knew a bit about getting into a profession. Such a trait sprouts from circumstance today, but I believe upstream policies can systematize agency-building in all children.

I propose a two-part agenda: make knowledge open and resources attainable for everyone. Knowledge lets you draw your map; resources let you explore it. The ultimate goal is to equip every American with the tools and confidence to create their future through capitalism.

Open Knowledge

The challenge is that proximity still predicts destiny; what we see shapes what we can imagine. Harvard economist Raj Chetty formalized this intuition through what he calls “economic connectedness,” the degree of interaction between low- and high-income people. Chetty’s research shows how children in neighborhoods with more economic connectedness have more upward mobility. Children surrounded by employed adults, regardless of their parents’ employment status, have higher earnings in adulthood.

In an age of limitless information, public-private partnerships can reduce proximity’s influence by developing and deploying “future discovery” LLMs: AI-powered advisors that give children up-to-date information on different career paths and their trade-offs. They should source data holistically from job market platforms like Indeed and online communities like Reddit. Unlike generic chatbots, the LLMs should ultimately assist students with discovering what matters to them, what kind of life they want, and which paths could help realize those goals — a practice that’s rarely been afforded to people in lower-income conditions.

LLMs are already showing promising results. Michael Cuna, an economics PhD candidate at the University of Chicago, found that a specialized AI advisor had improved first-gen students’ ability to navigate higher education by helping them acquire useful information and form productive choices.

Resource Attainment

Today, 30% of American households live paycheck to paycheck, with almost all income going towards necessities. Nearly 40% own no securities. My household had zero equities, let alone a brokerage account, so I had no conception of an “asset.” To me, money was cash; it did not grow, but it did deplete. My parents took care of matters by laboring harder, and I viewed life as a zero-sum game. Over the past decade, as I increased my economic connectedness, learned about history and markets, and watched my own capital work for me, my resentment gave way. Capitalism, in fact, does work.

But when people can’t access financial literacy or wealth accumulation, it rings hollow for leaders to champion this system. Understanding capital — the fuel of the American Dream — shouldn’t depend on socioeconomic background. We should give Americans at birth starter portfolios that they learn about through grade school and access at eighteen. When financial participation is lived, children will develop literacy and a muscle for long-term planning.

Connecticut’s $3,200 Baby Bonds and the $1,000 Trump Accounts set promising precedents, but we ought to think bigger. $10,000 in the S&P 500, compounded at historical averages, would nominally grow fivefold to $50,000 by age 18. That kind of sum opens up real possibilities, such as vocational training, university, entrepreneurship, or a down payment. The country could empower young people instead of indebting them to begin adulthood. While the upfront cost would be significant, it’s a trade-off the government should welcome, as inculcating young people to invest and save would substantially reduce future entitlement liabilities.

Moral Renewal

Achieving a sense of choice is tough for children when their households lack labor-market knowledge and a stake in capital gains. If these deficits are exacerbated amid an AI productivity surge, the country’s disenchantment with the American Dream will only deepen.

Through upstream knowledge and resource policies, everyone can become equipped to own their future. Open knowledge fosters imagination and belief; resource attainment offers the means to decide and act. When children have both, they’ll experience the economy as participants rather than spectators. The agency abundance agenda is a moral renewal for capitalism — a chance for it to become the greatest system we know it can be.

Nina Qin (MBA ‘26) is originally from Atlanta, Georgia. She has worked in edtech along with economic development and financial strategy at the local government level. Prior to HBS, Nina graduated from Georgia Tech with a B.S. in computational media and Teachers College, Columbia University with an M.A. in education policy.