Aspen is a place for leaders to lift their sights above the possessions which possess them. To confront their own nature as human beings, to regain control over their own humanity by becoming more self-aware, more self-correcting, and hence more self-fulfilling.
Walter P. Paepcke, Aspen Institute Co-Founder
Aspen Institute
Blog Posts, and Videos
Video: We Don’t Have to Choose Between Financial Stability and Wealth
Director, Benefits Transformation Initiative and Senior Policy Advisor
Why We Need to Connect the Social Safety Net and Wealth Building
Aspen FSP’s work spans benefits, savings, and wealth because we know that households need tools that help them afford everyday life and build long-term security. Too often, policy systems fail to respond to both of these needs and instead prioritize one goal over the other.
The recently passed HR1—also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—is a prime example. This tax reconciliation bill extends the tax cuts from the first Trump administration, but it’s also set to make significant changes to other areas of economic policy, including decreasing access to public benefits systems and federal student loans.
For Tim Shaw, director of Aspen FSP’s Benefits Transformation Initiative, the policy tradeoffs presented in HR1 represent “zero-sum” policy thinking. By cutting the social safety net in the name of spurring economic growth, he argues that HR1 pits financial stability against wealth, hurting families’ ability to afford daily life and plan for the future.
“There is a view that tax cuts are going to build the economy and create real wealth generation for people, and a view also that to pay for those, you have to reduce the safety net programs that produce financial stability for many people,” Shaw says in our latest video. “In reality, we need to both build solutions for people to have everyday financial stability and afford everyday life so they can imagine and get to a point where they can put money into wealth.”
