Families With Children Deserve Tax Relief—But A Growing Economy Too

By: bitcoin ethereum news|2025/05/14 14:45:04

Expectant parents may be disappointed that a $5,000 baby bonus—which President Trump himself said “sounds like a good idea”—hasn’t found a place in the massive tax and budget package now winding its way through Congress. The current draft of the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” would create tax-advantaged savings accounts that can be opened for newborns, and a pilot program for the next three years, during which the federal government would contribute $1,000 to kick-start each account. Accrued funds would then be accessible for the child when he or she turns 18 to help pay for higher education, to buy a house and other eligible expenses. That may be a help for parents concerned about their kids’ futures, but doesn’t feel like the same windfall as an immediate $5,000 baby bonus that was floated last month. Yet young parents have more at stake in the tax code than maximizing payouts related to the immediate years when they have young children. If bigger short-term credits or dedication came at the expense of higher marginal income tax rates, higher corporate tax rates and slower economic growth, young parents would find that they are still losers in the deal. Family together at home Higher marginal rates on top earners may sound like a rich and worthy source of tax dollars, but these top earners also tend to be the drivers of economic growth and job creation. Most small businesses are managed as “pass-through” tax entities , which means higher marginal rates would hit them, hurting workers and job creation broadly. High marginal tax rates discourage work, investment, and entrepreneurship—the very behaviors that drive economic growth and benefit the economy broadly. The corporate tax rate cuts in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) resulted in rising real wages , more generous benefits (including for paid time off, a critical benefit for families with young children), and more and better job opportunities for workers. This kind of growing, dynamic economy, more than short-lived tax breaks, will provide families with financial stability over the long term. Lana Pol , who runs a family-owned trucking company in Iowa with 68 employees, explained what the 2017 tax cuts meant for businesses like hers: “Before the tax cuts, everybody was struggling at that point, as far as small businesses. The confidence wasn’t there. When these tax cuts came along, we saw a tremendous increase in people’s confidence. Everything seemed to start flowing a lot better, cash flow was better, and just knowing that there was help out there.” A better economy for entrepreneurs and businesses of all sizes might not seem like a boon to families with small children, but will dictate the economic environment that surrounds them. Most families’ current budget woes stem from steeply higher living costs, which are the result of inflation, restrictive housing and energy policies, and other growth-crushing regulations left over from the Biden era. Simply by blocking the Biden administration’s unfinalized rules, the Trump administration saved the average family of four an estimated $2,100 over the next decade. Rolling back additional red tape will continue to reduce energy and compliance costs, bringing downward pressure on the costs of most goods and services. Families will also benefit from the administration’s changes in education policy. Returning funds to states and localities—and even better to parents themselves—will not only shake up under-performing government-run schools and help kids learn more, but also free parents from overpaying for housing in purportedly “good” school districts, easing housing costs and alleviating a variety of headaches for parents. Reducing taxes on families should remain a priority during negotiations for this tax and budget bill. Hitting already cash-strapped families with a massive reduction in their child tax credit—it was doubled by the TCJA—would cause real hardship. If Congress fails to act and allows the resumption of the pre-2017 tax system, the average taxpayer will see a 22% tax hike. A family of four making $80,610 (the median U.S. income) would see a $1,695 tax increase. The current version of the “One, Big, Beautiful Bill” includes an expanded Child Tax Credit of an additional $1,500 over the next three years, which would provide a big boost to families with the youngest children. Tough choices always have to be made during tax negotiations—especially when we have to fund a government of this enormous size. Families with children have a big stake in this debate, that goes far beyond any single baby bonus or tax credit. They need a tax system that creates a growing economy with more opportunities and affordable living for the long term. Carrie Lukas, a mother of five, is president of Independent Women. Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/carrielukas/2025/05/14/families-with-children-deserve-tax-relief-but-a-growing-economy-too/

The X Chat will be available for download on the App Store this Friday. The media has already covered the feature list, including self-destructing messages, screenshot prevention, 481-person group chats, Grok integration, and registration without a phone number, positioning it as the "Western WeChat." However, there are three questions that have hardly been addressed in any reports.

There is a sentence on X's official help page that is still hanging there: "If malicious insiders or X itself cause encrypted conversations to be exposed through legal processes, both the sender and receiver will be completely unaware."

Question One: Is this encryption the same as Signal's encryption?

No. The difference lies in where the keys are stored.

In Signal's end-to-end encryption, the keys never leave your device. X, the court, or any external party does not hold your keys. Signal's servers have nothing to decrypt your messages; even if they were subpoenaed, they could only provide registration timestamps and last connection times, as evidenced by past subpoena records.

X Chat uses the Juicebox protocol. This solution divides the key into three parts, each stored on three servers operated by X. When recovering the key with a PIN code, the system retrieves these three shards from X's servers and recombines them. No matter how complex the PIN code is, X is the actual custodian of the key, not the user.

This is the technical background of the "help page sentence": because the key is on X's servers, X has the ability to respond to legal processes without the user's knowledge. Signal does not have this capability, not because of policy, but because it simply does not have the key.

The following illustration compares the security mechanisms of Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram, and X Chat along six dimensions. X Chat is the only one of the four where the platform holds the key and the only one without Forward Secrecy.

The significance of Forward Secrecy is that even if a key is compromised at a certain point in time, historical messages cannot be decrypted because each message has a unique key. Signal's Double Ratchet protocol automatically updates the key after each message, a mechanism lacking in X Chat.

After analyzing the X Chat architecture in June 2025, Johns Hopkins University cryptology professor Matthew Green commented, "If we judge XChat as an end-to-end encryption scheme, this seems like a pretty game-over type of vulnerability." He later added, "I would not trust this any more than I trust current unencrypted DMs."

From a September 2025 TechCrunch report to being live in April 2026, this architecture saw no changes.

In a February 9, 2026 tweet, Musk pledged to undergo rigorous security tests of X Chat before its launch on X Chat and to open source all the code.

As of the April 17 launch date, no independent third-party audit has been completed, there is no official code repository on GitHub, the App Store's privacy label reveals X Chat collects five or more categories of data including location, contact info, and search history, directly contradicting the marketing claim of "No Ads, No Trackers."

Issue 2: Does Grok know what you're messaging in private?

Not continuous monitoring, but a clear access point.

For every message on X Chat, users can long-press and select "Ask Grok." When this button is clicked, the message is delivered to Grok in plaintext, transitioning from encrypted to unencrypted at this stage.

This design is not a vulnerability but a feature. However, X Chat's privacy policy does not state whether this plaintext data will be used for Grok's model training or if Grok will store this conversation content. By actively clicking "Ask Grok," users are voluntarily removing the encryption protection of that message.

There is also a structural issue: How quickly will this button shift from an "optional feature" to a "default habit"? The higher the quality of Grok's replies, the more frequently users will rely on it, leading to an increase in the proportion of messages flowing out of encryption protection. The actual encryption strength of X Chat, in the long run, depends not only on the design of the Juicebox protocol but also on the frequency of user clicks on "Ask Grok."

Issue 3: Why is there no Android version?

X Chat's initial release only supports iOS, with the Android version simply stating "coming soon" without a timeline.

In the global smartphone market, Android holds about 73%, while iOS holds about 27% (IDC/Statista, 2025). Of WhatsApp's 3.14 billion monthly active users, 73% are on Android (according to Demand Sage). In India, WhatsApp covers 854 million users, with over 95% Android penetration. In Brazil, there are 148 million users, with 81% on Android, and in Indonesia, there are 112 million users, with 87% on Android.

WhatsApp's dominance in the global communication market is built on Android. Signal, with a monthly active user base of around 85 million, also relies mainly on privacy-conscious users in Android-dominant countries.

X Chat circumvented this battlefield, with two possible interpretations. One is technical debt; X Chat is built with Rust, and achieving cross-platform support is not easy, so prioritizing iOS may be an engineering constraint. The other is a strategic choice; with iOS holding a market share of nearly 55% in the U.S., X's core user base being in the U.S., prioritizing iOS means focusing on their core user base rather than engaging in direct competition with Android-dominated emerging markets and WhatsApp.

These two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, leading to the same result: X Chat's debut saw it willingly forfeit 73% of the global smartphone user base.

Elon Musk's "Super App"

This matter has been described by some: X Chat, along with X Money and Grok, forms a trifecta creating a closed-loop data system parallel to the existing infrastructure, similar in concept to the WeChat ecosystem. This assessment is not new, but with X Chat's launch, it's worth revisiting the schematic.

X Chat generates communication metadata, including information on who is talking to whom, for how long, and how frequently. This data flows into X's identity system. Part of the message content goes through the Ask Grok feature and enters Grok's processing chain. Financial transactions are handled by X Money: external public testing was completed in March, opening to the public in April, enabling fiat peer-to-peer transfers via Visa Direct. A senior Fireblocks executive confirmed plans for cryptocurrency payments to go live by the end of the year, holding money transmitter licenses in over 40 U.S. states currently.

Every WeChat feature operates within China's regulatory framework. Musk's system operates within Western regulatory frameworks, but he also serves as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This is not a WeChat replica; it is a reenactment of the same logic under different political conditions.

The difference is that WeChat has never explicitly claimed to be "end-to-end encrypted" on its main interface, whereas X Chat does. "End-to-end encryption" in user perception means that no one, not even the platform, can see your messages. X Chat's architectural design does not meet this user expectation, but it uses this term.

X Chat consolidates the three data lines of "who this person is, who they are talking to, and where their money comes from and goes to" in one company's hands.

The help page sentence has never been just technical instructions.

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Before using Musk's "Western WeChat" X Chat, you need to understand these three questions