The Charlie Kirk Show - November 18, 2025


Women Fleeing America + Abolish Property Taxes?


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 5 minutes

Words per Minute

191.32248

Word Count

12,538

Sentence Count

959

Misogynist Sentences

25

Hate Speech Sentences

40


Summary

A new Gallup poll shows that 40% of women ages 15-44 want to leave the United States permanently. What does this mean for the future of the country? And why are these women so upset about it? Today's guest, Libby Emmons, shares her thoughts.


Transcript

00:00:03.000 My name is Charlie Kirk.
00:00:05.000 I run the largest pro-American student organization in the country fighting for the future of our republic.
00:00:11.000 My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth.
00:00:14.000 If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're going to end up miserable.
00:00:19.000 But if the most important thing is doing good, you'll end up purposeful.
00:00:24.000 College is a scam, everybody.
00:00:26.000 You got to stop sending your kids to college.
00:00:27.000 You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible.
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00:00:33.000 Go start a Turning Point USA high school chapter.
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00:00:39.000 I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade.
00:00:41.000 Most important decision I ever made in my life.
00:00:43.000 And I encourage you to do the same.
00:00:45.000 Here I am.
00:00:46.000 Lord, use me.
00:00:48.000 Buckle up, everybody.
00:00:49.000 Here we go.
00:00:56.000 The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends, and viewers.
00:01:09.000 This is according to a new Gallup poll.
00:01:11.000 20% of people say they want to live somewhere else.
00:01:14.000 That's one in five.
00:01:15.000 And the shift is mainly driven by young women ages 15 to 44.
00:01:19.000 40% of them say that they want to go.
00:01:23.000 The other thing is that it doesn't ask, are you going to leave?
00:01:26.000 It just says, basically, it's like at a cocktail party, would you say, I really want to get out of here?
00:01:31.000 I really want to leave the country.
00:01:32.000 But they're not actually leaving the country.
00:01:34.000 So it's just nobody all won, won, wah, complaining.
00:01:37.000 And there's a lot of Trump derangements.
00:01:38.000 They all want to be Emily in Paris.
00:01:40.000 That was actually a really good.
00:01:42.000 You got to love Martha.
00:01:43.000 She's pretty great.
00:01:44.000 And Dana Perino, they're both great.
00:01:46.000 Gonna welcome in now editor-in-chief of the post-millennial and human events.
00:01:51.000 That would be Libby Emmons, good friend of the show.
00:01:54.000 Welcome, Libby.
00:01:55.000 Hey, Andrew Blake.
00:01:56.000 Glad to be here.
00:01:57.000 Really glad to have you.
00:01:59.000 So why don't you react to this?
00:02:01.000 I mean, because this is a really crazy stat that 15 to 44-year-old women, 40% want to leave the U.S. permanently.
00:02:12.000 What do you make of this, Libby?
00:02:13.000 Yeah, these women are out of their minds.
00:02:15.000 They have no idea the bounty of conveniences and food and freedoms and peace that we have here in this country.
00:02:23.000 And I think that this is the reason for this is that we have done a really, really bad job of telling our kids what is so great about America and what is so great about their homeland contrasted to every place else.
00:02:35.000 By infusing our entire educational system with cultural relativism, we've led these women to believe that all cultures are the same when in fact, American culture is the greatest one.
00:02:46.000 Well, I mean, it's different types of American culture.
00:02:49.000 Yeah, there are.
00:02:50.000 We are, you know, not even bifurcated.
00:02:50.000 There are now.
00:02:53.000 We're like, what are we?
00:02:54.000 We have like 13 strands.
00:02:56.000 I mean, we've always been a country with multiple cultures within it.
00:02:59.000 If anything, we flattened out in a lot of ways.
00:03:01.000 We flattened out after very distinct New England and Midwestern and California and everywhere.
00:03:06.000 I miss that, you know?
00:03:07.000 I miss that.
00:03:08.000 I think we should have more.
00:03:10.000 I love the regional differences that we used to have.
00:03:13.000 I wish we still had those.
00:03:14.000 One thing I love about going back to New England where so many, much of my family is, is I get to hear all of these Boston accents and the Maine accent.
00:03:22.000 And it's all very different.
00:03:24.000 And New York is different.
00:03:25.000 And Philadelphia is different.
00:03:26.000 I think what these women find, and we've seen viral videos of women in the past few months.
00:03:32.000 We saw a woman who moved to Africa and then she was like, wait a second, it kind of sucks here.
00:03:37.000 We saw a woman who moved to Costa Rica and said that now she knows what real poverty is.
00:03:41.000 She grew up thinking she was poor going to private school just because she was the broke kid in private school.
00:03:46.000 And we all know that kid, that kid is not poor, you know?
00:03:50.000 So we're seeing this happen.
00:03:51.000 We're seeing these viral videos.
00:03:53.000 Women who have left tell you that it's not that great out there.
00:03:57.000 And I think that we really owe it to our kids to let them know that America is a great place to live.
00:04:03.000 It has a lot to offer and it has more opportunity than anywhere else.
00:04:07.000 And it has more opportunity for these women if only they would wise up and stop believing every lie that they've been told.
00:04:13.000 Well, that's one of the most interesting things about the opportunities.
00:04:16.000 Because if you think, we've had a million pieces where it's, you know, articles and data points where it's women pulling ahead.
00:04:23.000 They're more likely to complete college.
00:04:23.000 of men.
00:04:25.000 They're more likely.
00:04:26.000 They're almost in some ways, they're becoming male in surprising ways.
00:04:29.000 You know, now they're the ones who don't want to get married.
00:04:32.000 They don't want to be attached.
00:04:33.000 They're the ones more likely to buy a home.
00:04:34.000 Like they're, they're getting, like, they're adopting almost more masculine traits in some surprising ways.
00:04:40.000 And yet, and then of course, they're also, like, let's be frank, we have basically affirmative action for women in a lot of areas.
00:04:47.000 You know, we had a ton of that in academia, in tech, in medicine.
00:04:51.000 There's been a big effort in America to make every institution possible more opening to women, more welcoming of women to recruit more women into it.
00:05:00.000 And there's something interesting that they can look at decades of that reality and feel so repulsed by what they see that 40% of them are saying they actually just, they want to move to an entire different country versus men who don't want to quit and leave America.
00:05:17.000 Yeah, well, I actually, I mean, and on that point, Libby, how much of this do you think kind of what Martha McCallan was saying is this just sort of TDS, living liberal women having to live under a president they didn't vote for versus some of the these larger societal trends that we've seen where, you know, you could throw up image 95.
00:05:36.000 This is liberal women are the least likely to be completely satisfied with life.
00:05:41.000 Only 12% of liberal women are compared to 37% of conservatives, 28% of moderates.
00:05:48.000 So I think that it's a good sign of confidence.
00:05:52.000 If you want to be a conservative woman, that you're more likely to be completely satisfied with your life.
00:05:57.000 So is it TDS or is it part of these larger societal trends that's driving this desire to get out of the U.S.?
00:06:03.000 I think TDS might just be the capper.
00:06:06.000 But women, of course, just like everybody else, a lot of people live under presidents that they didn't vote for.
00:06:11.000 And it's not that big a deal.
00:06:12.000 You look at the president, you say, okay, didn't vote for that guy.
00:06:15.000 Maybe next time the guy I vote for will win.
00:06:17.000 But I think Blake is onto something when he's talking about these societal trends because women are basically the dog that caught the car, right?
00:06:24.000 American women, American women demanding power, demanding access, demanding all of this opportunity, demanding complete equality with men.
00:06:32.000 And then it turns out there you are in your 40s.
00:06:34.000 You've got some killer career.
00:06:36.000 You've got no kids.
00:06:37.000 You've got no man.
00:06:38.000 You've got like a mountain of stuff.
00:06:40.000 And we know from that old Tracy Chapman song that the mountain of things is not really satisfactory.
00:06:45.000 It doesn't give you anything that you want.
00:06:47.000 Turns out having a career for women who, you know, let's face it, are different than men, are just composed differently than men are.
00:06:55.000 Women look around at all their stuff and it's, it's really just not that great.
00:06:59.000 I mean, it might be shiny, but it's nothing like a bundle of grandbabies to snuggle with, you know, and to look after or anything like that.
00:07:07.000 So I think that's really what's going on here is women have been led to believe that equality with men will give them satisfaction.
00:07:15.000 And then what happens is all of these women end up powerful and they look around at the men who are available to them to partner with and they say, oh, but that guy doesn't make as much as me or he's not as powerful or as educated as me or any of these other things because women don't want the thing that they have been told to want, right?
00:07:32.000 We have been told to want power and equality, you know, straight across the board.
00:07:38.000 And instead, what we have gotten is a situation where women can't really be women.
00:07:43.000 Expressing maternal instincts and impulses gets you chided and derided by the left.
00:07:49.000 But there's nothing more satisfying in life than being a mom.
00:07:53.000 Women like to take care of people.
00:07:56.000 I know that, you know, not all women, blah, blah, blah, whatever.
00:07:59.000 But for the most part, women have this maternal instinct.
00:08:02.000 And so when you have women who are cut off from that instinct, they tend to mother everybody and screw up everything that they're in charge of.
00:08:08.000 Well, this is a good point because check this out.
00:08:11.000 This was actually a few days.
00:08:13.000 I remember sharing this article with Charlie, actually.
00:08:15.000 I think he tweeted about it.
00:08:16.000 The marriage effect from The Atlantic.
00:08:19.000 This is, I believe, September 1st.
00:08:21.000 The common narrative has it that commitment and motherhood make women unhappy.
00:08:26.000 New data suggests the opposite is true.
00:08:29.000 This is like thousands of years.
00:08:29.000 New data.
00:08:36.000 A common narrative that we've been telling you in the pages of the Atlantic for years that marriage will make you depressed and you won't have all your free time to have like wine nights with the ladies and Netflix.
00:08:47.000 A popular lunatic psyop has suggested that.
00:08:50.000 Yeah.
00:08:51.000 I mean, listen, I think this is really important, though, is that we've lied to young women for a generation or more, really since, you know, the 60s, burn your bras and all this kind of stuff.
00:09:03.000 I mean, this has been going on since the post-war era, and it really is taking a massive impact when you add onto the heap social media, you know, mental, I think, changes in the way we do psychiatry and the changes in the way we administer antidepressants, all of these things on top of each other.
00:09:25.000 So cultural lies, the drugs, social media, all of it is coming, the chickens are coming home to roost with our young women.
00:09:33.000 Libby Emmett.
00:09:35.000 Yeah, I think that's 100% true.
00:09:36.000 I was talking to Dr. Chloe Carmichael about this the other day, the incessant and rampant medicalization of womanhood.
00:09:43.000 And we get it from such a young age.
00:09:45.000 It starts with birth control pills and then you move on to SSRIs and then, you know, you end up with fertility treatments.
00:09:52.000 And then all of a sudden you're medicating menopause.
00:09:55.000 I think all of that is a contributor to women's unhappiness in this country.
00:09:59.000 And I also think the emasculation of so many American men is a contributor to American women's unhappiness because as you see these roles reversed and women are more educated and they're making more money and they're more in charge of stuff or whatever, and then you see men becoming more of like the stay-at-home dad or other things that men then end up doing, which were traditionally more feminine roles, women aren't attracted to those guys, it turns out.
00:10:27.000 It turns out that the male feminist is not someone that a lady wants to get married to.
00:10:32.000 Let's look at image 98.
00:10:34.000 This is from Gallup.
00:10:35.000 The desire to migrate became a partisan issue in 2017.
00:10:41.000 So you see it just really divide in 2017.
00:10:46.000 You know, if you disapproved of the country's leadership, you wanted to get the heck out.
00:10:51.000 And that kind of underlies like really how divided people are.
00:10:56.000 Because as you said, we've all lived through presidents we didn't like.
00:10:59.000 We never thought, okay, I'm not an American anymore.
00:11:01.000 But that is increasingly untrue because the vision for the country of either party is getting farther and farther apart.
00:11:10.000 Yeah, I think you're right.
00:11:12.000 I saw an article recently from David Marcus over at Fox Digital, and he was talking about how the left essentially wants a welfare state.
00:11:22.000 They want open borders and they want the decline of the country.
00:11:25.000 They want it to just be nothing that has anything to do with a culture or a history or foundational elements.
00:11:32.000 And I think that's a big part of this too, right?
00:11:34.000 You have on the right, you have a desire to have independence, to have government be out of your lives.
00:11:41.000 And on the left, you have a desire to push government into every aspect of Americans' lives.
00:11:46.000 You had Mom Donnie say recently when he made his victory speech in New York City that there is no problem too large for the government to small, to, I'm sorry, no problem too large for the government to solve and no problem too small that they won't get involved in it.
00:12:02.000 That sounds like a recipe for tyranny for me.
00:12:05.000 And I think you've also seen a lot of people saying they would leave New York over that.
00:12:09.000 I don't know if they're planning to leave America, but yeah, you have people saying they want to leave America because of Trump.
00:12:16.000 We've definitely seen that.
00:12:17.000 But these people have not considered where it is that they might want to go.
00:12:21.000 There is a decline of free speech rights in Europe and the UK specifically.
00:12:26.000 There's been a decline in that in Australia and New Zealand.
00:12:30.000 Where are they going to go, Libby?
00:12:31.000 Are they going to go to Germany with the Middle Eastern migrant rape gangs?
00:12:37.000 Are they going to go to the UK with the grooming gangs?
00:12:40.000 Are they going to go to, where are they going to go?
00:12:43.000 Like maybe not.
00:12:44.000 It is a funny thing I've seen pointed out that it's like the left often like they talk about leaving the country and they fantasize basically about going to countries that are whiter than America is.
00:12:55.000 And then when the right actually, you often hear right-wingers fantasize about leaving America and they want to basically go expat in like Mexico or Peru or something.
00:13:03.000 It's a funny dynamic you'll sometimes see.
00:13:06.000 It's cognitive dissonance, but it totally is the trend.
00:13:08.000 It totally is the trend.
00:13:10.000 Libby, I just, I have to play this because you were talking about strong men versus weak men and how weak men are actually driving women crazy in part.
00:13:20.000 And I don't disagree.
00:13:21.000 You're not lecturing men.
00:13:22.000 I just want to be very clear.
00:13:24.000 That's not what you're doing.
00:13:25.000 You're just saying you celebrate strong men.
00:13:27.000 I know what you're saying.
00:13:29.000 But this is really funny.
00:13:30.000 131.
00:13:30.000 This is a liberal woman having a similar thought.
00:13:33.000 131.
00:13:35.000 single man.
00:13:45.000 We got aura.
00:13:46.000 You know what I mean?
00:13:46.000 Yeah.
00:13:47.000 We got Aura.
00:13:47.000 I mean, perhaps she likes men instead of little wussy creatures who, you know, just do what they're told and don't have any ambition.
00:13:55.000 I think it's a sad thing what we've done to American men.
00:13:58.000 And I certainly hope that trends reverse that.
00:14:01.000 Women don't want that and men are unhappy too.
00:14:04.000 Men don't want that.
00:14:05.000 It's terrible.
00:14:05.000 It's a terrible condition for them.
00:14:07.000 Absolutely.
00:14:07.000 And let's throw up this image.
00:14:09.000 This is actually, I don't have a number for it, so I'm going to make sure we have it.
00:14:13.000 But this is a really important data point.
00:14:16.000 And it's a general social survey from the family studies.
00:14:19.000 It shows that 40% of married women with children are reporting that they are very happy.
00:14:27.000 Do you know who the least happy is, though?
00:14:31.000 And this is an important thing to note, is unmarried with children at 17.
00:14:38.000 And unmarried with no children is at 22% report being very happy.
00:14:42.000 So the happiest cohort is by far married women with children.
00:14:47.000 They report being very happy.
00:14:48.000 So I guess the cautionary tale is here is don't have children get married, then divorced and have to be a single mom because then you'll be the least happy.
00:14:55.000 So choose well.
00:14:57.000 I'm not saying rush in with the wrong person.
00:14:59.000 I'm saying married with children is the happiest cohort.
00:15:02.000 Libby, you are the best.
00:15:04.000 We love the postmillennial and human events.
00:15:06.000 Thank you for making time for us.
00:15:08.000 I know you had a busy media morning.
00:15:09.000 Thanks so much, guys.
00:15:10.000 I appreciate it.
00:15:13.000 A new Hillsdale College miniseries on colonial America offers a fresh way to think about Thanksgiving.
00:15:20.000 Beyond the food and the political debates, it reminds us what we should be truly thankful for, our freedom, our prosperity, and our faith.
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00:16:15.000 Without further ado, I'm excited to welcome Scott Turner.
00:16:18.000 He's our HUD Secretary.
00:16:20.000 Welcome to the show, Secretary Turner.
00:16:22.000 Great to be with you guys.
00:16:22.000 Thank you, Andrew.
00:16:23.000 Thank you, Blake.
00:16:25.000 Yeah, it's an honor to have you.
00:16:26.000 You've been, I mean, you've been doing a tremendous job, but on top of that, you've always been so encouraging, a huge supporter of Charlie's, of Turning Point.
00:16:34.000 And we salute you for that, sir.
00:16:35.000 So thank you just for being a great friend along the way as everything we've been through in the last couple months has transpired.
00:16:43.000 Well, absolutely.
00:16:44.000 You know, you know how much I love and respect Charlie and the entire Turning Point team and you gentlemen and Eric and everything that you're doing to continue the mission.
00:16:55.000 I'm here, you know, to support you and pray for you and love on you guys.
00:16:59.000 So thank you so much for this brief moment.
00:17:01.000 We can be together.
00:17:02.000 Yeah, absolutely.
00:17:03.000 Well, thank you for making the time, Mr. Secretary.
00:17:06.000 And you have come out guns blazing with this affordability crisis.
00:17:11.000 And this is something Charlie talked about a lot, especially in the final weeks and months of his life, and wanting to make sure that Gen Z has a stake in the American dream, has an opportunity to get on the rung of financial success, that first rung in the ladder.
00:17:25.000 And so you came out, I saw the clip, I instantly reached out to your team, and I love that you were talking about it.
00:17:30.000 Tell us about your plans to address the housing and affordability crisis, especially for young Americans.
00:17:36.000 Well, let's go to the root of it.
00:17:36.000 Well, absolutely.
00:17:38.000 You know, during the Biden administration, the policies as it pertains to housing, the economy, and in particular, the immigration policies of the Biden administration were crippling to our country and housing affordability in particular.
00:17:54.000 You talk about over 12 million illegal aliens coming across our border.
00:17:58.000 And because of this, Andrew, it literally stifled and weakened our housing supply and stifled housing affordability because illegal aliens were taking up homes that American people should have been taking up.
00:18:12.000 And so because of that, you see the affordability crisis.
00:18:15.000 You see the issues that we're having.
00:18:17.000 And one stat that I wanted to bring forth is about 59% of illegal alien families, 59%, they utilize one or more of the welfare programs in our country to the tune of about $42 billion.
00:18:32.000 And so if you think about over half of the illegal alien families use one or more welfare programs, costing the American people over $40 billion.
00:18:42.000 That's a problem.
00:18:43.000 It's not sustainable in our country, in particular when it comes to housing affordability.
00:18:48.000 And so for millennials and really for every American citizen, what we're doing at HUD is one, being very focused on tearing down burdensome regulations, which we can talk about as the show goes on, but taking down these regulations, both from a federal standpoint and then encouraging the localities, mayors, economic development, states, and cities to take inventory of their regulatory environment because that has really what has crippled development and building in our country.
00:19:16.000 And so regulations, for instance, in a multifamily housing project, 40% of regulations are the cost when you build a multifamily housing project in a single family housing development.
00:19:31.000 20 to 25% of the cost is in regulations.
00:19:34.000 Well, Andrew and Blake, this is unsustainable.
00:19:37.000 And so we have to tear down the regulatory environment in order to unleash the development and build in creativity and innovativeness in our country as it pertains to our housing supply.
00:19:48.000 Yeah, go ahead.
00:19:49.000 Blake, Chen.
00:19:50.000 You know, another stat I saw recently that really drove this home is put up 132.
00:19:56.000 And this chart is the number of newly built homes per capita in the U.S. by year.
00:20:03.000 And you can see different points in time, but the trend is clearly downwards.
00:20:07.000 You can see different housing busts.
00:20:09.000 You can see the Great Recession.
00:20:10.000 It really tanks new construction.
00:20:12.000 But the trend is so consistently down.
00:20:15.000 Sure, some of that is we're probably a little better at building houses that can last a little longer.
00:20:20.000 And so you don't need as much turnover.
00:20:22.000 But at the same time, the number of new houses getting built is just steadily going downwards.
00:20:28.000 And that might not even be an accurate per capita thing because we might not have an accurate number of how many people are illegally entering the country.
00:20:35.000 It could be lower than that.
00:20:36.000 And so it's just there's a steady downward trend in how many houses are being built.
00:20:40.000 Shocker, the price of houses is going up.
00:20:42.000 Yeah, and that's why we've had massive population increases, right?
00:20:47.000 I mean, from if you, I mean, this is approximate numbers, but it was, let's say, 225 million people in this country in 1980.
00:20:54.000 Maybe it was like 1985 by that, we got to that point.
00:20:57.000 And now we're at 330, 340.
00:20:59.000 We really don't know how many people are in the country because we don't know how many illegal aliens are in the country.
00:21:04.000 I am a big proponent, Mr. Secretary, of single-family homes.
00:21:10.000 And I know that you kind of work on both the single-family homes, especially in the urban core, these multifamily units.
00:21:18.000 I believe that it's the best way that a young family gets a start.
00:21:22.000 The kids need a yard.
00:21:23.000 I mean, you know, it gives a better sense of ownership, of independence, of, I think, a stake in the community.
00:21:32.000 I really like single-family homes.
00:21:33.000 What do you see is the solution for expanding single-family homes?
00:21:38.000 We're in Phoenix.
00:21:39.000 It's like the capital of single-family homes.
00:21:41.000 Just like it's like gives you a lot of urban sprawl downside.
00:21:44.000 I understand.
00:21:45.000 But it's also the biggest metropolitan area in the country that voted for Trump, right?
00:21:49.000 So it's, I think it's the fifth biggest metro area in the country, and it went red if you count all Maricopa County.
00:21:54.000 I think there is a correlation to housing density and politics.
00:21:59.000 I just think it's, you know, the white picket fence, you call it an ideal, you call it old-fashioned.
00:22:03.000 I think it's a beautiful thing.
00:22:04.000 What's your viewpoint on how we approach new housing developments in the country?
00:22:09.000 We want to be respectful of public lands.
00:22:11.000 We want to keep things beautiful, but we also want to make sure we're not outlawing single-family homes as they've essentially done in California, by the way.
00:22:18.000 You can't build new single-family zoning in California.
00:22:22.000 Right.
00:22:22.000 And that's a great perspective and great question, Andrew.
00:22:27.000 And, you know, at HUD, we deal with every American citizen in our country.
00:22:34.000 And when I say that, meaning that housing impacts all 380 million people per se that we have in our country.
00:22:41.000 Right now, we have a housing shortage, guys, of about 7 million units of housing that we need.
00:22:47.000 We need single-family houses.
00:22:49.000 We need multifamily, duplex, condo, manufactured housing.
00:22:53.000 Manufactured housing obviously is going to play a big role in filling this housing gap that we have in our country.
00:23:01.000 And Andrew, yes, you know, when you own a home, it is the single most powerful way to build equity and to start building generational wealth is in the home that you own.
00:23:12.000 And so, yes, I am a proponent, as you are, for single-family homes.
00:23:16.000 But also when you think about the millennial generation or people who are just now getting started, sometimes people have to rent a multifamily or rent an apartment or a condo in order to save so that they can have the monies available and appropriate and need it to invest in a single family home.
00:23:35.000 And so from our standpoint, you know, we look at the picture from a holistic view.
00:23:39.000 And so what we're doing when I talk about bringing down regulation and using some of the programs at HUD, like our section 221 and 223, to help build affordable housing and make rents as such that people can afford that to save up to achieve the American dream of home ownership.
00:23:57.000 So yes, I am in agreement with you that single-family homes are very important to build wealth, to build family, you know, to bring families together to raise our children.
00:24:06.000 I encourage the young people of America today, you know, to get married, to have children, to raise a family, to save up, buy a home, you know, build neighborhoods.
00:24:18.000 And so I'm in lockstep with you, but from our standpoint and my standpoint, personally, you know, we have to help those that are just now getting started out that may be renting to save up to buy a home.
00:24:31.000 And our FHA program has been tremendous.
00:24:34.000 We've helped about 630,000 people this year to have the first time, to buy loans from FHA.
00:24:42.000 And 370,000 of those are first-time homebuyers.
00:24:45.000 Oh, fantastic.
00:24:46.000 Oh, I just want to commend the admin.
00:24:46.000 That's great.
00:24:49.000 We did a whole segment on this last week, but I just, you know, there was some polling that came out.
00:24:54.000 Rich Barris was on it talking about that there was a feeling, a sense out there, especially after the offs, you know, the off-year elections in Virginia, New Jersey, that there was maybe a messaging disconnect from the administration to what people were actually wanting, right?
00:25:09.000 There was a lot of focus on foreign policy.
00:25:11.000 They wanted more focus on domestic.
00:25:12.000 And I just want to say the admin has completely responded.
00:25:16.000 You're part of that.
00:25:17.000 And I just love that you guys are really hammering home the fact that affordability, affordability, housing, housing, housing, Gen Z, Gen Z. Let's go ahead and play 79.
00:25:26.000 This is another indication of some of this messaging that's getting out there.
00:25:30.000 79.
00:25:31.000 President and his team want to put a difficult start to November behind them with a blizzard of policy and PR announcements designed to help Americans with the cost of living.
00:25:40.000 So what are those announcements going to be?
00:25:41.000 More deals with pharmaceutical companies to bring down drug prices, efforts to address those higher mortgage rates, try to change the housing market, reducing tariffs, as you guys mentioned, on a number of products, as well as a possible $2,000 rebate check for some taxpayers.
00:25:55.000 Affordability, affordability, affordability.
00:25:57.000 Blake, I don't know if you had anything to add there.
00:25:59.000 No, just it's one of the things Charlie cared about the most.
00:26:04.000 And I look at all of those long-term trends and you see long-term trends.
00:26:08.000 We don't build, we don't build as many houses as we used to.
00:26:12.000 We are steadily escalating the price of those houses.
00:26:15.000 I mean, we have the debate over how should we even try to lower them.
00:26:20.000 And it really appeals to people.
00:26:21.000 I think we should emphasize this for the administration.
00:26:24.000 We talked about the 50-year mortgage idea last week, and the number of emails we got about that was gigantic.
00:26:31.000 Some topics don't fire up our audience, even if we talk about them.
00:26:34.000 That one did, email after email after email.
00:26:37.000 And some people really liked it.
00:26:38.000 Some people really, really hated it.
00:26:40.000 It's not uniform how people felt about it, but what they do have strong thoughts about is the housing topic.
00:26:46.000 Well, and I love the creativity, Mr. Secretary.
00:26:49.000 I mean, it seems like we're going to get a blizzard of new proposals in the coming weeks.
00:26:54.000 And I'm just grateful to you that you at HUD are focused on it and you're laser focused on helping Gen Z start a family, get married, have kids, and use every power that you have at your disposal.
00:27:05.000 So thank you, sir, for doing that.
00:27:07.000 Absolutely.
00:27:08.000 Thank you guys.
00:27:11.000 If you're tired of watching this country drift away from the values that made it great, it's time to get involved.
00:27:16.000 That's why I stand with AMAC, the Association of Mature American Citizens.
00:27:20.000 Charlie loved this country and he loved partnering with organizations that truly stand for what makes America great.
00:27:26.000 One of our most trusted partners, AMAC, the Association of Mature American Citizens, is doing something special in Charlie's honor.
00:27:32.000 AMAC is offering free memberships to all ages.
00:27:35.000 No credit card, no strings attached, just a chance to stand for faith, family, and freedom.
00:27:40.000 Join this movement.
00:27:41.000 Go to AMAC.us slash Charlie today.
00:27:44.000 That is amac.us forward slash Charlie today.
00:27:52.000 We're going to be talking about property taxes.
00:27:55.000 Okay.
00:27:57.000 Ron DeSantis is trying to get rid of it in the state of Florida.
00:28:02.000 I think he wants to get rid of it nationwide.
00:28:04.000 Yeah, but what's that?
00:28:05.000 He wants to get rid of it nationwide, sure.
00:28:07.000 But he has power in Florida.
00:28:09.000 A lot of people think this is good.
00:28:11.000 A lot of people think this is bad.
00:28:12.000 They think it's a form of elderly welfare when they happen to be the most wealthy in the country.
00:28:17.000 But really quick, before we get to radio, let's play 49.
00:28:20.000 This is Charlie on renting.
00:28:23.000 If you have a generation that does not own stuff, then all of a sudden political radicalization starts to seep in.
00:28:30.000 I have a question for all of you in the audience, and this should hammer at home.
00:28:33.000 It's from my friend Frank Turek, and I told him as soon as he said it, I said, I'm going to steal this one, Frank.
00:28:38.000 When was the last time you washed a rental car?
00:28:41.000 When you rent a car from Hertz or from Avis, do you wash it?
00:28:44.000 Do you go get the oil checked on that rental car?
00:28:47.000 Of course not.
00:28:48.000 It's not yours, and you know it.
00:28:51.000 You're borrowing it.
00:28:52.000 And it's no different than how people are living in apartments endlessly until they're 32, 33.
00:28:58.000 They have two kids and they have to rent because the access to the housing market is so impossible.
00:29:04.000 You have an entire population, generation, that is on the outside looking in.
00:29:08.000 And that is a prerequisite for a political revolution if we don't turn renters into owners.
00:29:12.000 All right.
00:29:13.000 So I want to play this clip and then we're going to have some reaction on the other side.
00:29:16.000 134, Governor Ron DeSantis on the bombshell, dropping property taxes.
00:29:21.000 134.
00:29:22.000 From the property tax situation.
00:29:24.000 It's very important given how that's pinched so many homeowners, particularly our senior citizens who have their homes paid off and they bought it 30 years ago for a certain amount.
00:29:33.000 Now they're being told it's worth so much more and they have to pony up more and more money.
00:29:38.000 It's almost like they have to pay rent to the government just to be able to enjoy their property.
00:29:42.000 And that's wrong.
00:29:43.000 And we need to do something about it.
00:29:45.000 I actually really sympathize with this because I remember when I found out about property tax, I was like 18, 19.
00:29:50.000 I was like, wait, wait, wait.
00:29:51.000 You don't ever own your thing?
00:29:53.000 You don't like you pay for it all these years and you don't even own it?
00:29:56.000 It kind of is upsetting.
00:29:58.000 I get it.
00:29:59.000 I understand.
00:30:00.000 I've seen this pop up and I can see how that's like very intuitively appealing.
00:30:04.000 But at the same time, like, so I had a tweet over the weekend where I objected to this and it got commented on it.
00:30:08.000 Yeah, and it got a like, it got a very strong reaction, like much stronger than usually.
00:30:14.000 And most of it was pretty hostile, I'll admit it.
00:30:16.000 But I think I occasionally talk to Charlie about this because this was starting to bubble up while he was still with us.
00:30:23.000 And, you know, what I think needs to be emphasized is abolishing property taxes.
00:30:30.000 As he says, DeSantis said who the biggest beneficiary is intended to be.
00:30:34.000 It's intended to be senior citizens who've already paid off their homes.
00:30:38.000 Let's look at the numbers.
00:30:40.000 Elderly Americans are the wealthiest Americans by generation.
00:30:44.000 And this has gotten more and more dramatic over time.
00:30:47.000 This is not just a constant of life.
00:30:49.000 This is something that has gotten growing more intense every single year.
00:30:54.000 We already have a lot of things that specifically benefit older Americans.
00:30:58.000 They receive Social Security payments, of course.
00:31:00.000 And yes, they paid into it, but those are funded by just taxing young people now.
00:31:04.000 And a very large number of Social Security recipients get more money than they ever paid in.
00:31:08.000 There's your tweet up there, by the way.
00:31:09.000 Yes, 8000.
00:31:12.000 It's not the specific numbers.
00:31:13.000 It's the digital reaction.
00:31:14.000 It's a great tweet.
00:31:14.000 Good conversation stimulator, man.
00:31:16.000 And like, so you have that.
00:31:16.000 Yeah.
00:31:23.000 So elderly people are, they're pulling away.
00:31:25.000 I mean, they get Medicare, of course.
00:31:26.000 Their Social Security is now tax-free.
00:31:28.000 Did we pass that, I believe?
00:31:29.000 At least some portion of it is tax-free.
00:31:32.000 They had to, because it was done through reconciliation, they had to basically give them a tax.
00:31:36.000 They're also the biggest beneficiaries of the general rise in home prices.
00:31:39.000 They were generally bought for cheaper amounts, and these keep appreciating.
00:31:43.000 And property taxes, like they do pay for things.
00:31:46.000 They pay for, like, among other things, the legal system that guarantees your right to ownership.
00:31:50.000 I think that's important.
00:31:51.000 Fire department.
00:31:51.000 Yeah, your fire department, your police department, schools.
00:31:54.000 And they say, well, I don't have kids anymore.
00:31:55.000 Well, you benefited from schools when you had kids in them and when you attended them yourself.
00:32:00.000 We do not just say only parents pay into things.
00:32:03.000 We collectively pay for a lot of things in society.
00:32:06.000 You pay for cops even if you're not in a high-crime neighborhood or not that exposed.
00:32:10.000 We have a general obligation to care about the wider wealth.
00:32:14.000 And you can say those taxes are inefficient and wasteful.
00:32:17.000 I'm totally okay with that.
00:32:19.000 But explain that versus a land tax.
00:32:22.000 Well, land tax would be better, but this is the thing.
00:32:24.000 We're not proposing replacing.
00:32:25.000 I understand, but what is it?
00:32:26.000 A land tax would be you tax the unimproved value of your land instead of taxing like any property on it.
00:32:34.000 You're just kind of taxing the land as it would be worth if there was nothing built on it.
00:32:38.000 And this has become more popular lately.
00:32:40.000 It's an idea from the 1800s, actually, to tax this because the idea is it discourages speculation.
00:32:46.000 It discourages sitting on land and doing nothing with it because you hope it'll go up in value.
00:32:50.000 And instead, it encourages development.
00:32:52.000 It encourages productivity.
00:32:54.000 And that's the other thing.
00:32:55.000 It's generally when we've studied it, taxes on land have been, or property taxes are some of the least distortionary taxes.
00:33:04.000 Think of income tax.
00:33:05.000 Taxing income discourages people from working to make more income because you're taking it out.
00:33:09.000 Taxing property discourages sitting on property without doing anything to make more money.
00:33:15.000 And so we think of what different taxes encourage.
00:33:18.000 So, Blake, I responded back.
00:33:20.000 I said, maybe after a certain age, property tax rates get locked.
00:33:24.000 So if you're over 65, your property can't continually appreciate till you say you lived to 90 and you're on that fixed income for 25 years.
00:33:34.000 At some point, it's going to outstrip your ability.
00:33:36.000 I mean, I don't want to see a situation where if somebody, because hold on, you're talking about, well, you paid into the system when you'd had kids and you benefited from it.
00:33:44.000 So you need to keep paying into the system.
00:33:46.000 Well, you also paid into the system all those years.
00:33:48.000 There should be, I think, a reasonable compact made with people that when you get to a certain age and you're unable to work or you retire, that you know, you, you have, there's a kind of an agreement.
00:34:00.000 We're not going to kick you out of your house.
00:34:02.000 You know, and that's where we're not kicking you out of your house, but any other situation, and old people, let's be frank, old people love to point this out with younger people if they live beyond their means and then they feel entitled to things.
00:34:14.000 If you are living in a large house you can't afford the property taxes on, you are to some extent living beyond your means.
00:34:21.000 And the way that we respond to that in plenty of other situations is you can downsize.
00:34:27.000 And the reason they usually can't afford it is their house has gone up dramatically in value.
00:34:31.000 So another thing you can do is stop.
00:34:35.000 Maybe lock things in for people after a certain age.
00:34:38.000 Because here's the thing: you plan for retirement, making certain assumptions.
00:34:42.000 Well, if your house, I mean, we've seen the charts, those crazy, those crazy spikes before, I think, 08, and then another crazy spike after 2011 in the housing.
00:34:54.000 These are historic, unprecedented increases in the value of property.
00:34:59.000 Historic.
00:35:00.000 So you would make certain assumptions working your 40, 50-year career based on what you think you need in order to survive.
00:35:07.000 And then here, unbeknownst to you, your property value shoots up, you get reappraised, and your property taxes shoot through the roof.
00:35:14.000 And all of a sudden, it's the driving factor pushing you out of a house.
00:35:17.000 I just think that that is, if you could, if you're retired, if you're over 65, you're retired, let's say you retire at 65 or 70, something like that.
00:35:26.000 You stop earning extra income, but you're able to afford it.
00:35:31.000 But then five years later, your house, like, so this happened in California, where I was living.
00:35:35.000 After COVID, a bunch of houses in neighborhoods with a lot of old people in it went from like an average cost of the house being like a million, all of a sudden it was worth 2.5 in four years.
00:35:46.000 And you're telling me that some elderly couple that is on fixed income now has to be driven out of their house because their property tax gets reassessed.
00:35:53.000 What if you're a renter and renting prices went up?
00:35:55.000 So should we have rent control?
00:35:56.000 Because you don't deserve to get driven out of the place.
00:35:58.000 I agree.
00:35:59.000 I agree.
00:35:59.000 There's good counter arguments.
00:36:01.000 But like somebody who's done it right, that saved enough, that did the right thing.
00:36:06.000 They didn't save enough.
00:36:07.000 They didn't save enough.
00:36:07.000 What's that?
00:36:09.000 Well, they thought they did, but they were mistaken.
00:36:12.000 Like, I guess what I think is, I feel like I'm pleading.
00:36:16.000 It is special pleading for objectively the generation of Americans who have the most resources.
00:36:22.000 Well, but not everybody does, right?
00:36:24.000 So this is the thing, right?
00:36:25.000 Yeah, you can look at it in the macro, and there's a lot of wealth that is accumulated with elderly people in the macro.
00:36:31.000 So maybe you make it means tested.
00:36:33.000 I don't know.
00:36:34.000 Well, you can do that.
00:36:34.000 But then again, you're not cutting, like what we're seeing is we have, first of all, like I said, when we study this, property taxes are the least distortiony in terms of distortionary in terms of what behavior they do.
00:36:46.000 Like income, like having a high income tax.
00:36:48.000 You mean what behavior they result in?
00:36:49.000 Like having a high income tax can actually reduce productivity of individual citizens.
00:36:55.000 Having a high capital gains tax, that warps the behavior that people engage in.
00:37:01.000 Relatively speaking, a property tax is less distortionary in what it causes people to do.
00:37:07.000 And a land tax is even less distortionary, but no one's proposing changing to that.
00:37:11.000 They're just proposing we get rid of property taxes.
00:37:14.000 And like it really strikes me as an unhelpful, like it really is giving favoritism to like you should ask who's going to benefit the most from this?
00:37:24.000 And the people who are going to benefit the most from it are people who already have the most going for them.
00:37:32.000 The wealthiest Americans.
00:37:33.000 It is basically saying, let us continue to devour the young in order to favor the old.
00:37:40.000 So, okay, so Texas does something like this with the homestead property once you reach age 65, but it doesn't shield you from property tax increases due to improvements, upgrades, additions, et cetera.
00:37:52.000 So after 65, they sort of freeze the rate at which you're taxed for your property.
00:37:57.000 Gives you a little bit of predictability.
00:37:59.000 I mean, I'm just saying, you know, when you get old, you don't want a country that just kicks you to the curb.
00:38:06.000 There is a special dispensation for our elders when you're getting kicked to the curb.
00:38:12.000 Listen, we spend most of our time.
00:38:14.000 Because none of these ideas are even to say, like, we're going to just cut government spending generally and finance it by getting rid of property taxes.
00:38:20.000 They're still going to want all the services.
00:38:22.000 They're still going to want, frankly, heavily subsidized health care, heavily subsidized, you know, so no one's proposing getting rid of Social Security.
00:38:29.000 No one's proposing getting rid of Medicare.
00:38:31.000 So it's basically just a handout for a given group of people.
00:38:34.000 And we already actually know how this is going to go because, like, for example, California had a giant property tax revolt where they freeze property taxes to be lower for older people.
00:38:46.000 And what's the end result of that?
00:38:48.000 It's been massively.
00:38:49.000 The end result is California has the least affordable homes in the country.
00:38:53.000 I don't, but okay, but that's causation and correlation.
00:38:56.000 You know, we're not sure which is which because, I mean, California has a lot of issues that are driving.
00:39:01.000 California has tons of issues.
00:39:02.000 But actually 2013 for normal working families, I'm telling you, my wife's family has benefited tremendously.
00:39:02.000 Right.
00:39:09.000 It's why they're still able to be in their home, right?
00:39:11.000 And they've, listen, you could say that that's a handout for them, but they weren't living beyond their means, I will tell you.
00:39:19.000 So I just think, listen, if a land tax is even in the conversation, I think Florida should consider it.
00:39:26.000 Or you do it means tested and age frozen.
00:39:29.000 I mean, they're still paying.
00:39:30.000 They're still paying into the system.
00:39:32.000 Well, no, they're not if they're not paying property taxes.
00:39:35.000 No, I'm saying that.
00:39:36.000 A lot of this is because it's people who are retired.
00:39:38.000 They have no income taxes.
00:39:40.000 They have lower capital gains taxes.
00:39:43.000 They're receiving, you know, tax-advantaged Social Security.
00:39:46.000 And this is like the last thing that they have to pay into.
00:39:50.000 Well, what would you, you want them to keep working a job?
00:39:53.000 No, I think what we should say is if you are in a piece of property that is radically increased in value.
00:40:00.000 Free it up for the market, give it to somebody else.
00:40:02.000 Or you should recognize market pressures that exist for everyone else.
00:40:05.000 We don't think young people should be entitled to live in the most expensive parts of the city.
00:40:10.000 That's true.
00:40:10.000 We don't think young parents should be entitled to that should be the most entitled to live anymore.
00:40:16.000 We don't think young people should be entitled to go to the most expensive college for free.
00:40:19.000 We recognize this with a bunch of other things.
00:40:22.000 So I don't think we should view it as an entitlement to live forever in a house that has radically gone up in value.
00:40:31.000 If it is something you desire, you can work for it.
00:40:34.000 You can save extra money against it.
00:40:37.000 You can get support from your children.
00:40:41.000 But if you are just unable to do it, among other things, we're talking about something where you have benefited from something tremendously useful.
00:40:49.000 Your home has gone up dramatically in value.
00:40:52.000 You can take out a reverse mortgage on that.
00:40:54.000 You can borrow against the value of your home to do that.
00:40:57.000 Or you can downsize.
00:40:59.000 And historically, that is what elderly people have done.
00:41:03.000 You have downsized as you have fewer needs.
00:41:06.000 Because think about it.
00:41:07.000 If you don't have kids in your home anymore, if you don't, if you're not as mobile, you probably can't even use as much of your property anymore.
00:41:15.000 Like that is historically a thing that has happened.
00:41:18.000 And it's not just been poorer people.
00:41:20.000 I like to cite this example a lot because Charlie liked Winston Churchill.
00:41:23.000 Winston Churchill had a big house.
00:41:26.000 I think Checkers was the name of it.
00:41:28.000 But whatever it was.
00:41:29.000 He had a big house.
00:41:30.000 And when he was his son, right?
00:41:32.000 Yeah, he gave it to his son.
00:41:33.000 And he personally himself built a smaller cabin that he and his wife lived in.
00:41:38.000 And then he gave it to his son to live in the main house.
00:41:41.000 And he and his wife lived in the smaller home, which they didn't need anymore because they didn't need a big home anymore because their own children had grown up.
00:41:49.000 And it's not, I'm not saying this.
00:41:50.000 I don't want to be like this vicious person.
00:41:52.000 I'm not saying giddily, oh, make these people leave their homes.
00:41:57.000 I am saying this in response to a push to get rid of all property taxes, which has suddenly become this big meme on the right is to get rid of all property taxes.
00:42:07.000 And I would say this is sort of the conservative mirror image of Mamdaniism that wants to, you know, ban rent hikes.
00:42:16.000 We're waging war on like a normal thing that basically has always existed.
00:42:22.000 We've always had property taxes in America.
00:42:24.000 Literally, I think the first one was in 1634.
00:42:27.000 In fact, it used to be far more broad.
00:42:28.000 We used to have general property taxes in the United States, a tax on all property you owned, all your land, all your farmland, all your home, everything in it, your livestock.
00:42:37.000 We used to have general property taxes.
00:42:38.000 Just having a tax on residential or commercial property is a more restrained version of that, which we adopted because it got way harder.
00:42:49.000 How do you tax the value of every single thing in a modern person's home?
00:42:52.000 It would be implausible.
00:42:54.000 And so this is what we've adapted to.
00:42:55.000 But it's something that's always existed.
00:42:57.000 The same founding fathers who fought for life, liberty, and property were okay with property taxes existing.
00:43:03.000 Yeah, you know, it's interesting.
00:43:05.000 I think from the very first, like I said, when I thought about property taxes, I thought it was a raw deal.
00:43:09.000 Because I feel like you should be able to.
00:43:10.000 Texas stay.
00:43:11.000 Texas are horrible.
00:43:13.000 No disputing that.
00:43:14.000 Well, and this is why conservatives in Texas have been railing against property tax.
00:43:17.000 Now, they don't have an income tax in Texas.
00:43:20.000 They have higher property taxes to sort of make up for it.
00:43:24.000 And so that's been a huge, especially as property values in Texas have skyrocketed in the last 10 years.
00:43:29.000 You see a big push to either lower, reduce, or get rid of property taxes in Texas as well.
00:43:34.000 So I don't know where they're going to be making their income to run basic services in Texas if they get rid of it.
00:43:39.000 But I think, I think, listen, we're talking in like a very stark binary, right?
00:43:44.000 You either have them or you don't.
00:43:45.000 You either can afford it or you can't.
00:43:47.000 But I think something in the between of you know, maybe you freeze it at age 65 and it's a bit means tested or something to even get it frozen, something like that could be good because I don't think you should be a country that treats your elderly the same as you treat everybody else.
00:44:01.000 I think when you get old, that we should look out for our old people because we look out for old people.
00:44:07.000 I know we do.
00:44:08.000 But this is another way that's really important.
00:44:10.000 You can't make it means tested.
00:44:11.000 A real can't afford it.
00:44:12.000 You can't afford it.
00:44:13.000 Or force.
00:44:13.000 I actually do, you know, to be fair, a reverse mortgage is probably the answer here.
00:44:18.000 But yeah, there's different options.
00:44:20.000 But a big picture thing, and I know people are going to push back on this.
00:44:25.000 And I'm going to talk about it anyway because Charlie, that's what Charlie would do.
00:44:28.000 Charlie will sometimes say people need to hear uncomfortable things.
00:44:31.000 And it's not that we're hostile to the elderly, not in the slightest, but we do have to recognize we are in a large society and we need to care about the future of this country.
00:44:43.000 And what we're seeing all across the West is a sort of long-term damaging things to make things better for politically powerful older people.
00:44:55.000 Because every Western country has this, where they had a baby boom and then they had a baby bust.
00:44:59.000 So they're aging.
00:45:00.000 So older people have our larger share of the electorate.
00:45:04.000 And there's incentives for politicians to give them things understandable, but those things can be very harmful.
00:45:12.000 In Europe, it's especially bad.
00:45:14.000 You know, the justification.
00:45:15.000 The demo triangles, like it used, it used to be used to be like this, and now it's like this.
00:45:21.000 And now it's just old people make up the top rung.
00:45:25.000 If you want an extreme example of how bad this can get, in the United Kingdom, they have a pension system like ours, and there's a thing, they call it the triple lock.
00:45:34.000 This is a political issue in the UK.
00:45:35.000 I want to check what it is, how it exactly works.
00:45:39.000 So the triple lock on the UK's state pension is a law.
00:45:44.000 By law, the UK is required to increase the annual pension payout by either the rate of inflation, by the average wage growth that year, or by 2.5%, whichever is highest.
00:45:59.000 So they are guaranteed iron law of the universe to have their pension payments go up faster than the rate of inflation.
00:46:10.000 Because if inflation goes below 2.5%, you just have to go 2.5% no matter what.
00:46:16.000 This is Lane Schoenberger, Chief Investment Officer and Founding Partner of WhyReFi.
00:46:20.000 It has been an honor and a privilege to partner with Turning Point and for Charlie to endorse us.
00:46:26.000 His endorsement means the world to us, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Turning Point for years to come.
00:46:32.000 Now, here Charlie, in his own words, tell you about YReFi.
00:46:36.000 I'm going to tell you guys about whyRefi.com.
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00:47:12.000 Because of private student loan debt, so many people feel stuck.
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00:47:24.000 You know, it's funny.
00:47:25.000 I was in Portugal when I was around like 20.
00:47:30.000 And I was studying abroad in Spain, and I went over to Portugal for a weekend.
00:47:34.000 I met this homeless Brit.
00:47:36.000 And he was, I saw him at this pub, because everywhere is a pub in Portugal.
00:47:41.000 And he was celebrating.
00:47:42.000 And I go, what are you celebrating?
00:47:44.000 You look homeless.
00:47:44.000 He's like, I mean, just a really raggedy-looking old guy.
00:47:48.000 And he was celebrating because his pension had kicked in the day before.
00:47:52.000 His UK pension.
00:47:53.000 He'd made it to the appropriate age.
00:47:56.000 And he was like, I'm sorted for the rest of my life.
00:47:59.000 I'm like, well, you live in Portugal.
00:48:00.000 You still get your UK pension.
00:48:02.000 He's like, oh, yeah.
00:48:02.000 Oh, yeah.
00:48:03.000 I'm still getting it.
00:48:03.000 So now I don't have to be homeless anymore.
00:48:05.000 And I was like, so this guy's basically been living as a bag of people.
00:48:08.000 We don't want this sort of world where everyone's life revolves around getting to their pension age.
00:48:14.000 And I'm not saying that this is the case.
00:48:16.000 I cited the UK example just to say that is a policy that is, it is their third rail.
00:48:20.000 You can't touch the triple lock.
00:48:21.000 In fact, I think one of the parties ran, I think maybe the conservatives ran on promising a quadruple lock.
00:48:27.000 There would be a fourth thing that they would lock it to so it could go up even faster.
00:48:31.000 They are guaranteed to have their pension payments go up faster than inflation.
00:48:35.000 It is a suicidal thing to do.
00:48:37.000 It can only end in disaster.
00:48:39.000 I remember David Cameron tried to run on austerity and he got just absolutely blasted.
00:48:43.000 And in other countries, the justification for endless replacement migration is always they need to pay into our unsustainable pension system.
00:48:51.000 And I cite those as examples to then just pivot back to the property tax debate, which is just we have a system right now where things are, broadly speaking, pretty good for older Americans and they're getting very bad and they're getting worse for young Americans.
00:49:11.000 And Charlie would talk about you can have MAGA or you can have Mamdaniism.
00:49:15.000 And the sense that young people have no ability to buy into the system or it's extremely difficult and they don't have a straight path forward and that everything is against them drives a lot of Mamdaniism and it drives it across the spectrum.
00:49:28.000 So yeah, on the left, you have the people whose brains are shocked by the systemic racism, all of the insane narratives left pushes.
00:49:38.000 But on the right, it drives that.
00:49:40.000 You see this nihilism on the right.
00:49:42.000 That's what drives a lot of the popularity of Nick Fuentes, for example.
00:49:46.000 You can see there's this nihilism that encourages them to embrace radical solutions, the attitude of burn it all down.
00:49:54.000 And you're only going to have that burn it all down mentality get worse if they're seeing headlines where it's okay, we had to increase our state income tax or our state sales tax because we got rid of our state property tax.
00:50:09.000 And state sales tax and state income tax are a thing a young person pays.
00:50:13.000 And the state property tax was something that an older person was more likely to pay.
00:50:18.000 And by the way, they're the ones who also already own their homes.
00:50:22.000 They already have way more assets than you do.
00:50:24.000 But we just changed the rules so that they pay fewer taxes and you pay more.
00:50:28.000 And if you're giving that message to young people, they're going to get more radical and they're going to embrace one form of revolution or another.
00:50:36.000 I'm not saying we should double property taxes.
00:50:39.000 I am not saying we should do like extreme things.
00:50:43.000 I am saying we should not abolish property taxes because this is an idea that has caught fire on the right.
00:50:50.000 I think this issue is going to come up again this week.
00:50:52.000 I just have a feeling.
00:50:53.000 And I want to hear from the audience that is still with us.
00:50:56.000 Can we answer a few of these emails?
00:50:57.000 Well, freedom at charliekirk.com, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:51:01.000 Tell us what you think about property taxes.
00:51:03.000 Should there be, in my opinion, maybe you lock it at 65, you means test it if you're going to be eligible for a lock.
00:51:10.000 Otherwise, you pay it.
00:51:12.000 Because I broadly wonder, I broadly agree.
00:51:14.000 I broadly agree with the entire premise.
00:51:17.000 You know, I do because I'm more concerned about the welfare of the next generation than I am about the elderly generation, boomers, and silent generation.
00:51:27.000 But there is a point at which you're going to find my sympathies if you look, if you're looking at property values jettisoned up like rocket ships from a million to 2.5 is the example that I'm thinking of the top of my head.
00:51:43.000 Let's say I had a stock that went up like 10 times in value, like we should abolish the capital gains because I will pay more tax on the stock.
00:51:52.000 And I know with property, it's different because it is something you have to pay, even if you aren't selling it.
00:51:57.000 But we are talking about the impacts of, okay, your home went up dramatically in value.
00:52:03.000 And no, I know.
00:52:04.000 Yeah.
00:52:04.000 And probably a reverse mortgage is a fine option.
00:52:08.000 What did you want to?
00:52:09.000 What emails are you going to do?
00:52:10.000 Well, I like this idea of Allison email that just came in who, just because they had a proposal.
00:52:15.000 What about freezing property taxes until you move?
00:52:18.000 So they wouldn't go up until you sell your house.
00:52:20.000 That's a common idea.
00:52:21.000 The reason to push back on that is...
00:52:23.000 What was the proposal?
00:52:25.000 Freeze property taxes until you move.
00:52:27.000 So you get the rate of, or the amount, I guess, of when you buy.
00:52:30.000 And a reason you don't want to do that, and this is tough for people to hear, but it makes things a lot more inefficient.
00:52:38.000 And you actually Prop 13.
00:52:40.000 Yeah, well, Prop 13 locks you in.
00:52:42.000 Exactly.
00:52:42.000 And what do you get from that?
00:52:43.000 You get people, it actually, it makes the economy across the board less efficient.
00:52:49.000 It is discouraging good behaviors.
00:52:51.000 We should want people to not, you don't want people to just be parked in their houses because it's just such an economically terrible idea for them to move to a new situation that's yes.
00:53:06.000 So what it does, so here's, here's a really concrete example: is you want to encourage young families to buy homes.
00:53:12.000 Yes.
00:53:13.000 But if an older couple is locked in at a very low property tax and if they move, they lose it, which is the case with like Prop 13, then they're not going to sell that house.
00:53:22.000 Well, let's see if they can get it.
00:53:23.000 They're going to keep it, and they're going to get very creative about keeping it, by the way.
00:53:26.000 So even if they move, they're going to try and keep it.
00:53:28.000 Let's take other examples that stand out.
00:53:32.000 Let's say you're working in Los Angeles and you've received a job offer that would pay you twice as much to move to Phoenix.
00:53:41.000 But let's say we had this situation where your property taxes got locked in.
00:53:44.000 You got locked in at some insanely low property tax level.
00:53:48.000 And now you actively just don't want to take a job that will pay you more and make America and you more productive because you would be giving away this like insanely good property tax deal you have.
00:54:00.000 That's overall just not a good thing.
00:54:02.000 You want a tax system that is encouraging people to do productive things.
00:54:07.000 That's why.
00:54:08.000 By the way, that's also an argument for making your mortgages transferable.
00:54:13.000 So you could migrate.
00:54:14.000 So if you say you owed a million dollars to a bank at 3.5%, but you were going to try and buy a home in Phoenix and the new rates are at 6%.
00:54:21.000 You could actually use that mortgage, that money you owe once you sell your house, transfer the mortgage to the new property.
00:54:28.000 There could be a lot of other issues that are used to be the case.
00:54:31.000 That used to be the case.
00:54:33.000 And now they're supporting that idea as it's one of many ideas because guess what?
00:54:36.000 If I took a million dollar loan at 3.5, brought it over here, had to get another 600,000, say, to buy a nicer home or the same quality, but it was at 6%, then you dollar cost average those and you're somewhere like 4.8%.
00:54:50.000 The thing about that is I think that would, again, I don't think you want to be.
00:54:54.000 But it discourages like getting planted in a certain home and not moving and opening up inventory.
00:54:58.000 It does.
00:54:59.000 It disincentivizes that.
00:55:01.000 I'd have to look more into that one because I know I've seen that idea.
00:55:05.000 I would be worried about essentially declaring like the people who bought houses in 2020 when we had insane low interest rates are now just this like permanent nobility of low interest rates, which I think people will dislike.
00:55:19.000 I mean, listen, you took the loan out.
00:55:23.000 You still got to pay the loan off.
00:55:25.000 You do, but also, and then, like, how does that work with the bank?
00:55:28.000 How does that work?
00:55:29.000 Because the entire point, also the point of your loan to some extent was, you know, your house was the pledge against that.
00:55:35.000 That's what the mortgage is.
00:55:36.000 Yeah, but if you have another house, I mean, to the banks, it's what if you have out an extra $600,000, but you default on the first loan and then well, that's an interesting point.
00:55:46.000 Yeah, that is an interesting point.
00:55:48.000 I assume there's experts on this because I know they didn't come up with this idea.
00:55:51.000 I'm not an expert on that specifically.
00:55:53.000 But what I'm saying is it discourages people from not moving because of the price of the bank.
00:55:57.000 It does.
00:55:58.000 It lowers that.
00:55:58.000 But the price of their mortgage.
00:56:01.000 In general, you don't want anyone to end up just being like a privileged caste because they have like a special weird carve-out in the tax system.
00:56:08.000 And you want to encourage efficient, or efficient is like a weird thing.
00:56:11.000 You want to encourage productive and positive behaviors because people respond to incentives.
00:56:16.000 And that's one of the reasons people talk about why a land tax is good because it's the tax on the unimproved value of land.
00:56:22.000 It only encourages making land more useful, more productive, and getting stuff done.
00:56:27.000 Right, because you, because there is an incentive structure based on I don't want to renovate this house or improve this land because then I can't afford the upgrade exactly.
00:56:35.000 Whereas if it's just tax on land value, you want to make it useful.
00:56:39.000 You want to make it more valuable.
00:56:40.000 You want to add on.
00:56:40.000 Oh, there's no penalty for making it more valuable.
00:56:43.000 There's no penalties for making it.
00:56:44.000 Exactly.
00:56:45.000 I think that's a good place.
00:56:46.000 Well, just let's see if there's anything else.
00:56:46.000 Yeah.
00:56:49.000 Let's see.
00:56:50.000 I mean, you said property tax is not an elderly issue.
00:56:53.000 It is a family issue.
00:56:55.000 My husband and I are not elderly.
00:56:56.000 Our neighbors and local friends are not elderly.
00:56:58.000 That's all true.
00:56:59.000 That's all true.
00:56:59.000 It's not only elderly people who pay property taxes, but we heard what Ron DeSantis said there.
00:57:06.000 This is clearly, this is overtly aimed at being an aid to elderly people because they are more likely to pay these things.
00:57:16.000 And you have to look at the overall trend.
00:57:18.000 It's not what every individual person does.
00:57:20.000 My sister's younger than me.
00:57:21.000 She owns a home with kids.
00:57:23.000 Another sister, my other sister's also married.
00:57:25.000 She owns a home with kids.
00:57:26.000 I assume my brother will buy a home.
00:57:28.000 I don't own a home, but I do own, I own properties that pay, I am a partial owner of properties that pay property taxes.
00:57:34.000 So they do affect me still.
00:57:36.000 But.
00:57:37.000 Well, it's baked into your rent.
00:57:39.000 Well, yeah, the rent.
00:57:41.000 Yeah, I mean, listen, you've convinced me on one point.
00:57:46.000 I will contest or I will concede.
00:57:48.000 And that is that you build up a 401k, right?
00:57:54.000 For when you retire, you draw down your retirement as you get older.
00:57:59.000 It would make sense in the same way that the value of an asset that's not your 401k, your home has appreciated in value.
00:58:07.000 You draw down like the reverse mortgage thing got me.
00:58:09.000 I know some people hate the idea of 100%.
00:58:12.000 Some people are really mad because some people say they're a scam.
00:58:14.000 I know there's debates about that.
00:58:15.000 No, I mean, listen, essentially what you're doing is you're taking equity out of your home to augment your income.
00:58:22.000 Yeah.
00:58:23.000 You don't want, I mean, basically what should happen is that if you end up passing away and your children inherit that home, that they can still sell it and be the owners of it.
00:58:32.000 So you don't want a reverse mortgage where the because eventually what happens with a reverse mortgage is that they own your home, right?
00:58:40.000 That's the reason it's a scam.
00:58:42.000 But you could take out, I mean, another option would be you take out a home equity line of credit or something like that, right?
00:58:48.000 Where you where you borrow against the equity that's in your home.
00:58:51.000 You have to make a monthly payment at that point.
00:58:53.000 But say you take out half a million bucks to make your payments.
00:58:58.000 You use part of that to pay the note, I guess, and then you would use the other to meet your basic needs.
00:59:03.000 I don't know.
00:59:05.000 I'm conflicted.
00:59:06.000 I'm conflicted, especially if somebody's fixed income was able to meet, say, property taxes when you turn 65, when you retired, and your house accelerates.
00:59:16.000 I mean, I think you should stop assessing it, Doug.
00:59:18.000 I want to respond to another one.
00:59:19.000 We had Cynthia.
00:59:20.000 She says, you're wrong about how Prop 13 works.
00:59:22.000 Prop 13 helps families more than anything.
00:59:26.000 And she says, one, not everyone can be productive.
00:59:29.000 I don't want to have to move because my grandkids are here.
00:59:34.000 These are understandable things.
00:59:35.000 I understand them.
00:59:37.000 But first of all, it's probably not, if you do have to downsize, it's probably not that you have to move across the country.
00:59:44.000 You may just have to move into a smaller.
00:59:46.000 Maybe.
00:59:47.000 But here's what I would say.
00:59:48.000 So I'm thinking about this, and the more and more I like the idea of locking them as opposed to abolishing them.
00:59:54.000 And here's why.
00:59:55.000 Because, again, I think you make special dispensations for the elderly.
01:00:00.000 I really do believe that.
01:00:01.000 I actually think it's biblical.
01:00:02.000 But here's what else I'll say: is you reassess property taxes to keep up with the cost of living, right?
01:00:10.000 Because as things get more expensive, the police become more expensive, you got to pay fire department, firemen more.
01:00:18.000 You've got to do all kinds of things.
01:00:19.000 Things just start costing money.
01:00:22.000 But if the property values accelerate at such a rate as we've seen.
01:00:26.000 A real thing, I should flag.
01:00:27.000 Hold on.
01:00:28.000 Let me finish my point.
01:00:29.000 Is that when you get to a certain point, say you're 65, you're essentially making a deal with the elderly that you're, let's just say the average person is going to live to be 78 or something, right?
01:00:40.000 So they get to 65.
01:00:42.000 That means they have 13 years on average before the average person's going to be deceased.
01:00:49.000 Maybe it's 80, whatever.
01:00:51.000 So my point is, you're basically making a deal with your elderly population to say, hey, listen, once you hit a certain age, we're going to understand that you're still going to pay property tax, but it's going to be locked at the age, what it was when 65.
01:01:05.000 And yeah, by the time you're probably dead at 78 or 80, you're not paying as much as inflation has now caught up and everything's more expensive.
01:01:14.000 But you're a subset of the economy.
01:01:16.000 You're still paying in.
01:01:17.000 So you're a drag, yes, by the time you're 80, but you're not as much of a drag as if we just abolished them altogether.
01:01:23.000 Okay.
01:01:24.000 But then, but that's just for a 13-win year window on average between 65 and 78 when the average American passes away.
01:01:32.000 Maybe even make it like 68 or 7.
01:01:34.000 What should I do?
01:01:34.000 Sure, okay, fine.
01:01:35.000 Yeah, eligible.
01:01:36.000 Yeah, but like if you can take that over abolition.
01:01:38.000 If you can pay your bills for 13 years and we lock it off and you can keep your home and we're not causing you undue stress and trauma, I think that's a fine deal to make with your elderly population.
01:01:47.000 Now, Cynthia also flags that cities abuse property tax increases to fund their never-ending pensions.
01:01:51.000 That's totally true.
01:01:52.000 But that is, I would just, I've pointed this out several times.
01:01:52.000 That's true.
01:01:55.000 That's a separate issue.
01:01:58.000 If your local government spending is insane and out of control, your problem is that local government spending is insane and out of control.
01:02:04.000 And none of these proposals I'm seeing are going to fix the problem of.
01:02:08.000 Well, it does put downward pressure on budgets.
01:02:11.000 Well, they just have to do it.
01:02:12.000 Well, they're going to get more creative to sweat their budgets.
01:02:14.000 But what they'll do, they might just pass higher sales taxes, higher income taxes.
01:02:20.000 Income taxes.
01:02:20.000 That's true.
01:02:21.000 And then I'm going to say like Florida, because they actually are well governed.
01:02:24.000 But you've got to imagine, like, what are they going to do to make up the difference?
01:02:27.000 I mean, that's a real question.
01:02:28.000 There's a lot of things they can do, and those things are all more distortionary.
01:02:30.000 So that's a really good question that should be asked of Governor DeSantis.
01:02:36.000 What are you going to do with that budget shortfall?
01:02:38.000 So you're obviously going to make more and less revenue.
01:02:42.000 And all policies create incentives.
01:02:44.000 So we have to think about who the winners and losers are and what these incentives do.
01:02:49.000 Should the government pay to have children, to encourage childbirth?
01:02:54.000 We already do in some ways.
01:02:56.000 But for example, like in Texas, there was that law.
01:02:58.000 And by the way, we could do this on Thought Crime or another day.
01:03:01.000 But In Texas, there was that law that was saying like you would pay zero taxes if you had 10 kids, which is like kind of pretty wild, which is kind of weird because at 10 kids, you're using a lot of services.
01:03:12.000 Yeah, a big thing with a lot of this is a difficult one.
01:03:15.000 A big thing with children is the people who are really falling out in terms of how many kids they have is what you would call the productive middle class.
01:03:23.000 You know, it's like low-income families will have more.
01:03:26.000 By the way, this is so true.
01:03:28.000 And then high-income jumps up again.
01:03:30.000 Yes, exactly.
01:03:31.000 You're talking about how policies give winners and losers.
01:03:34.000 There is a point at which you're really poor and a lot of policies that are in place help you.
01:03:40.000 And then you get to a certain point and there's like nothing for you.
01:03:45.000 And as a matter of fact, there's so little for you that there's like the working class or the middle class trap where the tax code basically puts a ceiling on your ability to get up to higher higher.
01:03:57.000 Especially in California, there's so many they have just cliffs where if you go from making like if you're a mom with two kids and you go from making $20,000 to $70,000, I think you basically lose money because of how many products.
01:04:10.000 No, totally.
01:04:10.000 But like it's also true at like $240,000.
01:04:12.000 Yeah.
01:04:13.000 Like if you like $250,000, you essentially earn your, you earn your, you earn a penalty.
01:04:19.000 Yeah.
01:04:19.000 Like a massive penalty.
01:04:20.000 So instead of being able to get ahead, like truly become financially independent or truly kind of, you know, achieve that next tier, which by the way is so American.
01:04:29.000 You should be incentivized to keep producing and keep earning.
01:04:32.000 But basically the tax code and the penalty structure will make sure that you always stay working class, middle class, whatever.
01:04:41.000 You're never going to become upper class.
01:04:42.000 So you have to have such a huge payday to get you to break through that ceiling.
01:04:47.000 Yeah, this is which is which is unfortunate.
01:04:49.000 It's a real issue.
01:04:50.000 I want to bring on Scott Galloway, by the way, because he has a whole book on this.
01:04:53.000 And he basically says you need to add up your cost of living.
01:04:58.000 So let's say your annual life costs you $150,000 to live and you want to be able to live that way into retirement.
01:05:04.000 You've basically got to take that multiple and multiply it by between 15 and 20.
01:05:09.000 And that's what you need in your retirement to be fully financially independent.
01:05:14.000 But we invited him.
01:05:15.000 He was going to come on.
01:05:16.000 Do you know that when Charlie was still with us?
01:05:18.000 And he ended up canceling for he wouldn't tell us why.
01:05:22.000 But he was going to come on.
01:05:23.000 I think probably because Charlie was too controversial for Scott Galloway.
01:05:27.000 But he's a smart guy.
01:05:27.000 Has some good ideas on this stuff.
01:05:29.000 And thanks, Blake.
01:05:30.000 That was a fun discussion.
01:05:31.000 Yeah.
01:05:31.000 Fun way to end it.