Valuetainment - March 27, 2026


“You’re Killing Generational Wealth” - High Tax States PUSH Families & Businesses OUT


Episode Stats

Length

14 minutes

Words per Minute

196.72014

Word Count

2,763

Sentence Count

174

Misogynist Sentences

1


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Tax the rich or kill income taxes? States are divided on what to do with their budgets, and some want to raise taxes on the wealthy, while others want to get rid of them altogether. Pat McAfee and Alex Blumberg talk about the pros and cons of both approaches.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
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00:01:00.400 Tax the rich or kill income taxes.
00:01:02.260 States are divided on what to do.
00:01:04.660 This is a barren story a couple days ago, and it's not, I mean, it's truly what's going on right now.
00:01:09.360 Some states just want to tax the crap out of you, and some states are saying, like DeSantis,
00:01:14.040 who was on Hannity yesterday, and Hannity asked him, are you going to be running in 2020?
00:01:17.200 He says, I don't know.
00:01:18.300 He says, of course you have to run.
00:01:19.720 It's just get a better marketing campaign.
00:01:22.000 But, you know, for him, he wants to get rid of property taxes.
00:01:27.100 So here's a story.
00:01:28.500 Let me read it to you.
00:01:29.320 Page 21. Oh, I'm sorry. It says page 21, but it's not on page or page 10.
00:01:34.220 So page 10 tax the rich or kill income taxes. Let's go to this.
00:01:39.360 While you're pulling it up, Pat, you know, we talk a lot about housing affordability, the price of the home, as well as interest rates.
00:01:46.360 Right. But a huge chunk of that is the enormous rise we've seen in insurance costs and property taxes.
00:01:52.140 And that's part of the affordability problem that no one talks about.
00:01:56.060 It's true. It is very true. So let me read this to you.
00:01:58.080 U.S. states are heading in a different direction on tax policy reflecting diverging views of wealth and economic growth.
00:02:03.800 California has grabbed headlines with a proposed ballot initiative for a one-time 5% tax net worth on billionaires.
00:02:11.820 On March 11, Washington State passed a millionaire tax on personal income above a million and expanded a tax credit for low-income families.
00:02:18.680 Maine, Connecticut, and Rhode Island are among several other states where a proposal exists to boost tax on the wealthiest residents.
00:02:24.280 New York City, Mamdani has also steered debate with a proposed two percentage point increase in the city's income taxes for those that make over a million dollars.
00:02:33.620 At the same time, South Carolina, Georgia, Missouri are seeking to cut personal income tax.
00:02:38.660 A year after Oklahoma and Mississippi created a plan to eliminate personal income tax altogether to spur economic growth and attract businesses to their states,
00:02:45.980 that some states governed largely by Republicans
00:02:48.860 are cutting taxes to spur growth
00:02:50.680 while those governed largely by Democrats
00:02:52.800 are raising them to pay public services
00:02:54.560 is a century-old trend Matt Gardner,
00:02:57.120 senior fellow at Nonpartisan Institute
00:02:59.220 on Taxation Economic Policy, said.
00:03:01.420 Barry, thoughts on this?
00:03:02.840 What works throughout history?
00:03:05.040 Overtax, I mean, it just doesn't work
00:03:08.200 because you're going to lose,
00:03:09.900 and you're already losing
00:03:10.840 some of the more desirable individuals you have there.
00:03:13.660 Sure, some level of taxation may be appropriate, but if you overtax, you're going to wind up on the losing end of this.
00:03:21.780 There's only so much of this that you can do, and it's easy to stay in power, and it's easy to vote for it
00:03:26.680 because the majority of people are going to vote and say, oh, that doesn't affect me.
00:03:29.980 I don't make that much money or this and that, so it's easy to vote for it, but the effects that they don't realize,
00:03:35.560 Again, it is an age-old problem, and it's an age-old debate, but the reason why you have to have a balance is because if you do too much taxation, you will wind up increasing the burden and reducing the quality of life to those who are left behind.
00:03:52.500 Tom, you know, what's really interesting, I love state budgets as a topic to discuss, because in the United States, a state budget, there's a sense of truth to it, because states can't run deficits.
00:04:08.180 At the end of the year, they've got to sell bonds.
00:04:11.360 They've got to do something.
00:04:12.220 They've got to balance it.
00:04:13.100 They've got to find the money somewhere.
00:04:14.440 If they've had a natural disaster, a hurricane in Florida, earthquake in California, you can get federal relief dollars.
00:04:19.900 But at the end of the day, you've got to balance the budget.
00:04:22.500 So if you promise this and you do this, now you have to tax.
00:04:27.880 And if you tax, you get the outcome.
00:04:31.560 People don't understand it.
00:04:32.840 If you talk to the average person, most people are in favor of very reasonable taxes
00:04:39.800 because they like shiny fire trucks that are in good condition, firemen, police,
00:04:45.200 streetlights at work, streets without potholes, and sewage systems that actually flow.
00:04:50.700 Americans are all very in favor of this.
00:04:53.180 You know, it takes taxes to do those, to do those basic things and a public park for people to walk their dogs.
00:04:58.360 They understand.
00:04:59.420 But the rest of it is when it comes down to you decide to win the vote, you're going to promise free.
00:05:07.680 And then the other guy's got to pay for it.
00:05:09.980 And then the other guy leaves because guess what?
00:05:12.860 You have to balance the state budget.
00:05:14.620 So now you've got to go get bonds and you can't get them.
00:05:16.920 Do you think Maine, Connecticut, Rhode Island want to raise the taxes coming up in election year?
00:05:22.160 No, they don't.
00:05:23.220 They know they're about to get a cold bucket of water in the face.
00:05:26.260 They know what's going to happen, but they got no choice.
00:05:29.220 And they have to go with the tax the rich, and that has to be the angle that they're pushing.
00:05:36.180 So guess what?
00:05:38.180 Every action has a consequence and a reaction.
00:05:42.420 And right now you're seeing states raise taxes and lose citizens that are moving.
00:05:50.720 I have so much respect for these founding fathers.
00:05:53.460 If only federal government worked.
00:05:54.420 That created it the way they did.
00:05:56.320 They have options.
00:05:57.860 If you're sitting in a state that's destroying you with taxes, you have 49 other options.
00:06:01.940 Where do you want to go?
00:06:02.660 Pick and choose.
00:06:03.660 Pat, this brings up a much bigger issue.
00:06:05.440 that we know that within six years you're going to have a mandatory 23% cut in Social Security
00:06:13.240 benefits. That's just mandatory unless something changes. But if you've looked, and there's charts,
00:06:18.420 I don't know if you could find it, Rob, where you have inflows and outflows of government money.
00:06:23.020 So the inflows are approximately $5 trillion. The outflows are approximately $7 trillion.
00:06:28.420 You probably know more precise numbers, but that's a round ballpark number. And if you say,
00:06:32.880 okay, so how do I balance the budget? What can I do? If you look at the areas that you could cut,
00:06:38.160 you have to pay interest on the debt, which is pretty much as big as Social Security is.
00:06:42.560 Now, do you touch Social Security? That's a third rail. Do you touch the health care portion? So
00:06:48.540 it becomes very difficult. And the portions that are remaining out there, there's really not that
00:06:54.820 much where you could cut. This is the sad state of affairs that we are in. It's easy to talk about
00:06:59.980 it but um it's a very very difficult way to balance it i think that social security we have
00:07:05.380 to think about something like this you got it rob perfect you could see health care interest on the
00:07:10.600 debt social security this may be an old chart from 2024 interest on the debt has gone up clearly
00:07:15.840 since then it will be a trillion this year and it'll be above defense spending for the first
00:07:19.480 time ever that's right and those two will be 25 of the total budget that's right interest
00:07:23.720 it's weird how they snapped on musk when he started going after the fraud because i mean
00:07:26.680 there is some fraud to be found here that could narrow it down,
00:07:28.960 but it sounds like he got really scared when he was poking around with the
00:07:31.900 social security fraud.
00:07:33.020 Yeah.
00:07:33.500 Now,
00:07:33.780 one of the things you can do,
00:07:35.380 there's a calculator that you can go on where you could kind of try and
00:07:38.500 balance the,
00:07:39.260 or extend social security.
00:07:40.540 The biggest one that we have to consider is extending the age of where,
00:07:45.320 where you start getting benefits.
00:07:46.780 I mean,
00:07:46.960 you can't shock the system,
00:07:48.400 but you have to phase into that,
00:07:50.580 right?
00:07:50.780 Because otherwise we're,
00:07:52.400 we're definitely heading down a bad path here and people just have to,
00:07:56.120 suck it up and say okay you know the only way the system works is if we delay some of those
00:08:01.320 benefits a little bit longer people are living longer you talked about the age of uh new yorkers
00:08:06.820 yeah 58.8 yeah you know some of that is just because people are living longer and also there's
00:08:12.360 another story pat that you see median age of a first-time home buyer there's some discrepancies
00:08:16.460 there the media picked up on the 40 years old that's one survey and and that's there's problems
00:08:21.820 with that one is a 120 question survey a lot of young people aren't going to do that low response
00:08:25.780 rate and it also will count you as a first-time home buyer if you owned a home rented and then
00:08:30.620 owned a home again so that's skewed it's probably closer to 34 35 but that's a little above the
00:08:35.560 historical average so we have to address in realistic terms these issues the time and i
00:08:41.480 were saying the same thing some level of taxation is appropriate but you can't just spend crazy
00:08:49.060 Recklessly.
00:08:50.740 It's the family and friends event at Shoppers Drug Mart.
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00:09:07.460 Recklessly.
00:09:08.140 It's a very weird thing they're doing.
00:09:09.880 By the way, here's all it is.
00:09:12.060 Increasing taxes, if you're for it,
00:09:14.520 you think the government can do a better job than free market and people.
00:09:19.280 That's all it is.
00:09:20.520 You think money going to them, they're better with that money than free market.
00:09:26.760 Brent, I'll give you final thoughts here.
00:09:28.740 Yeah, I mean, it's pretty straightforward with the impact of state income taxes
00:09:33.340 like Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts.
00:09:35.320 They used to be great places, but when you put state income taxes in,
00:09:38.120 it decimates the incentive to own a business.
00:09:40.420 And that money doesn't even go towards productive things.
00:09:42.880 Like, look at California. I think they get, like, $250 billion a year in state income taxes.
00:09:48.020 And somehow they're always short of money for, you know, highway projects, for homelessness, for health care.
00:09:54.700 Everybody talks about the California pension system as being the number one most likely to go down.
00:09:59.540 They're going to have to get bailed out, which is crazy.
00:10:01.500 So don't know where all that money goes.
00:10:02.960 And, I mean, Florida only gets $50 billion from the sales tax and, like, all the cumulative taxes for the state.
00:10:08.800 And somehow we're cruising along fine with everything that we need.
00:10:11.600 So, I don't know, call me crazy, but maybe some of that money is going towards things it shouldn't go to in California.
00:10:17.100 Yeah.
00:10:18.340 DeSantis said our real estate revenue went from $30 billion to, I don't know what the number was, a massive number in the last five years.
00:10:25.460 He said it doubled.
00:10:26.580 And I said, we didn't do anything different.
00:10:28.420 It just went up.
00:10:29.140 So, you mean to tell me that's the right thing to do?
00:10:31.420 I don't agree with it.
00:10:32.120 So, I kind of, what DeSantis is doing, man, I mean, he is, as a governor and the way he thinks, he's a phenomenal governor.
00:10:39.840 Yes.
00:10:40.860 Phenomenal governor on what he's done.
00:10:42.360 Yeah, property income tax revenue went from $31 billion to now $60 billion.
00:10:47.120 He says, we don't need that additional $30 billion.
00:10:49.400 A rise in $20 billion honors from 19 to 24.
00:10:52.320 Forget about what it is in 2026.
00:10:54.400 What are you doing with that $30 billion?
00:10:55.500 He's saying, why do we need it?
00:10:56.840 Why don't we need it?
00:10:57.540 Why don't we just give it back to the people?
00:10:59.120 If you're living here, you say it's your house, you've paid it off.
00:11:02.280 Why are we still taxing you?
00:11:04.080 That doesn't make any sense.
00:11:05.240 So I like the way he thinks.
00:11:06.720 We'll see what will happen.
00:11:07.500 One thing on the, first of all, the tax thing that is absolutely fantastic, but what we were talking about just a moment ago, what was your point that you just made a moment ago?
00:11:19.320 The fraud and the deficit spending or what the money actually gets spent on?
00:11:24.960 California taxes.
00:11:26.320 Yeah.
00:11:26.620 Where are they shelling out those hundreds of billions?
00:11:29.340 Yeah.
00:11:30.420 I've lost my train of thought on that.
00:11:32.300 Oh, the pension system.
00:11:33.760 We were talking about the pension system.
00:11:35.680 There's another point I wanted to make, but it's okay.
00:11:37.500 We covered it well.
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