The Charlie Kirk Show - Women Fleeing America + Abolish Property Taxes?
Episode Date: November 18, 202540% of young women say they want to flee America -- possibly forever. Libby Emmons talks about what might be driving women to hate America. Plus, Blake set off a huge argument on X over the weekend by... opposing Ron DeSantis's plan to abolish all property taxes. Him and Andrew have an extended debate over whether it's a good idea or a giveaway to those Americans who least need one. HUD Secretary Scott Turner discusses a new Trump effort to tear down regulations blocking home construction. Watch every episode ad-free on members.charliekirk.com! Get new merch at charliekirkstore.com!Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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My name is Charlie Kirk.
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This is according to a new Gallup poll, 20% of people say they want to live somewhere else.
That's one in five.
And the shift is mainly driven by young women, ages 15 to 44.
40% of them say that they want to go.
The other thing is that it doesn't ask, are you going to leave?
It just says, you know, basically it's like at a cocktail party, would you see?
say, I really want to get out of here. I really want to leave the country. But they're not actually
leaving the country. So it's just mom, wom, wom, wah, wah, complaining. And there's a lot of
trumped arrangements. They all want to be Emily and Paris. It was actually a really good,
you got to love Martha. She's pretty great. And Dana Perino. They're both great.
I'm going to welcome in now, editor-in-chief of the Post-Millennial
and Human Events. That would be Libby Emmons, good friend of the show. Welcome, Libby.
Hey, Andrew Blake. Glad to be here. Really glad to have you. So, why
do you react to this? I mean, because this is this is a really crazy stat that 15 to 44 year old
women 40% want to leave the U.S. permanently. What do you make of this, Libby? Yeah,
these women are out of their minds. They have no idea the bounty of conveniences and food
and freedoms and peace that we have here in this country. And I think that this is a,
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 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
well I mean it's different types of American culture yeah there are there are now we are
not even bifurcated we're like what are we we have like 13 strands I mean we've always been
a country with multiple cultures yeah 100% if anything we're we're we're
We flattened out in a lot of ways.
We flattened out after World War II.
We used to have very distinct New England and Midwestern and California and Arizona.
I miss that, you know?
I miss that.
I think we should have more.
I love the regional differences that we used to have.
I wish we still had those.
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 main accent, and it's all very different.
And New York is different.
And Philadelphia is different.
I think what these women find, and we've seen viral videos of women.
In the past few months, we saw a woman who moved to Africa, and then she was like, wait a second, it kind of sucks here.
We saw a woman who moved to Costa Rica and said that now she knows what real poverty is.
She grew up thinking she was poor going to private school just because she was the broke kid in private school.
And we all know that kid is not poor, you know?
So we're seeing this happen.
We're seeing these viral videos.
Women who have left tell you that it's not that great out there.
And I think that we really owe it to our kids to let them know that America is a great place to live.
It has a lot to offer and it has more opportunity than anywhere else.
And it has more opportunity for these women.
If only they would wise up and stop believing every lie that they've been told.
Well, that's one of the most interesting things is about the opportunities.
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 of men.
They're more likely to complete college.
they're more like they're almost in some ways they're becoming male in surprising ways you know now
they're the ones who don't want to get married they don't want to be attached they're the ones
more likely to buy a home like they're they're getting like they're adopting almost more
masculine traits in some surprising ways 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 you know we had a ton of that
in academia in tech in medicine uh there 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. 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. Yeah, well, I actually, I mean, and on that point, Libby, how much of this do you think
kind of what Martha McCallum was saying is this, this just sort of TDS, living, a liberal
women having to live under a president they didn't vote for versus some of these larger
societal trends that we've seen where, you know, you could throw up image 95.
This is liberal women are the least likely to be completely satisfied with life.
Only 12% of liberal women are compared to 37% of conservatives, 28% of moderates.
So I think that it's a good sign of confidence if you want to be a conservative woman
that you're more likely to be completely satisfied with your life.
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.?
I think TDS might just be the capper.
But women, of course, just like everybody else, a lot of people live under presidents that they didn't vote for.
And it's not that big a deal.
You look at the president.
You say, okay, didn't vote for that guy.
Maybe next time the guy I vote for will win.
But I think Blake is on to something when he's talking about these societal trends.
because women are basically the dog that caught the car, right? American women. American women
demanding power, demanding access, demanding all of this opportunity, demanding complete equality
with men. And then it turns out, there you are in your 40s, you've got some killer career,
you've got no kids, you've got no man, you've got like a mountain of stuff. And we know from
that old Tracy Chapman song that the mountain of things is not really satisfactory. It doesn't
give you anything that you want. Turns out having a career for women who, you know, let's face it,
that are different than men are just composed differently.
And then men are, women look around at all their stuff.
And it's really just not that great.
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.
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.
And then what happens is all of these women end up powerful.
And they look around with the men who are available to them to partner.
are 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? We have been told to want power and equality, you know,
straight across the board. And instead, what we have gotten is a situation where women can't
really be women expressing maternal instincts and impulses gets you chided and derided by the left.
but there's nothing more satisfying in life than being a mom.
Women like to take care of people.
I know that, you know, not all women, blah, blah, blah, whatever.
But for the most part, women have this maternal instinct.
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.
Well, this is a good point because check this out.
This was actually a few days.
I remember sharing this article with Charlie, actually.
I think he tweeted about it.
The marriage effect from the Atlantic.
This is, I believe, September 3rd.
A common narrative has it that commitment and motherhood make women unhappy.
New data suggests the opposite is true.
New data.
This is like, oh, my God.
A common narrative.
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.
A popular lunatic.
Syop has suggested that. Yeah. 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. I mean, this has been going on since the post-war era. And it really is taking a massive impact when you add on to the heap social media, you know, mental, I think changes in the way we do psychiatry and the sense.
changes in the way we administer antidepressants, all of these things on top of each other.
So cultural lies, the drugs, you know, social media, all of it is coming, the chickens are coming
home to Roos with our young women. Libby Emmett. Yeah, I think that's 100% true. I was talking to
Dr. Chloe Carmichael about this the other day, the incessant and rampant medicalization of womanhood,
and we get it from such a young age. It starts with birth control pills. And then you move on to
SSRIs and then, you know, you end up with fertility treatments and then all of a sudden you're
medicating menopause. I think all of that is a contributor to women's unhappiness in this country.
And I also think the, you know, 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 you know men then end up doing
which were traditionally more feminine roles women aren't attracted to those guys it turns out it
turns out that the male feminist is not someone that a lady wants to get married to uh let's look at
image 98 this is from gallop the desire to migrate became a partisan issue in 2017 so you see it
just really divide in 2017, you know, if you disapprove of the country's leadership,
you wanted to get the heck out. And that kind of underlies like a really how divided people are
because, as you said, we've all lived your presence we didn't like. We never thought,
okay, I'm not an American anymore. But that is increasingly untrue because the vision for the
country of either party is getting farther and farther apart. Yeah, I think you're right. 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. They want open borders and they want the decline of the country. They want
it to just be nothing that has anything to do with a culture or a history or foundational elements.
And I think that's a big part of this too, right? You have on the right, you have on the right,
have a desire to have independence, to have government be out of your lives.
And on the left, you have a desire to push government into every aspect of Americans' lives.
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, 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.
That sounds like a recipe for tyranny for me.
And I think you've also seen a lot of people saying they would leave New York over that.
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.
We've definitely seen that.
But these people have not considered where it is that they might want to go.
There is a decline of free speech rights in Europe and the UK specifically.
There's been a decline in that in Australia and New Zealand.
Where are they going to go, Libby?
Are they going to go to Germany with the Middle Eastern?
migrant rape gangs?
Are they going to go to the UK with the grooming gangs?
Are they going to go to where are they going to go?
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.
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.
It's a funny dynamic.
you'll sometimes see it's cognitive dissonance but it totally is the trend it totally is the trend
liby i just i have to play this because you were talking about uh strong men versus weak men and how
weak men are actually driving women crazy in part and i i don't disagree you're not lecturing men
i don't i just want to be very clear that's not what you're doing you're just saying you
celebrate strong men i know what you're saying uh but this is really funny 131 this is a liberal
woman uh having a similar thought 131 why is
every single man that I'm attracted to
a Republican
we got aura you know what I mean
yeah I mean we got the bird perhaps she likes men
instead of little wussy creatures who
you know just do what they're told and don't have any ambition
I think it's a sad thing what we've done to American men
and I certainly hope that trends reverse that
women don't want that and men are unhappy too
men don't want that it's terrible it's terrible conditions for that absolutely um and let's throw up this
image uh this is actually i don't have a number for it so i'm going to make sure we have it but this
is a really important data point and it uh it's a general social survey from the family studies it
shows that 40 percent of married women uh with children are reporting that they are very happy
do you know who the uh the least happy is though and this is an important uh important thing to know
is unmarried with children at 17 and they unmarried with no children is at 22 percent report being
very happy. So the happiest cohort is by far married women with children. They report being very happy.
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. So choose well. I'm not saying rush in with the
wrong person. I'm saying married with children is the happiest cohort. Libby, you are the
best. We love the post-millennial and human events. Thank you for making time for us. I know you
had a busy media morning. Thanks so much, guys. I appreciate it. A new Hillsdale College
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Without further ado, I'm excited to welcome Scott Turner. He's our HUD Secretary. Welcome to the show,
Secretary Turner. Thank you, Andrew. Great to be with you guys. Thank you, Blake.
Yeah, it's an honor to have you. You've been, I mean, you've been doing a
a tremendous job. But on top of that, you've always been so encouraging, a huge supporter of
Charlie's, of Turning Point, and we salute you for that, sir. So thank you just for being a great
friend along the way as everything we've been through in the last couple months is transpired.
Well, absolutely. 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. I'm here, you know, to support you and pray for you and love on you guys. So
thank you so much for this brief moment. We can be together. Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for
making the time, Mr. Secretary. And you have come out guns of blazing with this affordability
crisis. 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,
the latter. And so you came out, I saw the clip, I instantly reached out to your team, and I love
that you were talking about. Tell us about your plans to address the housing and affordability
crisis, especially for young Americans. Well, absolutely. Well, let's go to the root of it.
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. You talk about it. You talk about it.
about over 12 million illegal aliens coming across our border. And because of this, Andrew,
it literally stifled and weakened our housing supply and stifled housing affordability because
illegal aliens were taken up homes that American people should have been taken up. And so because
of that, you see the affordability crisis. You see the issues that we're having. And one stat that
I wanted to bring forth is about 59% of illegal alien families. Fifty-nine.
percent. They utilize one or more of the welfare programs in our country to the tune about
$42 billion. 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. And that's the problem. It's not
sustainable in our country in particular when it comes to housing affordability. And so for
millennials and really for every American citizen, what we're doing at Hub,
is one being very focused on tearing down burdensome regulations 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 is crippled development and building in our country.
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
20 to 25% of the cost is in regulations well Andrew and Blake this is unsustainable and so we have to
tear down the regulatory environment in order to unleash the development and building creativity
and innovativeness in our country as it pertains to our housing supply yeah go ahead Blake
chime you know another another stat I saw recently that really drove this home is
put up 132, and this chart is the number of newly built homes per capita in the U.S.
by year.
And you can see different points in time, but the trend is clearly downwards.
You can see different housing bus.
You can see the Great Recession.
It really tanks new construction.
But the trend is so consistently down.
Sure, some of that is we're probably a little better at building houses that can last, you know,
last a little longer, and so you don't need as much turnover.
but at the same time it's the number of new houses getting built is just steadily going downwards and that might not even be you know an accurate per capita thing because we might not have an accurate number of how many people are illegally entering the country could be lower than that and so it's just there's a steady downward trend in what how how many houses are being built shocker the price of houses is going up yeah and and that's while we've had massive population increases right I mean from if you I mean this is approximate numbers but it was let's say 225 million people in
in this country in 1980, maybe it was like 1985 by that we got to that point.
And now we're at 3.30, 340.
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.
I am a big proponent, Mr. Secretary, of single-family homes.
And I know that you kind of work on both, the single-family homes,
especially in the urban core, these multifamily units.
I believe that it's the best way that a young family gets a start.
need a yard. I mean, you know, it gives a better sense of ownership, of independence, of, I think,
a stake in the community. I really like single family homes. What do you see is the solution for
expanding single family homes? We're in Phoenix. It's like the capital of single family homes.
It's like it gives you a lot of urban sprawl downside. I understand. But it's also the biggest
metropolitan area in the country that voted for Trump. Right. So it's, I think it's the fifth biggest
metro area in the country and it went red if you count all america county i think there is a correlation
to housing density and politics i just think it's you know the white picket fence you call it an
ideally called old-fashioned i think it's a beautiful thing what's your viewpoint on how we approach
new housing developments in the country we want to be respectful of public lands we want to keep
things beautiful but we also want to make sure we're not outlong single-family homes as they've
essentially done in california by the way you can't build new single-family zoning
in California. Right. And that's a great perspective and great question, Andrew. And, you know,
at HUD, we deal with every American citizen in our country. And when I say that, meaning that housing
impacts all 380 million people per se that we have in our country. Right now, we have a housing
shortage guys of about 7 million units of housing that we need. We need single family houses. We need
multifamily, duplex, condo, manufactured housing, manufactured housing is going to play a big role
in filling this housing gap that we have in our country. 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. And so, yes, I am a proponent as you are for single family homes.
but also when you think about the millennial generation
or people who are just now getting started,
sometimes people have to rent a multifamily,
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.
And so from our standpoint, you know,
we look at the picture from a holistic view.
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.
So yes, I am in agreement with you.
The single family homes are very important to build wealth, to build family, you know,
to bring families together to raise our children.
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.
And so I'm in lockstep with you.
But from our standpoint, in my standpoint, personally, you know,
we have to help those that are just now getting started out that may be rented to save up to buy a home.
And our FHA program has been tremendous.
We've helped about 630,000 people this year to have the first time to buy loans from FHA.
and 370,000 of those are first-time homebuyers.
Oh, fantastic. That's great.
I just want to commend the admin.
We did a whole segment on this last week, but I just, you know, there was some polling
that came out.
Rich Barris was on it talking about that there was a feeling, a sense out there,
especially after the, 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?
There was a lot of focus on foreign policy.
They wanted more focus on domestic.
And I just want to say the admin has completely responded.
You're part of that.
And I just love that you guys are really hammering home the fact that affordability,
affordability, housing, housing, Gen Z.
Let's go ahead and play 79.
This is another indication of some of this messaging that's getting out there.
79.
The 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.
So what are those announcements going to be?
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.
Affordability, Affordability, Blake, I don't know if you had anything to add there.
No, just it's what one of the things Charlie cared about the most, and I look at all of those
long-term trends, and you see long-term trends.
We don't build as many houses as we used to.
We are steadily escalating the price of those houses and we have, you know, the debate over how should we even try to lower them?
You know, we, and it really appeals to people.
I think we should emphasize this for the administration.
We talked about the 50-year mortgage idea last week.
And the number of emails we got about that was gigantic.
Some topics don't fire up our audience, even if we talk about them.
That one did.
Email after email after email.
And some people really liked it.
Some people really, really hated it.
It's not uniform how people felt about it, but what they do have strong thoughts about is the housing topic.
Well, and I love the, I love the creativity, Mr. Secretary.
I mean, it seems like we're going to get a blizzard of new proposals in the coming weeks.
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.
So thank you, sir, for doing that.
Absolutely.
Thank you, guys.
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we're going to be talking about property taxes okay ronda santis is trying to get rid of it in the
state of florida the the i think it wants to get rid of it nationwide yeah but it what's that
he wants to get rid of it nationwide nationwide sure but he has power in florida a lot of people think
this is good. A lot of people think this is bad. They think it's a form of elderly welfare when
they happen to be the most wealthy in the country. But really quick, before we get to radio,
let's play 49. This is Charlie on renting. If you have a generation that that does not own
stuff, then all of a sudden, political radicalization starts to seep in. I have a question for all
of you in the audience, and this should hammer at home. It's from my friend Frank Turrick. And I told
him as soon as he said it, I said, I'm going to steal this one, Frank. When was the last time you
washed a rental car when you rent a car from hurts or from avis do you wash it do you go get the
oil checked on that rental car of course not it's not yours and you know it you're borrowing it
and it's no different than how people are living in apartments endlessly till they're 32
33 they have two kids and they have to rent because the access to the housing market is so
impossible you have an entire population generation that is on the outside looking in and that is a
prerequisite for a political revolution if we don't turn renters into owners.
All right. So I want to play this clip and then we're going to have some reaction on the
other side. 134. Governor Ron DeSantis on the bombshell dropping property taxes, 134.
From the property tax situation. 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. Now they're being told it's worth so much more and they have to pony up
more and more money. It's almost like they have to pay rent to the government just to be able to
enjoy their property. And that's wrong. And we need to do something about it. I actually really
sympathize with this because I remember what I found out about property tax. It was like 18, 19.
I was like, wait, wait, wait, you don't ever own your thing. You don't know, like you pay for it all
these years. You don't even own it. It kind of is upsetting. I get it. I understand. I've seen
this pop up and I can see how that's like very intuitively appealing. But at the same time, like,
So I had a tweet over the weekend where I objected to this.
I commented on.
Yeah.
And it got a like, it got a very strong reaction, like much stronger than usually.
And most of it was pretty hostile.
I'll admit it.
But I think, you know, I occasionally talk to Charlie about this because this was starting to bubble up while he was still with us.
And, you know, what I think needs to be emphasized is abolishing property taxes, as he says, you know, DeSantis said who the biggest beneficiary is intended to be.
It's intended to be senior citizens who've already paid off their homes.
Let's look at the numbers.
Elderly Americans are the wealthiest Americans by generation.
And this has gotten more and more dramatic over time.
This is not just a constant of life.
This is something that has gotten, it's growing more intense every single year.
We already have a lot of things that specifically benefit older Americans.
They receive Social Security payments, of course.
And yes, they paid into it, but those are funded by just taxing young people now.
And a very large number of Social Security recipients get more money than they ever paid in.
There's your tweet up there, by the way.
You get 800,000 engagement.
It's not the specific numbers.
It's the different reactions on it.
Good conversation stimulator, man.
Yeah.
And like, so you have, you have that.
So elderly people are, they're pulling away.
I mean, they get Medicare, of course.
Their Social Security is now tax-free.
Did we pass that, I believe?
At least some portion of it is tax-free.
They had to, because it was done through.
reconciliation they had to basically give them
there are also the biggest beneficiaries of the general
rise in home prices they were generally
bought for cheaper amounts and these keep appreciating
and property taxes like they do pay for things
they pay for like among other things
the legal system that guarantees your right to ownership
I think that's important. Fire department
yeah they're fire department your police department
schools and they say well I don't have kids anymore
well you benefited from schools when you had kids
in them and when you attended them yourself
we do not just say only parents
pay into things we collect
pay for a lot of things in society.
You pay for cops, even if you're not in
a high crime neighborhood or not that exposed.
We have a general obligation
to care about the wider...
The general wealth. And then you can say those taxes are
inefficient and wasteful. I'm totally okay
with that. But...
Explain that versus a land tax.
Land tax would be better, but this is the thing.
We're not proposing replacing... I understand, but what is it?
A land tax would be you tax the unimproved
value of your land
instead of taxing
like any property on it.
You're just kind of taxing the land as it would be worth if there was nothing built on it.
And this has become more popular lately.
It's an idea from the 1800s, actually, to tax this because the idea is it discourages speculation.
It encourages sitting on land and doing nothing with it because you hope it'll go up in value.
And instead, it encourages development.
It encourages productivity.
And that's the other thing.
It's generally when we've studied it, taxes on land have been, or property taxes are some of the least distortionary taxes.
Think of income tax. Taxing income discourages people from working to make more income because you're taking it out.
Taxing property discourages sitting on property without doing anything to make more money.
And so we think of what different taxes encourage.
So, Blake, I responded back. I said maybe after a certain age, property tax rates get locked.
So if you're over 65, your property can't continually appreciate until, say you live to 90 and you're on that fixed income for 25 years.
at some point
it's going to outstrip your ability
I mean I don't want to see a situation
where if somebody
because you hold on
you're talking about
well you paid into the system
when you had kids
and you benefited from it
so you need to keep paying into the system
well you also paid into the system
all those years
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 have
there's a kind of an agreement
we're not going to kick you out of your house
you know and that's
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.
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.
And the way that we respond to that in plenty of other situations is you can downsize.
And the reason they usually can't afford it is their house has gone up dramatically in value.
So another thing you can do is borrow against that.
Maybe maybe lock things in for people after a certain age.
Because here's the thing.
You plan for retirement making certain assumptions.
Well, if your house, I mean, we've seen the charts.
Those crazy spikes before, I think, 08 and then another crazy spike after 2011 in the housing.
These are historic, unprecedented increases in the value of a property.
Historic.
So you would make certain assumptions.
assumptions working your 40, 50 year career based on what you think you need in order to survive.
And then here, unbeknownst to you, your property value shoots up, get you get reappraised and
your property taxes, shoot through the roof. And all of a sudden, it's the driving factor
pushing you out of a house. I just think that that is, if you could, if you're, if you're
retiring, if you're over 65, you're retired, let's say you retired at 65 or 70, something like that,
you stop earning extra income, but you're able to afford it. But then five,
years later your house looks to this happened in california where i was living 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 to be like a million
all of a sudden it's worth 2.5 in four years and you're telling me that that some elderly couple that
is on fixed income now has to be driven out of their house because their property tax gets reassessed
what if you're a renter and renting prices went up so should we have rent control because you don't want you
don't deserve to get driven out of the place you're i agree i agree there's there's good counter arguments but
like they're somebody who's done it right that saved enough that did the right things what's that
they didn't save enough well they thought they did but they were mistaken like i guess what i think is
i feel like i i get your point i get your point it is special pleading for objectively but we
the generation of americans who have his the most resources well but not everybody does right so
this is the thing right yeah you can look at it in the macro and there's a lot of wealth that is
accumulated with elderly people and the macro so maybe you make it means tested i don't know well you can
do that 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 like income like having a high income tax you mean what behavior they
result in like having a high income tax can actually reduce productivity of individual citizens having a
high capital gains tax that warps the behavior that people engage in relatively speaking a property
tax is less distortionary in what it causes people to do and a land tax is even less distortionary but
no one's proposing changing to that they're just proposing we get rid of property taxes 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 and the people who are going to benefit the most
from it are people who already have the most going for them, the wealthiest Americans.
It is basically saying, let us continue to devour the young in order to favor the old.
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,
etc so after 65 they sort of freeze the rate at which you're taxed for your property
gives you a little bit of predictability i mean i'm just saying it you know when you get old
you don't want a country that just kicks you to the curb i'm there is a special dispensation
for our elderly you're getting kicked to the curb i told listen we spend most of our
because like 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 there's still
going to want all the services they're still going to want frankly you know heavily subsidized
health care heavily subsidized you know so no's proposing getting into social security no one's
proposing getting rid of medicare so it's basically just a handout for a given group of people 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 13 for older people yeah
and what's the end result of that it's been the end result is california has the least of
affordable homes in the country i don't you but okay but that's causation and correlation you know
we're not sure which is which because i mean california has a lot of issues that are
california has tons of issues right but but actually pro 13 for normal working families i'm telling
you that's my my wife's family has benefited tremendously it's why they're still a bit of be in
their home right and they listen you you could say that that's a handout for them but i mean they
they weren't living beyond their means i will tell you um and so i i just think
Listen, if a land tax is even in the conversation, I think Florida should consider it, or you do it means tested and age frozen.
I mean, they're still paying. They're still paying into the system, you know?
No, they're not. They're not paying property taxes.
A lot of them, a lot of this is because it's people who are retired. They have no income taxes.
They have lower capital gains taxes. They're receiving, you know, tax advantaged social security.
And this is like the last thing that they have to pay into.
well what would you you want them to keep working a job no i think i think what we should say is
if you are in a piece of property that is radically increased in value like it up for the market
give it to somebody else or you should recognize market pressure that exists for everyone else
we don't think young people should be entitled to live in the most expensive parts of the city
we don't think young parents should be entitled who that should be the most entitled to live
anywhere we don't think young people should be entitled to go to the most expensive college for free
like we recognize this with a bunch of other things 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 if it you want if it is something
you desire you can work for it you can save extra money against it you can well I get support from
your children but if you are just unable to do it for among other things we're talking about
something where you have benefited from something tremendously useful
your home has gone up dramatically in value you can take out a reverse mortgage on that you can borrow against the value of your home that's true to do that or you can downsize and like historically that is what elderly people have done you have downsized as you have fewer needs because think about it if you don't have kids in your home anymore if you don't uh if you're not as mobile you probably can't even use as much of your property anymore like that is historically a thing that has happened and it's not you
just been poorer people. I like to cite this example a lot because Charlie liked Winston Churchill.
Winston Churchill had a big house. I think Checkers was the name of it. But whatever it was. He
had a big house and when he was... He gave it to his son and he personally himself built a smaller
cabin that he and his wife lived in and then he gave it to his son to live in the main house
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.
And it's not, I'm not saying this, I don't want to be like this vicious person.
I'm not saying giddily, oh, make these people leave their homes.
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.
And I would say this is sort of the conservative mirror image of Mamdanism that wants to, you know, ban rent hikes.
We're waging war on like a normal thing.
that basically has always existed.
We've always had property taxes in America.
Literally, I think the first one was in 1634.
In fact, it used to be far more broad.
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.
We used to have general property taxes.
Just having a tax on, you know,
a residential or commercial property
is a more restrained version of that,
which we adopted because it got way harder.
you know you can't how do you tax the value of every single thing in a modern person's home it would
be implausible and so this is what we've adapted to but it's something that's always existed
the same founding fathers who fought for life liberty and property were okay with property taxes
existing yeah you know it's interesting i i think from the very first like i said when i thought
about property tax i thought it was a raw deal because i feel like you should be able to
taxing taxes are horrible but it's like you can no disputing there and this is this is why conservatives
and texas have been railing against property tax now they don't have a
income tax in Texas. They have higher property taxes to sort of make up for it. And so that's been a
huge, especially as property values in Texas have skyrocketed in the last 10 years, you see a big
push to either lower, reduce, or get rid of property taxes in Texas as well. So I don't know where
they're going to be making their income to run basic services in Texas that they get rid of it.
But I think, I think, listen, we're talking in like a very stark binary, right? You either have them or you
don't you either can afford it or you can't 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 i don't think you should be a country that that treats your elderly the same as you treat
everybody else i think i think when you get old that we should look out for our old people
because we look out for old people a lot but but this is another way that's really important
you have to be a real you can't afford it you can't afford or or force i actually do you know to be
fair a reverse mortgage is probably the answer here but yeah it's there's there's different options
but a big picture thing and i know people are going to push back on this and i'm going to talk
about it anyway because charlie that's what charlie would do charlie will sometimes say people need
to hear uncomfortable things 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 we are in a large society and we need to care about
the future of this country 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.
Because every Western country has this, where they had a baby boom and then they had a baby bust.
So they're aging.
So older people are a larger share of the electorate.
And there's incentives for politicians to give them things understandable.
But those things can be very harmful.
In Europe, it's especially bad.
You know, the justification.
The demo triangles, like it used to be, it used to be like this, and now it's like this.
And now it's just old people make up the top rung.
If you want really, 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.
This is a political issue in the UK.
I want to check what it is, how it exactly works.
So the triple lock on the UK's state pension is a law.
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 two and a half percent, whichever is highest.
So they are guaranteed iron law of the universe to have their pension payments go up faster than the rate of inflation.
Because if inflation goes below 2.5 percent, you just have to go 2.5 percent no matter what.
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You know, it's funny. I was in Portugal when I was around like 20. And I was studying abroad
in Spain, and I went over to Portugal for a weekend. And I met this like homeless Brit.
And he was, I saw him at this like pub, because everywhere is a pub in Portugal. And he was
celebrating. And I go, what do you?
you celebrating you look homeless he's like any i mean just a really raggedy looking old guy and he was
celebrating because his pension had kicked in the day before his uk pension he'd made it to the to the to the
appropriate age and he was like i'm i'm i'm sorted for the rest of my i'm like well you live in
portugal you still get your uk pension he's like oh yeah oh yeah i'm still getting it so now
i don't have to be homeless anymore i was like so this guy's basically been living as a bag of
we don't want this sort of world where everyone's life revolves around getting to their pension
age and I'm not saying that
this is the case. I cited the UK example just to
say that is a policy that is it is their
third rail you can't touch the triple lock
in fact I think one of the parties
ran I think maybe the conservatives
ran on a quadruple lock
there would be a fourth thing that they would lock it to
so it could go up even faster
they are guaranteed to have their pension payments
go up faster than inflation it is
a suicidal thing to do
it can only end in disaster
David Cameron tried to run on austerity
and he got just absolutely
So, and in other countries, the justification for endless replacement migration is always, they need to pay into our unsustainable pension system.
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, probably speaking, pretty good for older Americans, and they're getting very bad, and they're getting worse for young Americans.
And Charlie would talk about you can have MAGA or you can have MAMDaniism.
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.
So, yeah, on the left, you have the people whose brains are shocked by, you know, the systemic racism, all of the, you know, insane narratives, the left pushes.
But on the right, it drives that.
You see this nihilism on the right.
That's what drives a lot of the popularity of, like, Nick Fuentes, for example.
You can see there's this nihilism that encourages them to embrace radical solutions,
the attitude of burn it all down.
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.
and state sales tax and state income tax are a thing a young person pays
and the state property tax was something that an older person was more likely to pay
and by the way they're the ones who also already own their homes they already have way more assets than you do
but we just change the rules that they pay fewer taxes and you pay more 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 i'm not saying we should double property to
taxes. I am not saying we should do like extreme things. I am saying we should not abolish
property taxes because this is an idea that has caught fire on the right. Well, I think this issue is
going to come up again this week. I just have a feeling. And I want to hear from the audience that is still
with us. Can we answer a few of these emails? Well, freedom at charliecirk.com. Freedom at charliecirk.com.
Tell us what you think about property taxes. Should there be, in my opinion, maybe you lock it at 65,
you means tested if you're going to be eligible for a lock, otherwise you pay it.
Because I broadly agree. I broadly agree with the entire premise. I think 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. But there is a point at which you're going to find my sympathies if you look if you're looking at property values jettison up like rocket ships from a million to $1,000.
2.5 is the example that I'm thinking
off the top of my head.
We don't do as anything else.
Like, if I,
if, let's say I had,
you know,
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.
And I know with property it's different
because it is something you have to pay
even if you aren't selling it.
But we are talking about the impacts of,
okay, your home went up dramatically in value.
And no, I know.
Yeah.
And probably a reverse mortgage is,
is a fine option.
What emails?
I like this Allison email that just came in,
just because they had a proposal.
What about freezing property taxes until you move?
So they wouldn't go up until you sell your house.
That's a common idea.
The reason to push back on that is...
What was the proposal?
Freeze property taxes until you move.
So you get the rate or the amount, I guess, of when you buy.
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 and you actually
what's essentially prop 13
yeah well exactly exactly
and what do you get from that you get people
it actually it makes the economy across
the board less
efficient it is discouraging good
behaviors 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 makes sense
so what it does
So here's a really concrete example is you want to encourage young families to buy homes.
Yes.
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.
They were going to keep it and they're going to get very creative about keeping it, by the way.
So even if they move, they're going to try and keep it.
Let's take other examples that stand out.
Let's say you are, 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.
But let's say we had this situation where your property tax has got locked in.
You got locked in at some insanely low property tax level.
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 insanely good property tax deal you have.
That's overall just not a good thing.
You want a tax system that is encouraging people to do productive things.
that's why yeah by the way that's also an argument for making your mortgages uh transferable so you
could migrate so if you say you owed a million dollars to a bank at 3.5 percent but you were going
to try and buy a home in phoenix and the new rates are at 6 percent you could actually use that
mortgage that money you owe once you sell your house transfer the mortgage to the new property
there'd be a lot of there'd be other issues they used to be the case they used to be the case
and now they're supporting that ideas it's one one of many ideas because guess
what? 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%. A thing about that is, I think that would, again, I don't think you want to be creating. But it discourages like getting planted in a certain home and not moving and opening up inventory for other people. It disincentivizes that. I'd have to look more into that one because I know I've seen that idea. I would be worried about a
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
I mean listen you took the loan out you're still you're still got to pay the loan off you do
but also and then like how does no guarantee for the bank how does that work because the entire
also the point of your loan to some extent was you know your house was the pledge against that
that's what the mortgage is.
Yeah, but if you have another house, I mean, to the banks, it's, it's roughly equivalent.
So if you took out an extra $600,000, but you default on the first loan and then...
Well, that's an interesting point.
Yeah, you, you, that, that is an interesting point.
I don't know how that works.
I assume there's experts on this, because I know they didn't come up with this idea.
I'm not an expert on that specifically, but it does, but what I'm saying is it
discourages people from not moving because of the...
It does.
It lowers that, but in general, in general, you don't want anyone to end up just being
like a privileged cast because they have.
have like a special weird car route in the tax system and you want to encourage efficient is
like a weird thing you want to encourage productive and positive behaviors because people respond to
incentives 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 it only encourages making land more useful more productive
and getting stuff out of it because you because there are there 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
the upgraded taxes.
Whereas if it's just a tax on land value,
you want to make it.
You want to make it more productive.
There's no penalty for making it more productive.
There's no penalties for making it.
Exactly.
I think that's a good place.
Yeah, well, just let's see if there's anything else.
Let's see.
I mean, you said property tax is not an elderly issue.
It is a family issue.
My husband and I are not elderly.
Our neighbors and local friends are not elderly.
That's all true.
That's all true.
It's not only elderly people who pay property taxes,
but we heard,
What Ron DeSantis said there, this is clearly, this is overtly aimed at being an aid to elderly people because they are more likely to pay these things.
And you have to look at the overall trend.
It's not what every individual person does.
My sister's younger than me.
She owns a home with kids.
Another sister, my other sister is also married.
She owns a home with kids.
I assume my brother will buy home.
I don't own a home, but I do own, I own properties that pay, I own a personal owner of properties that pay property taxes.
so like they do affect me still but well it's baked into your rent yeah you know yeah exactly
the rent yeah i mean listen i i i i you know you've convinced me on one point i will i will
contest uh or i will i will concede and that is that you you you build up a 401 4 1k right
for for when you retire you draw down your retirement as you get older it would make sense
in the same way that you're the value of an asset
that's not your 401k, your home has appreciated and value, you draw down, like, the reverse mortgage thing got me.
I know some people, some people are, I hate the idea of reverse mortgages.
Some people are really mad because some people say they're scam. I know there's debates about that.
No, I mean, listen, essentially what you're doing is you're taking equity out of your home to augment your income.
Yeah. You don't want, I mean, basically what should happen is, 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.
So you don't want to reverse mortgage where the – because eventually what happens with the reverse mortgage is that they own your home, right?
That's the reason it's a scam.
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?
Where you borrow against the equity that's in your home.
You have to make a monthly payment at that point.
But say you take out half a million bucks to make your payments.
You use part of that to pay the note, I guess, and then you would use the other to meet your base.
needs. I don't know. I'm conflicted. I'm conflicted, especially if somebody's fixed income
was able to meet, say, property taxes when you, when you turn 65 when you retired and your house
accelerates. I mean, I think you just stop assessing it. I want to respond to another one. We had
Cynthia. She says, you're wrong about how Prop 13 works. Prop 13 helps families more than anything.
And she says, one, not everyone can be productive. I don't want to have to move because my grand
kids are here. These are understandable things. I understand them. 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.
You may just have to move into a smaller. Well, maybe. But here's what I would say. So I'm thinking
about this, and the more and more I like the idea of locking them as opposed to abolishing them.
And here's why. Because, again, I think you make special dispensations for the elderly.
I really do believe that. I actually think it's biblical.
but but here's what else I'll say is you you you reassess property taxes to keep up with the cost of living right because as things get more expensive the police become more expensive the fire you got to pay fire department fire department fire firemen more um you've got to do all kinds of things that things just start costing money but if you but if the property values accelerate at such a rate as we've seen a real thing I should flag hold on I let me make my finish my point is that when you get to a certain point say you're six
you're essentially making a deal with the elderly that you're you're let's just say they're the average person's going to live to be 78 or something right so so they get to 65 that means they have 13 years on average before the average person's going to be deceased maybe it's 80 whatever the so like my point is you're basically making a deal with your elderly population say hey listen once you hit a certain age we're going to understand that that you're still going to pay property tax but it's
It's going to be locked at the age of what it was, when 65, 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, but you're a subset of the economy where you're still paying in, 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 abolish them altogether, okay?
But that's just for a 13 year window on average between 65 and 78 when the average American passed away.
Maybe even, I didn't maybe even make it like 68 or 70.
Sure, okay, fine.
Yeah, eligibility.
Yeah, but like if you can, if you can basically pay your bills for 13 years and we can,
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.
Now, Cynthia also flags that cities abuse property tax increases to fund their never-ending pension.
That's totally true.
True. But that is, I would just, I've pointed this out several times. That is a separate issue. If your local government spending is insane out of control, your problem is that local government spending is insane out of control. And none of these proposals I'm seeing are going, are going to fix the problem of, well, it does put downward pressure on budgets. Well, they just, they have other things they can tax. So they're going to get more creative to stretch their budgets. But what they'll do, they might just pass higher sales taxes, higher, uh, income. That's true. Income taxes. And then, not to say like, like, full.
Florida it is actually well governed but but you got to imagine like what are they going to do to
make up the difference I mean that's a real question there's a lot of things they can do and those
things are all more distortionary so that's a really good that's a really good question that's
that should be asked of governor desantis what are you going to do with that board budget shortfall
so you're obviously going to make less revenue have winners and losers and people and they all
policies create incentives so we have to think about who the winners and losers are and what
these incentives do should the government pay to have children to have
to encourage childbirth?
We already do in some ways.
But, okay, for example, like in Texas, there was that law.
And by the way, we could do this on thought crime or another day.
But, you know, 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 weird.
That would be pretty wild.
Which is kind of weird because at 10 kids, you're using a lot of services.
Yeah.
A big thing with a lot of, this is a difficult one.
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. You know, it's like low income families will have more. By the way, this is so true. And then it goes
down, down, down, down, down. And then high income jumps up again. Yes. Exactly. You're talking about how
policies give winners and losers. There is a point at which you're really poor and a lot of policies that are in
place help you. And then you get to a certain point and there's like nothing for you. 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...
It gets wild.
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 programs.
Totally.
But, like, it's also true at, like, $2.40.
Yeah.
Like, if you, like, they're $250,000, you essentially...
And that's just government ones.
You earn your, you earn a penalty.
Yeah.
Like a massive penalty.
So instead of being able to get ahead, like,
like truly become financially independent or truly kind of, you know, achieve that next tier,
which, by the way, is so American, you should be incentivized to keep producing and keep earning.
But basically the tax code and the penalty structure will make sure that you always stay working class,
middle class, whatever. You're never going to become upper class.
So you have to have such a huge payday to get you to break through that ceiling.
Yeah, it's a, which is unfortunate.
It's a real issue.
I want to bring on Scott Galloway, by the way, because.
he has a whole book on this and he basically says you need to add up your cost of living
your and you let's say your your annual life costs you 150,000 dollars to live and you want to
be able to live that way into retirement you've basically got to like take that multiple and
multiply it by between 15 and 20 and that's what you need in your retirement uh to be fully
financially independent so that but we invited him he was going to come on do you know that when
charlie was still with us and um he ended up canceling for he wouldn't tell us why but
He was going to come on, I think, probably because Charlie was too controversial for Scott Galloway.
But he's a smart guy, has some good ideas on this stuff.
And thanks, Blake.
That was fun discussion.
Yeah, that was a fun way to end it.
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