RPF0485-Questions_on_Taxation
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00:00:30.400 | Today is Thursday, September 28, 2017, and here in the United States of America, President
00:00:35.640 | Trump and the Republican Party released, or started the process of releasing some of the
00:00:40.720 | information about their goals for tax reform.
00:00:44.520 | Yesterday, they released the document called "A Unified Framework for Fixing Our Broken
00:00:49.200 | Tax Code."
00:00:50.640 | The idea is, the headline and the slogan is "Tax Reform.
00:00:53.640 | More Jobs.
00:00:54.640 | Fairer Taxes.
00:00:55.640 | Bigger Paychecks."
00:00:56.640 | And as I deal with personal finance here on Radical Personal Finance, I feel like I owe
00:00:59.160 | it to you to do a bit of analysis on some of these proposals.
00:01:05.840 | I've done a lot of shows on detailed, careful tax planning, and I feel like I owe it to
00:01:10.280 | you to give you some commentary and some analysis.
00:01:13.480 | And I want to do that.
00:01:15.400 | But I can't do that today for two reasons.
00:01:19.120 | One, it is far too early to have any clarity on specific proposals.
00:01:25.160 | This, of course, doesn't stop the commentariat from quickly talking about how it's either
00:01:31.240 | a great plan or a terrible plan, but it's far too early to have any specific proposals.
00:01:37.840 | At this point in the legislative process, things will go into committee, there needs
00:01:41.400 | to be debate, all kinds of things.
00:01:42.840 | And so it's just not – there's not enough information where I could properly comment
00:01:47.320 | on it with any kind of clarity or accuracy.
00:01:51.820 | For two reasons, just simply the subject and the way that this subject is handled utterly
00:01:55.680 | depresses me.
00:01:57.560 | This morning I worked through and I said, "OK, well, let me go and start reading some
00:02:00.960 | of the analysis, some of the news from people that I appreciate and people that are popular
00:02:06.820 | in the press."
00:02:09.160 | And I find the whole thing utterly depressing.
00:02:13.600 | Now, I promise I'm not going to depress you in this show.
00:02:15.840 | I do have a plan.
00:02:18.400 | But I just sat here and shook my head and I said, "How can I create anything positive
00:02:22.280 | for you?
00:02:23.280 | I don't want to depress you and I'm so tired of the political nonsense that – I'm
00:02:30.920 | sick and tired of it."
00:02:35.320 | But then I think we're probably all in the same place.
00:02:37.860 | It just feels like nobody wants to tell the truth.
00:02:39.880 | Nobody wants to have a debate about substance.
00:02:41.640 | Nobody wants to debate issues.
00:02:42.960 | We all just want to argue.
00:02:44.760 | I'm tired of it.
00:02:47.520 | So here's what I thought I would do and what I'm going to do.
00:02:50.080 | I'm going to ask you some questions and give you an opportunity to think through your
00:02:53.780 | personal philosophy.
00:02:55.320 | I've come up with a list of questions that are philosophical questions that I think will
00:02:59.840 | be useful to you to just consider your own personal philosophy.
00:03:04.080 | Your answers to these questions will largely determine your approach to specific proposals,
00:03:10.480 | whatever those specific proposals are that come out in the coming days.
00:03:14.680 | I don't claim that this list is complete but I think these are just some useful philosophical
00:03:21.000 | questions that you should ask yourself and you should ask yourself the reasons behind
00:03:26.560 | your underlying beliefs.
00:03:27.920 | So let's start with this one.
00:03:30.440 | Do you believe that a civil government has the right to tax an individual's income?
00:03:43.000 | Do you believe that a civil government has the right, has the moral right to tax an individual's
00:03:49.160 | income?
00:03:51.080 | If so, why?
00:03:53.840 | And if not, why not?
00:03:57.320 | What's the fundamental basis of your personal belief?
00:04:04.200 | I'm homing in here on income specifically.
00:04:06.280 | There are many other kinds of taxes that we could talk about.
00:04:09.840 | But since we're debating income tax, what's the fundamental truth that would give a government
00:04:16.400 | the right to tax somebody's income, your income, or to not give them the right?
00:04:22.280 | Now I encourage you when thinking about questions like this to apply various diverse examples
00:04:29.680 | to think about it.
00:04:30.880 | So for example, with income, we're all so used and accustomed to the way that income
00:04:35.400 | taxes are handled here in the United States now.
00:04:37.280 | Our tax returns and our quarterly checks if you're in business or the automatic deduction
00:04:42.620 | from your paycheck if you're an employee.
00:04:45.240 | But take it down to its essence.
00:04:47.300 | After all, your income is what you use to pay for the basic truths of your life.
00:04:51.960 | So let's pretend that you are living in an agrarian society and you grow a crop of sweet
00:04:56.760 | corn.
00:04:57.760 | You sell that sweet corn at the local farmer's market to your neighbors.
00:05:01.840 | Well, you go out and with the work of your brow, you plant those plants and you have
00:05:05.960 | a harvest and you gather in the harvest.
00:05:08.320 | Now let's say that your tax rate is 20%.
00:05:11.900 | So then you've gathered in a thousand bushels of corn and now along comes the government
00:05:18.000 | agent and says, "You owe us 200 bushels of corn out of your barn and we're going to take
00:05:22.880 | the 200 bushels of corn."
00:05:25.260 | What gives that government agent the right to make that demand upon your corn?
00:05:30.320 | Or let's say that you've taken your corn and sold it to the neighbors and you've collected
00:05:34.000 | a hundred pieces of silver, silver coins from your commerce.
00:05:38.760 | And then the government agent comes down, knocks on your door and says, "You have earned
00:05:43.040 | a hundred pieces of silver for your corn.
00:05:46.760 | Give me 20 pieces."
00:05:49.280 | What gives the civil government the moral right to tax you in that way?
00:05:54.840 | Do you believe they have that right?
00:05:56.120 | If so, why?
00:05:57.360 | And if not, why not?
00:05:59.960 | Now here's a corollary question of that.
00:06:03.420 | Do you believe that the US civil government has the constitutional right to tax an individual's
00:06:11.480 | income?
00:06:12.480 | If so, why?
00:06:14.320 | And if not, why not?
00:06:16.200 | There's an interesting investigation there for you which you might want to look into.
00:06:23.520 | Grab your pocket constitution.
00:06:25.960 | More likely look it up on the internet and start reading and find out what the constitutional
00:06:30.040 | right is that the US government stands on in order to collect taxes and research some
00:06:38.160 | of the history of that question.
00:06:40.880 | Next question.
00:06:41.880 | If you believe that a civil government does have the right, the moral right to tax an
00:06:45.840 | individual's income, how much of a person's income can they claim?
00:06:53.400 | What's the right number of how much a person's income the government can claim and how would
00:06:59.440 | you know?
00:07:00.440 | How would you know what that right number is?
00:07:02.200 | For example, if they had a thousand bushels of corn that you gathered in from your crop
00:07:07.320 | in front of your house or if you had the silver pieces that you – silver coins that you
00:07:11.800 | earned from a simpler era, the silver coins that you earned from building tables and chairs
00:07:16.880 | and selling them to your neighbors, how many of those bushels of corn does the civil government
00:07:22.160 | have the right to?
00:07:23.640 | How many is the right number?
00:07:25.080 | Or how many of those pieces of silver coin does the government have the right to?
00:07:30.800 | What is the right number and how would you know if that were the right number?
00:07:36.180 | How would you know if 20 pieces out of your hundred pieces of silver is the right number
00:07:40.000 | or 10 or 15 or 50 or 95 or 100?
00:07:45.680 | How would you know?
00:07:47.760 | Next question.
00:07:48.760 | Do you believe that everyone should be required to pay income taxes?
00:07:56.240 | If so, why?
00:07:57.240 | And if not, why not?
00:07:59.760 | Again, do you believe that everyone should be required to pay income taxes?
00:08:05.840 | If so, why?
00:08:06.840 | And if not, why not?
00:08:09.920 | Now I'll come out of philosophical question mode for a moment just to add a little bit
00:08:14.160 | of personal touch to this.
00:08:16.280 | If you believe that everyone should be required to pay income taxes, do you believe that that
00:08:22.000 | requirement should be expressed in the reality that some money comes out of everyone's pockets?
00:08:28.360 | This is one of the biggest challenges that we face right now in the US American context.
00:08:32.880 | When we come to the question of tax policy and appropriate tax policy, about half the
00:08:37.860 | country doesn't pay any income taxes effectively.
00:08:41.800 | And there's a very different way of approaching taxes.
00:08:46.720 | Let me describe to you two different scenarios.
00:08:49.680 | Many high-income earners, many business owners, every quarter write a substantial check out
00:08:57.400 | of their checking account to the US Treasury Department.
00:09:00.800 | There are many business owners who, when they prepare their returns at the end of the tax
00:09:05.880 | year, write a substantial check to make up for what they didn't pay in their substantial
00:09:10.680 | quarterly checks to the US Treasury Department.
00:09:14.880 | On the flip side, there is a substantial percentage of the population that looks forward to the
00:09:20.520 | filing of their tax returns because it means that they get money into their checking account
00:09:26.600 | to spend.
00:09:30.400 | This is a consistent theme for many people.
00:09:33.680 | They look forward to filing their income taxes because they get a nice check from the Treasury
00:09:39.200 | Department.
00:09:42.360 | If you ask people this question, it's one of my favorite questions, "How much did you
00:09:46.720 | pay last year in income taxes?"
00:09:49.920 | You'll get very different answers to that question depending on the part of society
00:09:54.840 | that you're working in.
00:09:57.440 | Some people say, "I wrote a check for $30,000."
00:10:00.640 | Some people say, "Oh, I got a check back for $5,000."
00:10:05.400 | So do you believe that everyone should be required to pay, actually pay, income taxes?
00:10:10.200 | If so, why?
00:10:11.200 | If not, why not?
00:10:13.440 | Next question, do you believe that some people should be treated differently than other people
00:10:19.880 | and so be ordered to pay a different rate of income tax than others?
00:10:27.240 | If so, why?
00:10:28.240 | If not, why not?
00:10:30.480 | Do you believe that some people should be eligible for special treatment and be treated
00:10:34.480 | differently than other people and so be required to pay a different rate of income tax than
00:10:42.800 | others?
00:10:45.880 | Here's the corollary question for this.
00:10:48.080 | If you believe that some people should be treated differently and be ordered to pay
00:10:51.560 | a different rate of income tax than others, how would we determine who should be treated
00:10:57.000 | differently and how much of a difference there should be?
00:11:03.600 | Who should be taxed at a higher rate and how much of a difference in rate should there
00:11:07.400 | be?
00:11:11.080 | How would you know?
00:11:12.080 | How would you prove that?
00:11:16.080 | Next question, do you believe that government tax policy should be used to incentivize certain
00:11:22.360 | behaviors or to disincentivize other behaviors?
00:11:30.520 | Do you believe that government tax policy should be used to incentivize certain behaviors
00:11:36.160 | or to disincentivize other behaviors?
00:11:42.800 | If so, how would we know what behaviors should be incentivized or which ones shouldn't?
00:11:52.440 | How would we know which ones we should encourage?
00:11:54.600 | Let me give you an example, the US tax code has certain provisions in it that relate to
00:12:01.320 | marriage and children.
00:12:05.440 | Depending on how we look at this, we could view these as a penalty, for example, the
00:12:11.200 | frequently referred to marriage penalty or we could refer to this as an incentive.
00:12:17.680 | For example, if you have children, you're eligible for a child tax credit.
00:12:21.760 | So the idea is this may be an incentive for people to have children.
00:12:25.520 | Well, how do we determine if that's what the government should be encouraging or shouldn't
00:12:29.920 | be encouraging?
00:12:31.920 | I've spent quite a bit of time in my life reading various feminist authors and various
00:12:37.800 | LGBT activists.
00:12:40.320 | One oft-repeated theme is that among feminist authors and some LGBT activists that I've
00:12:46.560 | read is that marriage is an institution of oppression.
00:12:51.880 | Thus, if we encourage marriage, we're encouraging and expanding the immoral, patriarchal society
00:13:01.040 | and structure.
00:13:03.160 | So we should not be encouraging marriage.
00:13:06.400 | Or another expression of this would be children.
00:13:08.560 | Some people believe that children are a positive force for good.
00:13:11.080 | Some people believe that children lead to oppression.
00:13:14.080 | For example, one of the fundamental legal reasonings behind why the United States of
00:13:20.720 | America has laws legalizing the abortion of children is that without a right to abortion,
00:13:28.920 | a woman is inferior to a man because she has to carry a baby.
00:13:33.160 | So therefore, if a man doesn't have to carry a baby, then a woman shouldn't have to carry
00:13:37.040 | a baby either.
00:13:38.040 | So children can lead to oppression.
00:13:41.600 | So should government tax policy be used to incentivize marriage children or to disincentivize
00:13:47.920 | marriage children?
00:13:48.920 | How would we know which behavior should be incentivized and which one shouldn't?
00:13:53.460 | One interesting change as of late is that there is a dramatic – there's a dramatic
00:13:58.800 | change happening in some countries regarding tax policy in children.
00:14:02.040 | I shared an article on my Twitter feed last week about – I can't remember which Scandinavian
00:14:05.800 | country it was but they – this particular country is dying off simply because the birth
00:14:12.680 | rate for that particular country is well below the replacement rate.
00:14:18.720 | And so the government has done practically everything they can with tax policy to pay
00:14:22.320 | parents to have children, to have substantial parental benefits and to pay for all the expenses
00:14:28.120 | of childbirth, et cetera.
00:14:29.960 | And yet still, the population is not seemingly reacting to this governmental tax policy
00:14:36.640 | and the population of this country, that particular country is headed for continual decline.
00:14:43.160 | This is a major problem because the vast majority of our governments are built upon the principle
00:14:50.480 | of our having more and more children.
00:14:53.360 | Most of the governmental programs depend on higher future tax revenues that are needed
00:14:59.240 | in order to pay off the promises to past generations.
00:15:03.120 | It's a classic Ponzi scheme.
00:15:05.640 | Without new children, new taxpayers coming in, then this whole scheme falls apart.
00:15:10.280 | It's based upon children.
00:15:14.000 | So should government tax policy be used to incentivize certain behaviors and disincentivize
00:15:18.200 | others?
00:15:19.200 | And if it should, how would we know which behavior should be incentivized and which
00:15:23.960 | ones shouldn't?
00:15:25.360 | Many examples we could go to.
00:15:27.040 | A common one would be deductions for real estate interest, mortgage interest in the
00:15:32.320 | United States of America.
00:15:34.040 | Should a government be encouraging home ownership?
00:15:36.680 | If so, why?
00:15:38.000 | And if not, why not?
00:15:40.720 | Next question, do you believe that tax policy should be used to give some people special
00:15:45.200 | benefits because of certain behaviors or because of a certain status?
00:15:54.320 | Do you believe that tax policy should be used to give some people special benefits because
00:16:01.200 | of certain behaviors or certain status?
00:16:07.360 | For example, do you believe that the local city government in your town or the state
00:16:13.880 | government should give a company special tax concessions in order for them to choose to
00:16:19.040 | move their business into your town?
00:16:22.040 | Say we're not going to charge you taxes or we're going to charge you a lower rate of
00:16:25.000 | taxation because you're bringing your business to our town.
00:16:29.920 | Whether it's an NFL stadium or a local biotech engineering facility or a local entertainment
00:16:37.480 | complex, is it right that certain businesses and certain business owners are given special
00:16:47.360 | concessions for them to take certain actions?
00:16:52.760 | Or what about special tax benefits for people in a certain condition?
00:16:55.400 | For example, there are certain tax benefits, increased deductions, etc. for blind people
00:17:02.580 | or for the elderly under US tax law.
00:17:05.920 | Should tax policy be used to give some people who meet certain descriptions special benefits?
00:17:18.280 | If so, which people and how would you know?
00:17:21.040 | If not, why not?
00:17:25.880 | Here's my last question, many more that you could ask.
00:17:28.560 | Do you believe that government and tax revenues for said government, do you believe it's a
00:17:35.760 | productive user of the tax money?
00:17:38.440 | Is it a good thing to be doing with money, to give money to a government?
00:17:46.720 | Or do you see government as an unproductive user of tax money?
00:17:52.660 | If government is a productive user of tax money, then shouldn't we be trying to get
00:17:56.880 | as much money into the government control as possible?
00:18:00.800 | If it's very productive?
00:18:04.120 | Or is government unproductive?
00:18:05.120 | And if so, should we be trying to get as little money into the hands of the government as
00:18:08.960 | possible?
00:18:09.960 | I hope these are thought-provoking questions.
00:18:16.080 | I just wrote them down, many more questions perhaps that you could ask.
00:18:19.320 | But I hope you'll consider the answers for these questions.
00:18:23.120 | And I hope you'll consider the support that you have for those answers.
00:18:30.300 | The answers to your questions will largely determine where you come out on a particular
00:18:35.360 | opinion.
00:18:38.140 | Now let me just close today's show with a few thoughts and a few comments, a little
00:18:41.640 | bit of commentary on the forthcoming political debate in our country for the coming months.
00:18:51.680 | I really don't think it matters much.
00:18:53.320 | I really don't.
00:18:56.280 | If or when I can get more clarity on what's actually proposed, what actually passes, et
00:19:00.400 | cetera, we can talk about that.
00:19:02.200 | But at the end of the day, Gary North convinced me that taxes don't really change all that
00:19:07.360 | much.
00:19:08.360 | Taxes just basically seem stuck at about 20 percent of GDP in the United States of America.
00:19:12.440 | Yeah, there are little changes here and there and whatnot, but it's all noise.
00:19:16.880 | And more and more, it seems to me that it's just meaningless noise.
00:19:23.360 | Republicans and the Democrats basically do the same thing.
00:19:25.440 | They basically want the same thing and all of the so-called differences between them
00:19:29.760 | are silly.
00:19:31.600 | For example, the Republicans – evidently from the information that we have right now
00:19:36.700 | about the forthcoming Republican framework for tax reform is that instead of having seven
00:19:46.340 | different tax brackets, things would be simplified into three tax brackets of 12 percent, 25
00:19:52.560 | percent and 35 percent.
00:19:55.000 | This is not a fundamentally different philosophy from the current system that we live under.
00:20:03.540 | For example, nobody is recommending or advocating for any kind of non-progressive tax rate,
00:20:09.260 | for a flat tax rate of any kind.
00:20:11.040 | Everyone believes evidently – both Republicans and Democrats believe that people who earn
00:20:15.440 | a higher income should pay a higher rate of taxes.
00:20:20.360 | So both Republicans and Democrats when asked the question, "Do you believe that some
00:20:24.560 | people should be treated differently than others and so be ordered to pay a different
00:20:27.400 | rate of income tax than others?"
00:20:29.040 | Both Republicans and Democrats would answer, "Yes."
00:20:32.720 | Now why they would answer yes, I don't know why.
00:20:35.000 | Maybe they believe differently.
00:20:36.520 | I would say it probably just comes down to political expediency.
00:20:39.120 | At least for the Republicans, it's probably political expediency.
00:20:43.200 | They know they can't get a flat tax through politically speaking or they don't think
00:20:47.800 | they can.
00:20:49.920 | And so they're having basically a tiny debate about whether there should be seven different
00:20:54.120 | rates or three rates.
00:20:55.120 | It's meaningless.
00:20:56.120 | It doesn't matter.
00:20:58.360 | So don't buy into the hype that any of this stuff is going to really matter.
00:21:01.360 | There's no major difference between – at least so far.
00:21:05.560 | I need to be careful and not overstate it.
00:21:07.640 | But there's nothing dramatically different about what I have read so far versus the way
00:21:13.000 | things are.
00:21:14.000 | This is all political posturing and the goal is to get – to use tax policy to gain more
00:21:19.600 | votes.
00:21:20.600 | So Bastiat called it the politics of plunder.
00:21:24.400 | The politics of plunder are alive and well in the United States of America.
00:21:28.680 | The question is who's going to be plundered and how can we build that for political gain?
00:21:34.640 | Another example of sameness between – in this political debate, I don't hear anybody
00:21:38.000 | talking about the need for a balanced budget.
00:21:40.960 | Both Republicans and Democrats seem to believe that it's perfectly fine and perfectly right
00:21:44.720 | to dole out lots of benefits without actually paying for them and to use debt to finance
00:21:49.780 | the difference.
00:21:50.780 | Now there may be a slight difference in talking about it.
00:21:54.080 | But in terms of doing it, nobody seems to want to cut spending.
00:21:58.540 | Nobody seems to actually want to rein in government.
00:22:01.560 | So everyone has got the best possible solution.
00:22:04.520 | We can play around with taxes, which the debate over taxes will please our various constituencies
00:22:09.440 | and please our certain people to buy more votes from here or buy more votes from there.
00:22:15.520 | It will make us more popular.
00:22:17.000 | But in the meantime, we can just hand out as many government benefits as possible to
00:22:20.400 | other parts of our constituencies and then we will buy some more votes from there and
00:22:24.760 | who knows?
00:22:26.440 | Maybe someday 100 years in the future, the economy will have grown enough that the debt
00:22:30.480 | can be handled.
00:22:32.560 | Sale seems rather silly to me.
00:22:34.960 | I believe that this practice that we've all and practically every large, least large
00:22:39.920 | Western government in the world has latched onto.
00:22:45.000 | This practice is fundamentally immoral.
00:22:46.560 | You can't continue to say we're going to run up the credit card bills and pass it
00:22:50.560 | along to future generations.
00:22:52.920 | It's terrible.
00:22:55.120 | It bugs me to no end when people want to go out and talk about cutting taxes and not cutting
00:23:00.800 | spending.
00:23:01.800 | Frankly, if I had my druthers, I would be happy for people to have a debate about actual
00:23:07.720 | tax policy and actual spending policy.
00:23:10.580 | But let's actually make the checks real.
00:23:12.760 | Let's actually make the budget balance and say you've got to spend the money.
00:23:16.600 | So if you're going to pass a new government program, you've got to actually pay for
00:23:19.640 | it.
00:23:20.640 | And you find out if your tax constituents actually want to write the checks for it.
00:23:23.520 | And if they do, if you've decided that it's all about the votes and the people want
00:23:26.680 | to vote for it and they want to vote themselves new government programs, that's fine.
00:23:30.020 | But make sure you actually pay for them, not just sell them and give away money for free
00:23:34.760 | while meanwhile no one ever pays the bill.
00:23:38.960 | Anyway, finally, remember that taxes, most taxes are largely optional.
00:23:46.200 | You can safely ignore most of this debate.
00:23:48.560 | It's not going to matter much to you.
00:23:50.460 | When things are decided, then find the rules, read the rules and then change your life however
00:23:55.880 | you need to change it in order to minimize your tax burden.
00:23:58.960 | Now, you can't get out of all the taxes.
00:24:01.100 | Some taxes you can get out of, but you can change your behavior and change from a lot
00:24:05.640 | of them.
00:24:08.280 | The people who really get screwed with taxes are those who don't read the rules.
00:24:13.920 | So you read the rules and play the game.
00:24:16.240 | And then finally, be encouraged with the increase in global competition.
00:24:23.160 | One of my favorite things actually about the framework that was released and it's probably
00:24:29.120 | a political no-go because everyone's going to play their games.
00:24:32.280 | But one of my favorite things personally is the removal of the deduction for state and
00:24:38.800 | local government taxes.
00:24:41.560 | That of course penalizes high-tax states, for example, California, New York, Massachusetts,
00:24:47.440 | etc., where residents of those states get major deductions for all their state taxes
00:24:52.260 | that they pay.
00:24:53.260 | But I love that.
00:24:54.760 | If that word actually passed, that would be – that would be great because then it forces
00:24:59.920 | reality more and more onto the states and it brings in more and more competition.
00:25:05.960 | For the last few years, I see that there's a substantial migration happening across the
00:25:10.920 | country.
00:25:11.920 | People are moving out of high-tax jurisdictions and moving into lower-tax jurisdictions.
00:25:15.880 | I've promoted here on the show the website Savetaxesbymoving.com.
00:25:19.360 | If you go into Savetaxesbymoving and you type in your city and your state where you live
00:25:23.960 | and what your filing status is and how old you are and what your annual earnings are
00:25:27.680 | and where you'd like to move to, it will calculate for you the change in your taxes.
00:25:33.280 | It's so easy to do.
00:25:36.160 | It gives people the value of being able to show it.
00:25:38.040 | For example, I just popped in.
00:25:39.400 | If I'm 30 years old and I have three dependents, married, filing jointly, three dependents,
00:25:47.040 | and I'm earning $150,000 per year and I move from Boston, Massachusetts to Dallas,
00:25:54.000 | I would have an annual savings of $6,720 per year.
00:25:59.760 | Well, $6,720 per year amortized – or compounded out over the course of an investing lifetime
00:26:07.360 | at a reasonable rate of interest could very easily be in excess of a million dollars extra
00:26:12.720 | toward – at 60, 65, 70 years old.
00:26:16.720 | So sometimes if the cost of taxes, unless there's an offsetting income benefit, the
00:26:21.920 | cost of taxes of living in Boston, Massachusetts versus somewhere else is substantial.
00:26:31.440 | And that's happening nationally with the competition among the states and that's
00:26:36.320 | happening internationally.
00:26:37.320 | I have to keep a close eye on myself on other international jurisdictions.
00:26:42.760 | If I get to the point where my income comes to the point where it's worth it, I very
00:26:48.520 | seriously would consider changing where I lived just to avoid the taxation.
00:26:55.400 | I think that's growing more and more.
00:26:56.720 | Now it's largely on the periphery.
00:26:59.160 | Not a lot of people that really are doing this stuff but you can.
00:27:04.320 | So this global competition is forcing more and more – is forcing reality onto some
00:27:09.360 | of the politicians and that's a positive trend.
00:27:14.400 | So I guess that's what I wanted to share with you.
00:27:16.200 | I hope that these questions are thought-provoking for you.
00:27:18.280 | I hope they cause you to assess your personal philosophy, your ideology and think through
00:27:24.080 | carefully the why questions.
00:27:28.600 | Use it as a chance to consider your own beliefs.
00:27:31.800 | Even in some of these questions when I was writing them out, I thought, "You know,
00:27:34.200 | I'm not sure my answer to that question.
00:27:35.680 | I know what I think I believe but I can't really defend the why very well.
00:27:39.760 | I need to do some homework."
00:27:40.760 | I hope that they're thought-provoking for you and you take them and do the homework
00:27:45.560 | as well.
00:27:48.000 | This show is part of the Radical Life Media network of podcasts and resources.
00:27:53.600 | Find out more at RadicalLifeMedia.com
00:28:02.600 | This is the sound of a beach in the Caribbean.
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00:28:25.840 | (waves crashing)