This morning I was browsing The David Pakman Show sub Reddit, where nearly 30000 of our
viewers and listeners are now subscribed. You can find the sub Reddit at David Pakman dot com slash
Reddit. That's R.E.D. Ditty. Very interesting post this morning
about how the actual effective tax rate for the bottom 80 percent of people is actually
higher in Texas than in California. There's been a big movement lately,
including in the context of covid people wanting more freedom, and particularly with
the recent news that Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is ending all covid guidelines,
ending Marzook mandates opening everything wide open in Texas. There's been this idea for a while
and has been bolstered by certain celebrities like Joe Rogan and Elon Musk announcing they
are abandoning California and going to Texas. There's this assumption that you just pay a lot
less in taxes if you go to Texas. And that is true for people who make a lot of money.
But the reality is that for a lot of people, the state tax rate is actually higher in Texas
when you consider state and local taxes and there's a really good post about this,
it's actually someone posted it to our sub, read it. But it's a link to to the Joe Rogan sub,
read it and it outlines this. And I think that it's important to understand that
in some cases, when you go from a so-called high tax state to a low tax state,
you really are paying less in taxes. In many cases you're not. There are states with no
state income tax where property taxes and sales taxes, for example, are significantly higher.
We've talked before about how you can also hide taxes and other transaction fees. There
are places where you might say, oh, the sales tax is low and there's a low or no income tax.
But every fee associated with driving a car insurance requirements on different.
There are lots of different ways in which living in one state versus another can be more expensive.
And people who make decisions based solely on state income tax are often, what's the word,
surprise. They receive a rude awakening when they realize that, hey, I'm not paying a state
income tax anymore, not one that's as high, but I'm paying all of these new and different
things. Very interesting analysis. I encourage you to look at it in detail. Another post,
and this is sort of like from the news of the obvious and unsurprising, the creator of that
CPAC golden Trump statue now admits that it was made in China. I don't know how many of you even
followed this story, but there was this incredibly cult like I mean, really disturbingly cult like
golden Trump statue that was wheeled through CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference over
the weekend, which we covered. And aside from it all, being really weird because people were
almost like praying at the altar of this thing, extraordinarily cult like Trump behavior. People
started asking, where was this thing made? This would be really expensive to make in the United
States. And I guess initially the guy who made it said it was made in Mexico. I don't even know
if that's good or bad. But then we ultimately found out that it was actually made in China.
And I don't even think we have to comment. A lot of the Trump campaign gear for years
was made in China while Trump was publicly saying China's crushing us on this. China's crushing us
on that. Well, partially, maybe they're crushing us because you're giving them your own business.
We now found out that the Trump golden statue was made in China. Not surprising, but predictably
hypocritical, joined the discussion by joining the sub. Read it at David Pakman dotcom slash R.E.D..