CW 1006 - Up-Level Your Life & The Libertarian Chick Kristin Tate's Field Guide to the Great American Rip-Off

Hey Jason, John here. Hey. I wanted to wish you a belated congratulations on 1000 episodes.

Welcome to the Creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new slant on investing, some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world's most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self made multimillionaire who's actually been there and he's a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who's owned properties in 11 states, had hundreds of tenants and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to your financial Independence Day. You really can do it. And now here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Welcome to the Creating Wealth Show. Episode 10061006 thank you so much for joining me from the Infinity lift car as we are in New York City ended the venture alliance meeting this afternoon and Mason, who you may recall his video was number two in the video contest for the five year plan at Meet the Masters. He planned a little get together for us over by the high line. We are going to the top of the standard right now. So we just try to you where we are and what we're up to. Anyway, we're in the car, so welcome. So today we will have the libertarian chick on the show. The libertarian chick. Now don't get all turned off folks. If you're not a libertarian, it's okay. A lot of you are libertarians and you don't even know it yet. So anyway, listen in and you'll enjoy Kristen Tate. She is a commentator. You've probably seen her on many, many news programs whether it be cnn, Fox News or a zillion others out there, msnbc. I'm sure she' on, she's been on a lot of them. So we will have that here in just a few minutes. But we ended the weekend, this weekend with a very lively debate and that debate was about self management versus having a quote. I'm doing single air quotes here folks. Professional unquote property manager. Because you know about my continuing frustrations with property managers. Hey, there are some good ones out there but there's a lot of bad ones too. Just like any industry. Just like any industry. Hey, and when you look out the window here, this is one, this is the Freedom Tower. Sorry, going one world observation but it's the Freedom Tower we're looking at here in New York City. And we took a Beautiful skyline cruise last night. That was really gorgeous. Got some pictures. One of the pictures I posted on my Facebook and Instagram account, by the way, on Instagram. You can follow me at Jason Hartman and the number one, just Jason Hartman one on Instagram. That picture is so good. The sky is so gorgeous and the skyline of New York City is so gorgeous that it looks fake. Yes, it looks fake. Like fake news. Speaking of fake news, we had a speaker on Saturday who was fascinating and he talked about using the blockchain to prevent fake news. Fascinating stuff. You know, it is an amazing time to be alive and we have amazing technologies out there. And we got a firsthand demonstration of one of them on Saturday morning here at the Venture alliance weekend. And we had another speaker who talked about wealthy, very, well, not wealthy, but very, very wealthy people immigrating to the US from other countries. A lot of Russians, Chinese, etc. And moving lots and lots of money and doing foreign direct investment in the United States and talked about their concerns and considerations. A lot of these people became billionaires, literally billionaires through privatization in the Soviet UN or the former Soviet Union. And fascinating discussion there as well. And we just had a great weekend. You know, when I do these weekends, I am just so intellectually stimulated because we've got this room of really smart people. And at least I, and I hope I speak for the other members, have dozens and dozens of interesting, fascinating, deep conversations. Which by the way, leads me to another little point. I want to encourage you with all the people you're hanging out with to try and up level your conversations. You know, I have to do this constantly. I am not good at small talk. I don't like small talk. I think that it's important that we all try to make our conversations high level conversations, more stimulating conversations, more interesting conversations about more important things. So just maybe something to think about in our, in our lives as we go about our daily business and talking to people and socializing. And speaking of socializing, I wanted to get a couple comments from a couple of people that were here this weekend who are in the car with me. And the first one is Carmen. And she's pointing back and saying, get the comment from Mason. Now you heard Carmen on the show because she was with us in Sweden at the ice hotel. Carmen, how do you like the weekend? It was great. This was my first Venture alliance official meeting. So sort of a regular retreat versus the ice hotel, right? Yeah, and it was just great. I mean, just like you said, the conversations that you engage in are amazing.

And you Just learn constantly.

It was a great weekend. Yeah. Really amazing people. You know, you put this is what Napoleon Hill talked about in the very famous book Think and Grow Rich. You put a bunch of really, really bright people in a room and the conversations you will have are truly, truly amazing. We have another first timer here, and that is Mason, who I mentioned before. Mason is one of our younger investors, a millennial investor. And Mason, what did you think of the weekend?

I thought it was very busy so far. And we're, we're like you said, getting really deep into these topics and bouncing experiences and what worked for you may not work for another person. But, you know, we each have our own way of investing. We have like different, I guess, tolerances. And it's just interesting to hear other people have similar experiences, but also like what, that we can, you know, sharpen each other as well. So that's been a huge, you know, just experience for me just to, just to see these conversations. I'm, I'm just listening, you know, this weekend mainly. But it's glad, I'm just glad to be here to, to be able to listen and hopefully help out as well, you know, in the future.

Good, good stuff. Hey, Mason, anything you want to mention about your five year plan and putting that video together that you did, and we played it on a former episode. You know, any tips you have for people in making their five year plan or anything, you were the number two winner in the contest. Any quick comments on that?

Sure. For me, goals are really important. So that's. I'd already had a five year plan when I first started listening. For me, it's enough time and you can get big with your ideas and then you can also focus down. So my five year plan and it just sort of extended out for five more years. And I like personal development. I feel like if you're gonna invest and move forward, you have to have a goal like so, like, which way? Where's the finish line? You know, so.

That'S really important for me.

I mean, good, good stuff. Good stuff. Hey, the sound quality is not too good in here. So I think we ought to get to our guests here because I'm looking at the little oscilloscope here on the recorder and there's a lot of background noise, folks. So normally we don't do this, but once in a while. You know, I did one episode from an airplane once. Remember that one, folks, if you've been listening. And by the way, when we were in Philadelphia, I have to say thank you so much, listeners who have listened to 1,000 or more episodes. And I got another note from one of you the other day who listened to 1,000 plus episodes. So we appreciate you sticking around so long. And you remember I recorded from an airplane. I've done a couple from Cars before and it's interesting but sound quality is not that great. So I think we ought to probably get to our guest. Without further ado, Mason, thank you for sharing stuff about your five year plan. And Carmen, your comments on the weekend. And let's jump over to our guests. Check out Jason hartman.com for properties and so forth. By the way, we are redesigning the Properties page because we had some feedback from actually our podcast producer who's also a client, that's Adam, on having some difficulty finding properties. He and his wife are looking to buy another property now. So we're going to redesign the page and hopefully that'll be done very soon. Also, one last thing before we get to our guest. I wanted to mention do not take or plan a tropical vacation, folks, because you're going to do this with us and you're going to do it the first week of November. Stay tuned. There's an announcement coming for a new, a totally new conference we're doing and it is going to be a resort, beautiful location. So save those tropical vacations for the first week of November and we'll probably get this announced on the next episode or two. All right. Stay tuned. Here is the Libertarian Chick, Kristen Tate.

It's my pleasure to welcome Kristin Tate, the Libertarian Chick. She is a columnist for the Hill and author of the new book How Do I Tax the A Field Guide to the Great American Ripoff. You know, taxes are the single largest expense in any of our lives. And if we do not become aware of taxation and we do not become aware of how to deal with lowering our taxes, we will be wasting a lot of time paying them. So I'm glad Kristen's here to address a lot of the hidden taxes in her book. It's just a fantastic read, a fun read, very solutions based. And let's go ahead and dive in. Kristen, welcome. How are you?

Jason, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be on the show.

Well, it's great to have you on. And I gotta tell you, I love seeing a young, pretty, intelligent person like yourself speaking to the millennial generation. I guess mostly they're just not paying attention. That's what it feels like to me. Do you feel that way?

Thank you so much. I do. In some ways, the generation has a Bad rap. And I think that we brought that upon ourselves. But I gotta tell you, Jason, when I actually speak with my millennial friends, they aren't as clueless as they may seem. You know, these kids have very strong opinions on social issues because, frankly, those issues are easy to understand. You know, we all have friends who are gay. We all know someone who's had an abortion. They tend to be a little more clue when it comes to fiscal policy. But when you actually start asking them about specifics, whether it be taxation or government involvement in business, you'd be surprised. They tend to be pretty libertarian. So I think that a lot of this just comes down to messaging and showing young people how policy affects their bottom line.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And, you know, I think I'll give Ron Paul a little credit for that. You know, he's been on my show, and we had him speak at my event in January, a conference we do every year called Meet the Masters. Ron really oddly attracted a lot of the millennial generation, you know, this old white guy. Right. You know, but. But he. He somehow was pretty well supported with the college crowd, which just amazed me, and I love that. And maybe it's because of the libertarian stance on the social issues. So I think the libertarian position is the only honest position in the political world. It's good to hear. Now, you talk about a lot of these hidden taxes, and, you know, I remember many years ago reading studies about how a loaf of bread is taxed 200 times before you buy it at the grocery store. What's going on with this, with all of these underhanded taxes? Nobody looks at their cell phone bill, their utility bill, you know, a gallon of gas, what's that got, like, $0.29 tax on every gallon of gas. It's just insanity where we're being taxed everywhere, even where we don't look, right?

Absolutely. Almost everything you do is taxed. And, you know, taxes is a really hot political topic right now. Everyone's talking about it on the news, but these national dialogues about taxation tend to focus almost exclusively on the income tax. And, you know, of course, I think the income tax is too high, especially in states like New York. But what lot of people don't understand is that the income tax actually makes up less than half of our personal tax burden. So I wrote this book to open people's eyes to all of the other ways that the government is siphoning money from our bank accounts into their own coffers. So every time you do anything, whether it's you know, riding the subway, getting a gallon of gas, taking a plane ride, staying at a hotel, eating a meal at a restaurant, going to the movies, going to the museum, paying your rent, paying your utility bills. All of these things are inflated by taxation and by stealth fees. And by the way, Jason, in my book, I treat fees the same way as I treat taxes because they serve the same function, which is that they take your money and redirect it to government coffers. So all of these daily activities are more expensive than they should be. And these taxes add up to a large, large amount of money. Each year, Americans pay over $650 billion in hidden taxes. So I wanted to write this book because these hidden taxes must be part of the conversation when we talk about taxation at the national level.

Yeah, well, you know, income tax is so apparent. I mean, you know, there's another tax that very few people talk about, and that's the inflation tax. Now, the millennial generation doesn't really know about inflation very much because they didn't experience much of it, but it's certainly stealing from us all the time. And big government is a prime cause. Government spending is a. Is a cause of inflation. So that's a whole nother part for your next book, I hope. But, you know, you're. You're so right. I'll just share a personal example. I remember I posted this on my Facebook, Renting a car recently, Kristen in Phoenix. Literally, the amount of tax on the rental bill was more than the base of the bill. It was 69% tax. I couldn't believe it. The whole rental car fee for, I don't know, two days or something was like $107. And 69% of that was tax. Only 41% of it actually went to the vendor. Sorry, 31%. This is insanity. I mean, what are we doing here?

Oh, it is insanity. And what would shock people even more is to learn that the resulting revenue is often squandered. In Florida, they use rental car taxes to build sports stores, stadiums. I mean, it's ridiculous, but, yes, these taxes make up a large portion of a lot of the bills and expenses that we pay. In New York city, for example, 27% of every electric bill is just taxes. And again, some of the things that these taxes are funding are laughable. For example, if you live in New York City and you pay an electric bill or a wireless bill, you're funding the inefficient and terrible subway system, the mta, with those bills. You know, they continuously raise our ticket prices for the subway. And yet the thing still runs a $6 billion deficit every year. So they have to make up for the loss by inserting taxes into people's utility bills. It's ridiculous. And this is not, you know, something that is unique to New York. The same thing's happening in nearly every major city. So, yes, it makes up a large percentage of the expenses that we pay, but also the resulting revenue is often going towards expenses that have nothing to do with what you just purchased or paid for.

You know, one of the things that so many people have a hard time understanding is the concept I talk about a lot, and that is you can't hear the dogs that don't bark. So in your book, you talk about renting and how renting, you'd think a place like New York City that is so pro tenant, you know, same with on the west coast, you've got Santa Monica, San Francisco, you know, you've got rent control, you've got all these crazy things that are just total, massive failures, right? And you'd think that a pro tenant place would actually be good for the tenant, but you point out that it's the exact opposite. You can't hear the dogs that don't bark. In other words, if you took those taxes away, well, there'd be more supply, the price of rent would be lower. And that just happens in all of these things. You talk about transportation, rent, utilities, cable debauchery, cell phones, leisure, the sharing economy, and you just go on and on with more things, too. Share some crazy examples in addition to the ones you've mentioned. Maybe.

Sure, yeah. First of all, I just want to point out you're absolutely right about the transparency aspect. And my book is not supposed to be making the point that taxes are necessarily too high, although I think they are too high. The problem is that these taxes are not visible to the people who. You know, if you want to live in a city and pay high taxes because you support the causes that your taxes are going towards, that's great. By all means, vote for high taxes. But the problem is that bureaucrats understand that raising taxes is politically unpopular. So instead of putting a tax up for a vote, they wave a magic wand, create a fee or a hidden tax and attach it to things that we already have to purchase to begin with. And we just keep paying these bills and don't know that we're in addition, paying taxes. So that's an important aspect of the book. As for crazy examples, oh, my gosh, there are so many. Jason, you have a dog, right? You mentioned a dog before you started recording.

I have a dog, but she.

I have two dogs too. I love dogs. I'm a total dog person. When you got your dog, do you remember having to purchase something called a pet licensing fee?

Oh, yeah. And you know, when I was forget to pay it, I would get a nice notice from. At the time I lived in Scottsdale, Arizona. You know, they were just, well, frankly, I'll say ravenous about collecting their 26 bucks and they added fines on top of it if you didn't pay on time. And yeah, it's absolutely.

That's exactly right. So, you know, when I, when I got my first dog, you know, I thought, oh, I'm doing something so great. I'm adopting this homeless dog. And of course they slapped me with the pet licensing fee. And I didn't want to pay it, but I thought, you know what? I love animals. This money is probably going to the pound or the shelter. So I paid it. I didn't. I wasn't happy about it, but I thought it was going towards a good cause. Well, lo and behold, in most states and cities, when you pay these pet licensing fees, they do not go to pounds. They do not go to anything even pet related. This money is just funneled into a state or city general fund where bureaucrats can spend it however they'd like. So essentially, you are being punished for doing a good thing and saving a homeless pet. And a lot of people roll their eyes and go, okay, well, you know what? I just won't renew the pet license fee. They'll never really do anything. Yeah, you might get a letter in the mail, but they're not going to enforce it. Actually, a lot of cities go to great lengths to enforce this. In Seattle, for example, the city calls up every local pet store on an annual basis and gets the names and addresses of every customer who has purchased pet dog food in the last year. And they send these people letters threatening them with misdemeanors if they do not renew the pet license fee. Well, these letters alone last year generated $80 million in revenue for the city of Seattle. So bureaucrats will go to great lengths to enforce this.

Unbelievable. Yeah, it's just crazy in a way. You're almost. That's almost unconstitutional because you're incriminating yourself if you respond to the letter. It's like the red light camera tickets or the speeding camera tickets, you know, but that. We could go down a whole nother rabbit hole with that one. Okay, what about debauchery? What are you talking about? Syntax. Like on cigarettes and booze or. What do you mean?

Yes, so syntaxes. But syntax is. They extend far beyond what you would just typically think of syntaxes. You have places now taxing sugar. Certain cities are taxing candy, which is just extremely complicated, because think about it. Like, what is candy? There are some types of food that are sweet, but they're not necessarily prepackaged. Well, is that candy or is it not candy? It just creates all of these compliance costs for stores and just raises prices for consumers. But the bigger point about syntaxes is that they don't yield the intended results. So these syntaxes allow bureaucrats and politicians to say, oh, we're doing something really great. Like in Philadelphia, they have a tax on sugary drinks. And it allows all the politicians to pat each other on the back and go, oh, we're doing this to make our city more healthy. And they tell everyone, oh, don't you worry the revenue from the sugary drink tax will go to pre K. Well, guess what, Jason. This tax has been in place for several years now. Not a dime of it has gone to pre K because the funds are generally rated to make up for budget deficits every single year. And meanwhile, the tax has done nothing to help people lose weight. There is no evidence that this has been successful. And what you're doing with things like sugary drinks taxes is you're hurting the poor people in the city the most because they are the people who typically buy soda, and they don't have money to buy, you know, organic drinks. That is a cost that hurts them more than it hurts people who are middle or higher income. So these are regressive taxes, and they don't yield the intended results.

Well, why don't they just have the substitution concept like they do when they calculate the consumer price index? Won't all those poor people that are buying cheap soda now just switch to kombucha or, you know, for. For $3 or $4 a bottle?

Actually, a study by Cornell shows that a lot of these people end up switching to beer. So it's like they're just being more unhealthy. And another unintended consequence of this sugary drinks tax is that it's. It's really hurt businesses in. In the city of Philadelphia, Pepsi had to lay off a bunch of people. Meanwhile, the ve outside of the city limits are booming because people are driving to neighboring towns and stocking up on a bunch of soda and just taking it home. So, you know, they're getting their soda fix anyway, or they're Switching to more expensive drinks or they're buying healthier stuff and spending more of their money. It's like, lose, lose, lose.

Yeah, it never works. I mean, look, when we had a lower tax burden and a lot of these syntaxes weren't in place, the population was a lot thinner and a lot more feminine. It. You got to ask yourself, what is the real reason America has just such disastrous health problems? Well, you know, if the government wouldn't be in bed with Monsanto, you know, Obama's cabinet is what I'm referring to, especially. Right. You know, all these unintended consequences happen. The bigger you make the monster by giving it more money, the more you feed it through taxation, the worse it gets. And there are so many, either intended or unintended. They're probably mostly unintended, but maybe some are evil and conspiratorial consequences of the big government problem. You know, I mean, it's mind boggling. It really is. Well, you know, your book is Solutions Oriented, Kristen. What can people do? What should they do? Awareness is the first part, but what do you do after awareness?

So what's really interesting about these taxes, Jason, is that most of them, not all of them, but most of them are implemented at the the state or city level. And if you live in a, you know, a small to medium sized town, it's actually quite easy to get rid of these taxes once you're aware of them, because again, they're locally implemented. The problem is that people just have no idea they exist. Even if you live in a big city, it's relatively easy to get rid of them. I'll give you an example of that. In Boston, the mbta, which is their subway system, started putting hidden taxes in people's bills and they also simultaneously hiked the fee for a subway ticket. Well, people found out what was going on due to some really great investigative reporting in Boston, and people were furious. And you had bipartisan protests outside of the subway for nearly a month. And finally the city said, you know what? Okay, you win. We're going to take away these taxes and lower the fares back down to normal rates. So a lot of the problem with these taxes is that we just kind of take them lying down. We don't really know they exist. So once we make people aware of them, it's very, very easy to get rid of the locally imposed taxes. The other thing I tell people is, look, if you don't like that your city is taxing something, don't buy it there. For example, in Philadelphia, it makes a big statement when people are going to neighboring towns and buying their sugary beverages all elsewhere, it's telling the city that, you know, businesses are being hurt, they're going to lose revenue because businesses may not be as likely to start in Philadelphia. They may consider neighboring towns instead.

Exactly. If I get for a moment, Kristen, what you just said is a perfect example of how you can't hear the dogs that don't bark. See that example? Fewer restaurants will start, right? I mean, look, look at like Seattle and their crazy minimum wage, right? You raise the minimum wage, you create more unemployment. You don't solve any problem. You simply have fewer people hired. You have more demand for automation, which means less employment. You have fewer places opening for business. They don't even contemplate opening, whether it's minimum wage or additional taxes or additional regulations. I remember, remember when I had a couple of different real estate offices in California, and every time we would look at a new space, Kristen, it was insane. The Socialist Republic of California. And this is not a state law either, by the way. It's, you know, but I'm just lumping it all together because it's the whole climate, the whole vibe. You'd have to yank all of the wires out of the wall, out of the conduit and do it over again. So if a tenant was in that office for a short time, they had totally up to code. Data cabling and phone cabling for all the cubicles. You'd have to pull it and do it again. It's just insane. Think of all the businesses that don't open, all the employment that is never created because of these regulations and these insane taxes. And nobody can see that. You can't hear the dogs that don't bark. That is a giant problem with this. And you made that point. Point just now. So it's perfect. Perfect, but scary.

And then, and like you said, you know, we're seeing that in Seattle. We see it around the country. But again, sometimes cities do realize that they are being harmed by these taxes and they take them away. The smaller the town, generally, the smaller the city, the easier it is to get rid of the taxes.

Yeah, yeah. It's funny, like, I mean, it's so crazy that you live in a place like New York, which is one of the, it's probably number one of the 50 states. It is the 49th worst place to do business. I think California is the worst and New York is like second. But I know you probably won't live there forever, but why do these places succeed? Why do people still come there or will they ultimately learn their lesson? California does seem to be getting some feedback, yet they're still enacting crazy legislation to tax, to regulate, to interfere in everybody's life in every way they can think of.

Well, you know what, Jason? People aren't moving to New York and California at the rates they used to. In fact, there is a well reported exodus out of California and New York right now. New York for the last few years has actually lost more tax paying working aged people than they gained. There is an exodus and it's because it's simply impossible to live a high quality of life life here on a normal salary. So they're squeezing out the working tax paying people and then you're left with the insanely rich who don't care about taxes because they're so rich and the insanely poor who are living off the system. So eventually you lose all the people propping up your system because the taxpayers are gone.

You got that right. That's what's happening in California. It's becoming a banana republic of rich and poor and the middle class is just leaving.

They're all going to Texas. They're all going to Arizona and Florida and Texas.

Yep. They're voting with their feet, which is exactly what they should do. It's exactly what I did, you know.

But you know what's so annoying about this is that a lot of these liberals go to places like Texas and then they vote in the same exact policies that they fled. For example, I'm from New Hampshire and New Hampshire forever has been a very purple, you know, libertarian, liberty minded state. And right below us we have Massachusetts and all the Massachusetts people. Yep. They all leave Massachusetts and Boston because it's too expensive to live there. They move to New Hampshire and what do they do? They vote in liberals. They vote for higher taxes. And now New Hampshire unfortunately has gone from a true purple state to really a blue state at this point. And I think we're going to see the same thing happen with Texas. It's really unfortunate.

Yeah, it really is. You know, this is the tragedy of the commons when it's everybody's money, it's nobody's money, everybody's happy to spend the public treasury. I don't know. You know, I don't know what we're ever going to do about it because. Because you know they. Kristen, what happens is. And of course you know this. I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but maybe you can comment on it. They create these iron triangles. I mean the concept for Example of public employee unions is absolutely insane to me. That any government employee should be able to create a union to basically unionize against the taxpayers can never dismantle that because you've got all these interests that are in lockstep creating the iron triangle. You can never dislodge it without just a revolution, I guess. I mean, I don't know how you ever fix it.

Yep, that's exactly right. It's very hard to fire any public employee these days. You know, they fire a public employee in New York City in their protest and, you know, it's really scary. You can look up the roster of public employees just in New York City or LA or any of these cities, and you'll find scores and scores of people with these nebulous job titles that don't really mean anything. And they're all making $200,000, and they each have, you know, five assistants who are each making $100,000. You know, the average worker for the subway system in New York City, the vast majority of whom are bus drivers and janitors, make six figures. That is terrifying. And then they make a lot more because of this massive overtime scam going on in the subway system. This is what our public workers are doing. They're taking taxpayers for a ride. And I don't blame the workers. They're just taking advantage of us.

The system. Yeah. Why wouldn't they? Yeah, the system's a mess. Yeah, no, it totally is. You didn't even mention it. But I know, you know, they take advantage of. Of the pension scam too, because what they'll do is they'll have, like, multiple government jobs during their career. They'll be in California, for example. I remember reading a story of a lifeguard that's making 220 grand a year. And he's not even lifeguarding. He's retired from lifeguarding. And then I think he became some other. I can't remember, government employee. So he's got, like, that pension. He's got the other pension, and then he's got the overtime, and this is insane. It's just gotta stop. It's gotta stop. I'm glad there are people like you getting the word out about this stuff, because it's. It's really important. I'm curious about your career a little bit, if you could comment on that. You know, how did you become so interested in this? You know, again, it's unusual for someone like you to be such a great spokesperson for this, and I. I really commend you for it.

Thank you. So much. Well, I grew up in rural New Hampshire. We didn't really have much a of up there. We were a 40 minute drive away from the nearest grocery store or Walmart or whatever. So all my family had was each other. So we would sit around the dining room table and just talk about politics. And my dad is a staunch neocon. My mom's kind of like an academic liberal, so there are always extremely heated debates in my house. And then when I graduated from college, coincidentally, Breitbart News was launching their Texas bureau. You know, I never intended to get into any of this. I wanted to go into business. But I thought, you know what, I've always been curious about Texas. So I moved down there and it was pretty amazing. I was there during that big border surge when you saw all of those thousands of unaccompanied minors coming across the border. So that was an eye opening experience for me. And I then moved back to the east coast and wrote my books and it's been a crazy ride, but it's been a lot of fun. And I gotta tell you, Jason, you know, a lot of people think this country's doomed. I'm a little more optimistic, I've gotta say, because again, when you really talk to millennials, they're not as clueless as you think they might be. And I think as they get jobs and they start paying taxes, you're gonna see a lot of them turn into Republicans or libertarians and hopefully we can start getting this country back on track.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, you know what they say. If you're, if you're under 30 and you're not a liberal, you don't have a heart. And if you're over 30 and not a conservative, you don't have a brain.

I guess I'm heartless.

Well, thank you for being so, because. Because you make a lot of sense to me, that's for sure. Kristen, give out your website, your Twitter handle, whatever you want people to know so they can follow you and buy your books and learn more about your work.

Sure. So my website is the libertarian chick.com you can also find me on Twitter. My handle is Kristin B. Tate, and Kristin is spelled K R I S T I N and the same handle on Instagram and my books can all be found on, you know, Amazon or.

Barnes and noble.com and they are excellent. By the way, I'm sure you've seen Kristen in the news media. She's, she's, she's all over TV and, and social media. So, Kristen, keep up the good work. Thank you so much for joining us. And everybody go out and get a copy of How Do I Tax Thee and hey, let me count the ways, right?

Thank you so much, Jason.

All right, take care.

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