The QUESTIONS episode tackles Florida's voucher system, which the host likens to "pilfering Egypt" by diverting state funds from public schools to private institutions. He argues that while school choice improves upon current failures, it remains theft, citing Texas property taxes where families pay roughly $5,000 annually for unused services. Calculating a net gain of $23,000 for a four-child family under programs like Arizona's, he asserts this represents "neighbor stealing." Ultimately, the host proposes replacing progressive income taxes with a 20% to 30% flat sales tax and urges recipients of excess vouchers to return the surplus rather than accept government theft. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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High Taxes Fund School Choice00:10:16
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Dave Owen says In Florida, we have a voucher system that allows you to take monies allotted to your kid and apply it to any school, should you take it.
Is that pilfering Egypt?
Gotcha.
Yeah.
So, I. Toby Sumter, I think, has said some really good things about this.
You're talking about school choice, is what it sounds like.
Arizona, I think, was the first state to go ahead and hop on the bandwagon of school choice.
It's definitely an improvement from what we have.
But in terms of is it objectively just by biblical standards?
No.
Because you're still taking money from other people for your kids.
So it'd be one thing, right?
So it'd be one thing if it was like, so I'm in the state of Texas.
We pay property taxes.
We don't have a state tax, praise God, but we have property taxes.
They're far too high.
I don't think we should have property taxes at all.
I don't think we should perpetually rent land from the government.
It's not the government's land.
That's ridiculous.
Essentially, you're always renting and you're never owning.
And 20 years from now, if you think, well, it's insignificant, it's not.
Because basically, by the time, let's say your average 30 year mortgage, and I think a Christian should strive as best they can to pay off their mortgage way faster than 30 years.
But.
Let's say it takes you 30 years to pay off your house.
Well, by the time you no longer have, you're no longer paying the interest and the principal because the house is bought and paid for.
By that point, your property taxes will likely be comparable to what your mortgage was.
Meaning, 30 years from buying a house, your property taxes are one of the smallest portions of your mortgage, right?
The principal is a big portion.
The next biggest portion is probably the interest, especially right now with high interest rates.
Then, of course, you've got a little bit towards homeowners insurance and things like that.
And then property taxes.
Well, let's say your mortgage is $2,000 a month and your property taxes are, let's say it's like $400, $400 of that $2,000.
30 years from now, when there's no more principal and the house is paid off, your property taxes will easily be $2,000.
You'll be paying, my point is, you will monthly be paying just as much as you were when the house wasn't even paid off once it actually is paid off.
So you're always renting.
It's still worth, I'm not saying so, therefore just rent and don't try to own property.
It's still worth owning property because you have an appreciating asset and you're not just building someone else's wealth, but you're building yours because that house can be sold.
If you're renting and you live there for 30 years and you move, you don't have a dime to show for it.
Whereas if you own the property, you can at least sell that property eventually and have an accruing, appreciating asset and build your wealth.
All that being said, the point is in Texas, we don't have a state tax.
The property taxes that we pay are high.
In my area, it's about 2.6, 2.7, 2.8%, all the way up to like the low threes, 3.2, 3.3%.
Depending, it's county by, it's not even county by county, it's like neighborhood by neighborhood.
It's even more particular than just a zip code.
I can be in the same zip code and in one neighborhood.
It has to do, part of it has to do with timing of development.
If it's an older neighborhood, over time the property taxes go down.
If it's a newer neighborhood, they usually have higher property taxes, kind of like an HOA, which is another theft in my opinion.
But all that being said, in Texas, on average, half of your property taxes go towards the public school.
So if you're wondering, what do my property taxes go towards?
The property taxes I don't feel like I should even have to pay?
Well, half of them go towards, if you're a Christian, the public school that you're not going to use.
Now, here's the deal though.
I pay probably, I don't know, give or take, this is a ballpark average, but probably close to maybe a little under, but close to $10,000 in a year in property taxes for the home that my family lives in and that we own.
Not we own in the sense we currently have a mortgage, but that we're working towards owning.
We're not renting.
$10,000 a year in property taxes.
About half of that goes towards.
Public schools, which means I pay about $5,000 to the public school system.
So $5,000 goes towards education.
If the government, if the policy of Texas was, you don't have to give a dime towards a public school unless you're using it.
And you now, it's not that we're going to give you money, right?
The government doesn't have any money for the record.
And when they say we're going to give you money, what they mean is we're going to let you keep your money or we're going to give you somebody else's money.
But rest assured, one thing's for certain the government doesn't have money.
They don't have money.
Even when they print more money, it causes inflation, which is stealing everybody else's money.
Inflation is theft, as Ronald Reagan once said.
So the government does not have money because it doesn't do anything.
The government does not produce or create anything.
So all the government does is it's just supposed to get bad guys, punish bad guys, and praise the good, the social good, the public good.
Our government does way more than that.
We have a bloated government.
And so essentially what happens is that they're taking.
Your money, and they're taking people who don't have kids, apart from the argument of whether or not you should have kids.
The point is, people who don't even have children, who have never used the public school system, they're having to pay towards the public school.
People who are retired, the kids have already gone through school, people who are 85 years old, paying towards public school.
What should happen, what would be fair, is nobody pays for public school.
And whatever amount you are paying towards public school, you just get to keep those taxes.
And then you can just personally use that.
So in my case, I'd have $5,000.
To go towards my kids' education.
Now, I currently have four children, and Lord willing, we may have some more.
But with four children, it's going to cost more than $5,000 a year for their education if we're going to put them in a private Christian school.
And so, all that being said, it's not going to cover the bill.
What school choice, I think, is essentially trying to do is it depends on which state, but from what I've heard, again, this is ballpark and some of the things that I've heard, and I may not be remembering exactly correctly, but I think it's like $6,000, $7,000 per kid.
And everybody gets it.
Right.
So, for school choice, instead of it going to, you know, covering the cost of your kid, what it would cost for your kid to go, you know, through their K through 12 education in the public school system, it's you're going to get, you know, seven grand per kid annually each year to pick whatever school you want.
You can put them in the public school and then the money goes towards that, or you can put them in a private school.
But the thing is, that family, let's say they have four kids like I do, and let's say that what they're paying.
In terms of their taxes that go towards education, they're paying, like me, about $5,000.
But if they have four kids, they're getting $28,000.
So the question is where is the extra $23,000, right?
So they have four kids and getting $7,000 each year a pop for each of their kids.
That's $28,000.
But they're only paying $5,000 in taxes towards education, but they're getting $28,000 back.
$28,000 minus $5,000 is $23,000.
Where does that $23,000 come from?
And the answer is your neighbor stealing.
The government takes it from somebody else who earned it.
Who worked for it and gives it to you, right?
1% of our population pays over 50%, well over 50% of taxes.
That's wrong.
And you might say, well, they can afford it.
They're rich.
That's envy.
You need to repent of that.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter if they can afford it.
What matters is what's just.
Yeah, taxing, you know, taxing, just for the record, you know, so what's my philosophy on taxation?
I think there should be a straight sales tax.
Not no income tax, and certainly not different brackets to where if you work harder, you get penalized even more.
That's unjust.
I don't think there should be any income tax, and definitely not a state tax and no property taxes.
Or I'm sorry, there should be a state tax, but there should be a federal tax.
I think it should be minimal.
And then each state could have a larger tax, but all of it would be through sales tax.
So every time you purchase something, you buy something, I would say, you know, again, this is ballpark, but it would have to be much higher than, you know, eight.
10 12%, what we currently have, because there'd be no other form of taxation, but it'd be well worth it.
We'd win in the long run.
But this is going to sound high, but just imagine you have no income tax, you have no social security, you have no property tax, you have nothing else.
This is your only tax.
It'd probably be about a 20 to 30% tax that you would pay on each purchase.
Every time you buy something, you go grocery shopping.
If you buy $200 of groceries, you end up paying $260, you know, $250 to $260, 50 to 60 bucks in taxes.
And then, with that, I would say that out of this 30% tax, about 10% of it should go to the federal government, a national tax, and 20% of it, so two thirds of it, would go to your state.
Stop Stealing Your Earnings00:04:00
And those are your taxes.
And that's what you're paying.
And if you're rich, here's the thing you could be a billionaire.
But if you're a billionaire and you don't live like a billionaire, you're content, which a lot of billionaires don't, you're content to live in a modest house and drive a modest car.
And live a modest life, then you're going to pay the same taxes as I do.
Because you're buying, in terms of your purchasing habits, it's a sales tax, you're buying the same amount of things.
You're not being taxed off of your earning.
You're not getting penalized, progressively penalized for your earning capability.
It's your spending.
Anyone who spends has to pay straight across the board sales tax all over the nation.
That would be the way to do it.
And if you did that, you'd have, trust me, you'd have a lot more money than you currently do because you're being stolen from all the time by the civil government.
And then you'd be able to use all that extra money to figure out what you're going to do to pay for your kids' education.
You'd be okay.
As it stands, what you're suggesting, you're not suggesting it, but what you're asking about, Dave Owen, is school choice.
I do think school choice is a step in the right direction, but it's the same basic principle.
Right now, what we do is we steal from people.
To pay for failing public schools.
School choice, what you're proposing or what you're asking about, is stealing from people, but then letting them choose which school to put them in.
So currently, we're going to steal from everyone.
The government is going to, is civil theft across the board.
We're going to steal from everyone and especially the rich.
We're going to progressively steal more.
The more successful you are, the harder you work, the more that you earn.
We're going to steal even more from you.
And then we're going to, with all this theft, the money that we stole, we're going to force you to put your kids in our failed system, the public school.
School choice as an alternative is saying we're going to keep the theft going.
We're going to still, we're going to continue stealing and progressively stealing, especially from the rich.
Progressively more, the harder you work, the more you earn, the more you're stolen from by Uncle Sam.
But at least with the money we're stealing, we will let you have some of that stolen money to put your kid in a good school of your choice instead of a bad school.
Should Christians use school choice?
If it's in your state and you have the option, yeah, I think you should.
But is it just?
Is it the ultimate solution?
No.
What we need to do is we just need to eventually work towards the state.
To stop stealing, to stop stealing.
And I would say, you know what, to be fair, I think it would be commendable.
I'd have to think through this a little bit more to give a solid, definitive answer.
But I'd say that you may even be morally bound to this, but at least, I'm not ready to say that yet.
I just need to give it more thought, but at least commendable.
I think commendable in the sight of God.
If you said, with that school choice, if you said, all right, how much was I paying in taxes?
How much did I pay?
Right?
So it's like I got four kids and I'm getting 28.
Thousand dollars a year for school choice.
How much did I pay for taxes?
Five.
Okay, I'll use five of that 28 towards the school of my choice.
But the rest of the money that I'm getting for school choice, I'm not going to use that because that money was taken from someone else by the government.
And I don't want to tell the government that it's okay to take my money, my neighbor's money, because I love my neighbor.
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