Affordability is under pressure across the U.S.—and the root causes are increasingly tied to policy choices.

In this episode of This Week’s Economy, we examine how persistent inflation, excessive federal spending, weak state tax reform, regulatory burdens, and supply constraints are driving higher costs and limiting opportunity for families and businesses.

The stakes are clear: when government expands and markets are distorted, the result is higher prices, reduced investment, and slower economic growth.

This episode provides a full economic health check—from CPI and jobs data to federal budgeting, property taxes, banking regulation, lawsuit costs, and emerging risks to future growth like data center restrictions.

The payoff is a roadmap for improving affordability: restore fiscal discipline, remove barriers to supply, and allow markets to allocate resources more efficiently.

🎧 Watch the full episode at the link above. 
📖 Read the full show notes: https://vanceginn.substack.com/p/ca1a37b7-7c59-4410-ba95-faa5c8dc2eb0

Subscribe, share, and explore more at vanceginn.com to stay informed and engaged.

Originally published at The Daily Economy. 

​​A property deed should mean ownership, not a renewable lease from the government. 

Yet that is what property taxes amount to in practice. A family can earn the income, buy the home, pay off the mortgage, maintain and improve the property, and still owe the government every year merely to retain possession of it. Miss enough payments, and the state can seize the property. That may be common. It is not normal in any morally serious sense.

That is why the standard economist’s line that property taxes are the “least bad tax” has always missed the deeper problem. The issue is not only economic efficiency in the abstract. It is whether a free society should tolerate a tax that permanently weakens ownership, punishes stewardship, ignores ability to pay, funds excessive spending, and treats citizens as perpetual tenants of the state. From a taxpayer’s perspective, and from a classical liberal, constitutional view of limited government, the answer should be no.

Our core humanity consists of responsibility, work, and the right to enjoy the fruits of honest labor. Property ownership flows from that principle. What people build, buy, improve, and care for should be theirs to keep. Property taxes invert that moral order. They place governments above the owner and convert secure ownership into conditional possession.

An Old Tax With a Long Record of Failure

Property taxes are not merely flawed in their current iteration. They are an old tax with a long history of administrative failure and political abuse.

In early America, taxing visible property was convenient because land and buildings were easier to identify than income or financial assets. But convenience is not justice. Over time, states expanded the old general property tax into a supposed tax on nearly all forms of wealth.

It sounded fair in theory. In practice, it became arbitrary and unworkable. As the economy modernized, wealth became more mobile, financial, and complex. Local assessors could not reliably find it, value it, or tax it evenly. Real estate, however, stayed put. So governments kept taxing what they could easily see and seize.

The history of property taxation in the United States shows the pattern clearly: what began as a supposedly broad and equal tax became increasingly narrow, uneven, and disconnected from any real measure of ability to pay. That problem never went away. Today’s system still leans heavily on immovable property because homes, land, and buildings cannot flee the jurisdiction.

In Texas, where I reside, the system became so contentious and inconsistent that lawmakers eventually created central appraisal districts and related review structures to standardize valuations. That did not make property taxes elegant. It merely professionalized the bureaucracy around appraisals, protests, hearings, and litigation.

Property taxes are not a simple tax. They are an elaborate administrative machine for guessing values and then fighting about them.

Property Taxes Violate the Meaning of Ownership

The core case against property taxes is moral rather than economic.

Property is the foundation of liberty because it protects the individual’s right to control what they earn, save, buy, and build through voluntary exchange. That right creates independence, responsibility, and the ability to form families, build communities, and leave a legacy. A government strong enough to tax ownership forever is a government already reaching beyond its proper role.

Defenders say property taxes help fund local services. Roads, police, and courts are not free. But that does not justify an annual tax on mere ownership. Governments exist to protect life, liberty, and property, not to establish a permanent claim on property once acquired. A tax that says, in effect, “pay us every year or lose your home” is not a neutral funding mechanism. It is legalized extortion.

That is why my research on securing ownership through property tax reform starts from a different place than much of the standard literature. The usual conversation begins with the government budget and asks how to preserve it. I begin with the taxpayer and ask what kind of tax system best protects ownership, respects the constitutional limits of government, and lets people prosper. On that test, property taxes fail badly.

The Tax Is Inefficient, Costly, and Detached From the Ability to Pay

Property taxes are often defended as stable and efficient. Stable for government, maybe. Efficient for taxpayers, not even close.

They require appraisal districts, valuation models, protest procedures, review boards, appeals, compliance staff, and legal disputes. That is a costly way to raise revenue. A broad consumption tax on final goods and services is not perfect, but it is generally more transparent and less administratively invasive than a recurring tax on ownership filtered through appraisal bureaucracies. And to be clear, the better alternative is not a value-added tax (VAT). The superior choice is a tax on final consumption, not a tax layered throughout production chains, and not a tax piled on top of property taxes forever.

Property taxes are also disconnected from the ability to pay. Income taxes apply when income is earned. Sales taxes apply when purchases are made. Property taxes arrive whether someone got a raise, lost a job, retired, or suffered a financial setback. A rising appraisal does not mean a family has more cash. It just means the government sees a larger tax base. That is why retirees and fixed-income households get squeezed so hard. They can be asset-rich on paper and cash-poor in real life.

Milton Friedman and many other economists in the free-market tradition preferred taxes on consumption over taxes that punish productive activity, investment, or saving. Property taxes do exactly that: they punish ownership itself. They are not neutral. They discourage improvement, raise the cost of holding property, and hit people for simply staying put.

Highly Regressive in the Real World

The standard defense of property taxes also downplays their regressive nature in practice.

Lower- and middle-income households spend a greater share of their budgets on housing. Renters bear a significant portion of the burden through higher rents. Businesses pass along property tax costs through higher prices, lower wages, and reduced investment. And assessments can be regressive, meaning lower-value homes may bear a higher effective tax rate than more expensive properties.

Then there are the behavioral distortions. Property taxes create lock-in effects, where people stay in homes that no longer fit their needs because moving means a new assessment and often a higher bill, driving up prices for everyone else. They also create push-out effects, in which seniors and lower-income residents are forced from homes they have already paid off because taxes rise too quickly for them to absorb. At the same time, they make it harder for people to purchase a home.

That is a rotten combination. It punishes staying, moving, and buying. All things that typical regressivity calculations cannot easily compute, thereby making property taxes much more regressive than those calculations suggest.

Stable Revenue for Government Means Endless Revenue for Government

One reason property taxes remain so popular with officials is that they are a wonderfully stable way to finance bigger government.

That stability is often praised as a virtue. But stable revenue for the government is not the same thing as stability for households. It simply means politicians have a dependable stream of money to keep spending. Local officials can hold nominal rates steady while appraisals rise and collections swell, then pretend they never raised taxes. That is not transparency. It is camouflage.

The real driver of the property tax problem is not undertaxation. It is overspending. 

This is why so many so-called reforms disappoint. Levy limits, appraisal caps, homestead exemptions, and rebates may slow the growth of the burden for a while, but without strict spending restraint, they do not change the underlying trajectory. Kansas and Texas have both tried versions of these limitations, and property taxes remain a major problem because spending has continued to grow and loopholes have remained.

Levy Limits Can Help, but Only if They Are Truly Tough

This is where the debate needs more honesty.

Yes, property tax growth can be limited with levy caps. But most caps are too weak, too narrow, or too easy to bypass. A serious limit should apply to all property, with no carveouts, no games, and no exemptions that merely shift burdens around.

The right standard is simple: zero percent levy growth in all property taxes collected unless a supermajority of voters explicitly approves more. Even then, truth-in-taxation rules should require that rates fall automatically when values rise, unless voters say otherwise.

That is a good guardrail. But even a strict levy limit mostly slows the growth of property taxes. It does not reduce them meaningfully on its own. People do not want a slower climb up the hill. They want the burden reduced. That is where my budget surplus buydown approach comes in.

The Best Path: Spend Less, Use Surpluses, Buy Down the Tax

Real property tax reduction should start with a hard spending limit below population growth plus inflation for state and local governments, not as a target but as a ceiling.

When government spending grows more slowly than the average taxpayer’s ability to pay, as measured by population growth plus inflation, budget surpluses emerge. Those surpluses should not be used for new programs, bigger bureaucracies, or one-time political goodies. They should automatically go to reducing property tax rates.

This surplus-driven buydown is a sustainable path to durable relief. It is predictable, pro-growth, and fiscally disciplined. It allows taxes to come down without sudden budget shocks. And unlike gimmicks, it works because it directly reduces the government’s claim on property.

At the state level, the first priority should be school district maintenance-and-operations (M&O) property taxes, because states already control most school finance systems. That is the obvious place to start.

States should use surpluses generated above strict spending caps to buy down school district M&O rates until they reach zero. That can also support a transition toward truly universal education savings accounts, where money follows students rather than being routed through district monopolies. 

Yes, state constitutions still generally require some form of schooling system, and that language is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. But nothing in that reality requires permanent dependence on school district property taxes.

Local governments should use the same surplus-buydown model to reduce city, county, and special district property taxes until they reach zero as well. The logic is the same: spend less, generate surpluses, and use those surpluses to compress rates downward over time.

Could this be accelerated? Yes. States and localities could also broaden the sales tax base to include more final goods and services, and even raise the rate if needed, to replace property taxes more quickly.

But the key is not the exact mix. The key is spending limits. Without strict limits, any tax swap just funds the same bloated government through a different collection method.

The Goal Should Be Elimination

My argument runs counter to much of the conventional wisdom because it starts with the taxpayer, not the tax collector. From a constitutional perspective, the government’s role is limited. It should protect rights, not build endless revenue structures around violating them. 

From a pro-growth perspective, income taxes are more destructive and should be eliminated where possible. But after income taxes are gone, property taxes should be next. They are more coercive than a sales tax on final consumption, less connected to the ability to pay, more administratively wasteful, and more corrosive to secure ownership.

That is why more states are now reconsidering them. As my work shows, lawmakers and commissions in Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, and Wyoming are debating reforms ranging from modest relief to full elimination. They should aim higher than temporary relief.

Property taxes are arcane. They are immoral. They are inefficient. They are highly regressive once all effects are counted. They fund excessive spending and never let people fully own what they have earned. A free society should not settle for trimming them at the margins forever. It should start reducing them now through strict spending limits and surplus buydowns, and it should put in place a serious path to eliminating them for good.

Taxes are a certainty—but the structure of the tax system is a policy choice.

In Episode 159 of This Week’s Economy, I explore how America’s current tax code affects economic growth, household finances, and long-term opportunity. As Tax Day approaches, this episode takes a step back to evaluate whether our system is helping people prosper—or quietly holding them back.

We cover the hidden costs of taxation, the importance of simplicity and broad-based reform, and why better tax policy—paired with spending restraint—is essential for sustained economic growth.

🎧 Watch now and subscribe
📩 Show notes: vanceginn.substack.com

Originally published on Substack. 

New York City’s latest budget fight should grab the attention of lawmakers across the country. When spending grows without guardrails, taxpayers become the contingency plan.
​
NYC Mayor Mamdani and City Hall is floating a 9.5% property-tax rate hike projected to raise about $3.7 billion in FY2027 if state lawmakers don’t approve higher taxes on wealthy residents and corporations, according to the city’s own FY2027 preliminary budget release.

The message is straightforward: allow new “tax the rich” authority, or brace for a major property-tax increase.
That’s clever politics. It’s poor economics.

The same budget documents show a $5.4 billion two-year gap, even after announced savings and revised revenue projections.

The plan also leans on nearly $1 billion from a rainy-day reserve in FY2026 and hundreds of millions more from a retiree health trust in FY2027 to technically balance the books. Those are temporary tools being used to manage a structural budget imbalance.

This isn’t a revenue problem; it’s a spending problem.

Property taxes are not some neutral lever. They don’t land on “the system.” They land on people. When local reporting notes that higher property taxes will flow into higher rents and higher living costs, that’s not partisan commentary. It’s how cost pass-through works.

Landlords incorporate higher tax bills into rents. Commercial property owners build those costs into prices. Small businesses raise fees to stay afloat.

Even families who don’t own homes feel it.

The framing of “tax the rich or raise property taxes” creates a false choice. Either way, the private economy gets squeezed to sustain an expanding government. And when the baseline for spending keeps rising, the tax debate becomes permanent.

This pattern isn’t unique to New York. It’s a common model in local government:

1. Expand recurring spending commitments.
2. Assume steady or optimistic revenue growth.
3. When projections soften, propose tax increases.

Property taxes are especially attractive to local officials because they’re stable and difficult to avoid. You can relocate income or consumption more easily than real estate. That makes property taxes politically convenient. It also makes them a disaster economically.

For lawmakers, the lesson is simple: if spending growth isn’t limited, taxes will climb. It’s not ideological. It’s arithmetic. When expenditures grow faster than population growth and inflation over time, the gap compounds.
Eventually, officials argue that tax hikes are unavoidable to protect “essential services.” But what’s essential is rarely defined with discipline.

A more durable approach would focus on structural reforms:

• Cut spending and enact growth limits of less than population growth plus inflation.
• Stop relying on one-time reserves to cover recurring costs.
• Conduct independent, private sector efficiency audits of programs and redirect funds toward measurable outcomes or even better back to taxpayers through lower tax rates.
• Reduce regulatory barriers that drive up housing and business costs, allowing supply and competition to relieve pressure instead of tax increases.

Property taxes also raise a deeper concern about ownership.

When tax bills rise year after year to sustain ever-expanding budgets, ownership becomes conditional. You may hold the deed, but your ability to remain in your home depends on your capacity to keep pace with government growth. That’s not a stable foundation for long-term prosperity.

There’s also a governance issue. Tax authority is supposed to be transparent and accountable.

When executives frame tax hikes as inevitable unless other governments approve alternative levies, accountability becomes blurred. The debate shifts from “How large should government be?” to “Which tax should rise?”

That’s the wrong starting point.

New York City’s budget discussion is a reminder that affordability challenges often stem from fiscal policy choices, not market forces. Before asking taxpayers for billions more, local leaders should ask whether spending commitments have outpaced sustainable growth.

Lawmakers elsewhere would be wise to pay attention. Without clear fiscal guardrails, every government eventually faces the same crossroads: expand taxes or draw down reserves.

The better path is spending discipline now, not pressure later. When spending has limits, taxpayers aren’t treated as the fallback option. And when government lives within sustainable growth, families and businesses have room to prosper.
​
Because in the end, if spending has no ceiling, taxpayers’ wallets become the ceiling. And they feel the pressure first.

​How property taxes undermine homeownership—and what states and localities can do to fix it.

Affordability is a major issue for voters. Families are feeling squeezed by higher housing costs, rising insurance premiums, and everyday expenses that often outpace income. For many Americans, the question is no longer just whether they can buy a home, but whether they can afford to keep the one they are in.

Across the country, states are beginning to confront one overlooked driver of the housing affordability crisis: property taxes. 

From proposals to cap assessments to more ambitious efforts to reduce or even eliminate property taxes, lawmakers are reexamining a tax that quietly raises housing costs annually.

In This Week’s Economy, we’ll look at how property taxes undermine true homeownership, why they fall hardest on those least able to pay, and what meaningful reform would require if states and localities want to restore affordability and let people prosper. 

Check out the show notes at ⁠vanceginn.substack.com⁠ and more information on my work at Ginn Economic Consulting at ⁠vanceginn.com⁠. Thank you for watching. Please subscribe and share now!

Originally published on Substack. 

​​If you want a clear snapshot of what’s contributing to Texas’ affordability crisis, look no further than property tax bills.

A recent Houston Chronicle article by EricaGrieder highlighted just how punishing these taxes have become in fast-growing suburbs of Houston.

​Cities like Conroe, Pearland, and The Woodlands now rank among the highest in property-tax burdens in the nation when measured as a share of household income.

In Conroe, homeowners pay a median property tax bill of nearly $5,900 on a median household income just over $114,000—5.2% of income. Pearland isn’t far behind near 5%. Even high-income areas like The Woodlands face bills approaching $9,000 a year.

This isn’t just a Texas problem, but it is becoming a Texas test. And the verdict is clear: property taxes are harsh, unworkable, and incompatible with prosperity.

Why Property Taxes Are So Harmful
​
Property taxes don’t rise automatically because “the market” failed. They rise because local governments choose to spend more, then set the tax rate to collect more taxes that cover spending.

Local taxing entities—school districts, cities, counties, and special districts—set tax rates every year. Those rates are applied to the county’s appraised values that tend to rise quickly over time, especially in growing communities. Even when officials claim they’ve “lowered the tax rate,” it is often not enough to offset higher appraisals when spending continues to grow.

In other words, appraisals help set the base—but spending decisions determine the bill and the tax rate to get there.

That’s why property taxes are uniquely destructive. All taxes are destructive but some more than others. Families can budget for purchases and sales taxes. They can plan their work or leisure around income taxes. But property tax payments are due regardless of income, job loss, or retirement—driven by government budgets, not household choice.

Data from SmartAsset confirm this reality nationwide.

Their 2025 study shows Texas ranks among the states with the highest effective property-tax burdens, a point echoed by the Tax Foundation.

This tax system punishes homeownership. It turns ownership into something closer to renting from the government.

The Moral Case Against Property Taxes

There’s also a deeper issue here—one that often gets ignored.

Property taxes violate the basic principle of property rights.

If you must keep paying the government simply to remain in your home, then you don’t truly own it. And for seniors on fixed incomes, young families stretching to buy their first home, or small businesses operating on thin margins, that’s not just inefficient—it’s unjust.

These taxes are fueling the affordability crisis created by years of bad policy: excessive spending, loose fiscal rules, and governments that grow faster than the taxpayers’ ability to pay for it.

Families didn’t create this problem. Government did.

A Responsible Path to Elimination

The good news is that eliminating property taxes can be done responsibly—without gimmicks, carve-outs, or distortions like ever-larger homestead exemptions, flawed appraisal caps, or arbitrary age freezes, which have been thrown around by key leaders in Texas.

The most realistic path forward currently is likely a surplus buydown strategy, paired with strict spending limits, which Gov. Abbott rightfully made a local spending limit the number one item in his property tax plan.

Here’s how it works:

• At the state level, use budget surpluses—generated by economic growth, not tax hikes—above a strict spending limit to permanently compress (“buy down”) tax rates and eliminate school district M&O property taxes, starting immediately and continuing until they reach zero.
• At the local level, cities, counties, and special purpose districts should adopt the same approach simultaneously, using surpluses above the state’s population growth plus inflation to eliminate their property taxes over time. In places that can’t, they should consider refining in spending to reduce property taxes, join a compact with nearby localities for services and funds, and consider ways for more growth in a sales tax base to eliminate them.
• Rollback rates must become true no-new-revenue rates, and exceeding them should require a supermajority vote of voters, not politicians, on a uniform election date.

The key is discipline. None of this works without strict limits on spending growth, ideally capped below population growth plus inflation. Spending is the ultimate driver of property taxes—and the ultimate burden of government.

What About Other Options?

There is a faster, more comprehensive option: redesigning the tax system by broadening the sales-tax base without a VAT while keeping the state-local sales tax rate competitive, potentially eliminating property taxes much sooner than the surplus buy-down approach. The state’s sales tax rate would just cover the school district property taxes and local governments’ sales tax rates would cover their property taxes where possible.

My research finds that we could be at a state-local sales tax rate of at most 8.75% with a broader sales tax base from 8.25% today to eliminate school district M&O property taxes.

Any additional sales tax revenue collected by local governments at their lower rates from the broader sales tax base and dynamic growth must go to reducing their property taxes through tax rate cuts.

This allows lower local property taxes, then local governments can use the surplus buydown approach to eliminate the rest, where possible.

Done correctly, dynamic growth effects and spending restraint should lower the overall tax burden and deliver immediate property ownership to all Texans.

In my view, this redesign approach is stronger.

But politically, the surplus buydown seems the most viable path today—and importantly, it still moves us in the right direction.

Either way, the non-negotiable principle remains the same: less spending, not higher taxes.

States like Florida are beginning to explore similar pro-growth approaches, recognizing that affordability and competitiveness depend on limiting government’s footprint—not expanding it.

The Bottom Line

Property taxes are not a law of nature. They are a policy choice.

Texas can lead by choosing a better path—one that respects ownership, restores affordability, and lets families keep more of what they earn.

Eliminating property taxes won’t solve every problem overnight, but it would remove one of the biggest obstacles standing between Texans and prosperity.

The question isn’t whether we can afford to do this.

It’s whether we can afford not to.

Originally published on Substack. 

A recent post on X from Barrett Lindberg made the rounds, warning Texans that eliminating property taxes is “a mathematical lie.” His thread paints a dramatic picture: Texas balanced on a “two-legged stool,” forced to choose between sky-high sales taxes or deep state control over local communities. According to him, property-tax elimination is not just unrealistic—it’s dangerous.

Here’s Barrett’s analysis if you haven’t seen his post on X.

He makes good observations about the structure of Texas finances, the role of local governments, and the mechanics of school finance. But the conclusions are ultimately flawed because they miss the most important point: the problem is not taxation—it’s spending. And spending at every level of Texas government is growing far faster than Texans’ ability to pay.
​
I said as much in my response.

Barrett is right that you can’t “delete $81 billion” of property taxes without replacing it. What he overlooks is that Texas doesn’t need to replace every dollar—it needs to spend less!

That’s the heart of the issue. And the only way to build a future of real homeownership and prosperity is to confront spending directly, not hide behind doomsday math. That’s the way in Washington, but shouldn’t be the way in Texas.

The Real Problem: Overspending, Not Undertaxation
​
Local property taxes in Texas now exceed $80 billion per year, up roughly 70 percent from 2015 to 2024, while population growth plus inflation rose only 50 percent. That’s not the “two-legged stool” Barrett describes. That’s a spending stool whose legs keep growing while Texans keep shrinking under the weight.

And it’s not just schools. Cities, counties, hospital districts, appraisal districts, and special taxing districts have been expanding their budgets year after year. When government gets bigger, property taxes follow—no matter what relief gimmicks lawmakers pass.

This is why homestead exemptions don’t solve anything. They don’t reduce spending; they simply shift the tax burden from one group of taxpayers to another.

If Texas doesn’t restrain spending, then no tax structure—three-legged or two-legged or twenty-legged—will ever feel stable.

The Moral Failure: Texans Shouldn’t Have to Rent Their Homes from Government

Property taxes are not just inefficient; they are immoral. They violate the basic principle that individuals should control the value they create and the property they acquire through voluntary exchange. Once a homeowner pays off the mortgage, that home should be theirs—secure, not subject to a perpetual ransom demanded by local government.

No tax that allows the government to seize your home for nonpayment should ever be defended as “good policy.”

Property taxes are also highly regressive. The Texas Comptroller’s Suits Index shows that property taxes fall hardest on lower- and middle-income families. Meanwhile, renters pay property taxes in their rent, and small businesses pay them through commercial leases. The economic burden is everywhere, even where the tax bill isn’t.

Barrett is correct that property taxes hit high-value properties. But he ignores the enormous harm to families trying to build wealth or retire in dignity. If the state’s goal is prosperity, mobility, and ownership, property taxes are the most anti-ownership tax imaginable.

For more on this, check out my property tax research archive.

The Economic Path Forward: Sustainable Budgeting

Now to the economics. Barrett warns that replacing property taxes would require a 20 percent sales tax. But that’s only true under one assumption: that government continues spending at today’s levels.

Texas doesn’t have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem.​

The real solution is simple: adopt a sustainable budget—lower spending now and a growth limit that keeps state and local spending increasing slower than population growth plus inflation thereafter. When spending stays below that threshold, surpluses naturally emerge. Those surpluses should be used to permanently buy down school district property taxes through rate compression—the first and largest component of the levy.

Texas already dipped its toes into this model with tax-rate compression, which Barrett praises. But compression alone is not a long-term strategy because it still allows local spending to grow faster than the average taxpayer’s ability to pay.
The sustainable budget model is a short-run and long-run strategy.

If lawmakers embraced a strict spending limit and used every surplus dollar to buy down school district maintenance and operations property tax rates, Texas could eliminate school district property taxes quickly. Cities, counties, and other local covenants could do the same by holding spending below the limit and using their own surpluses to ratchet down their rates.

No 20 percent sales tax (this is fearmongering). No centralization (except school district funding which the state already controls). No fiscal cliffs (boom and bust cycles). Just disciplined budgeting (like many families).

The 21st-Century Solution: A Single, Simple Sales Tax

Barrett mocks the idea of a sales-tax-based system. But he misses the economic truth: broad-based consumption taxes are the least burdensome tax structure available.

Texas already relies heavily on sales taxes on final goods and services, but they’re riddled with exemptions. Clean up the base, remove carveouts, and modernize it for a 21st-century economy, and Texas could support core services with far less distortion and far more transparency.

This is the model I’ve written about for years:

• Sustainable budgeting with less spending and strict spending limits
• Broad, flat sales tax on final goods and services
• No income tax
• No property tax
• No other taxes or fees

A one-stool system—not the wobbly two-legged one Barrett describes. Think bar stool. Think barber stool. Sturdy. Simple. Hard to kick over.

What Texas Needs Now: Courage

Barrett’s final claim is that elimination “sounds like freedom, but it’s centralization.” What centralizes power is a finance system built on runaway spending and endless property taxes that force Texans into permanent dependence. What decentralizes power is letting Texans own their homes outright and forcing governments to live within their means.

Texas doesn’t need bigger taxes. It needs smaller government. It doesn’t need “rate compression forever.” It needs a path to elimination. It doesn’t need fear about the math. It needs courage, conviction, and leadership that trusts Texans more than bureaucracy.

The truth is simple:

Texas can eliminate property taxes.

Texas should eliminate property taxes.

And if policymakers embrace sustainable budgeting, Texas will eliminate them.
​
Freedom begins when government spends less so Texans can prosper more.