January 7, 2025 • 49 mins
In this episode, Toby discusses the role of higher education in South Dakota, questioning who should attend college and who might benefit more from alternative paths such as technical schools or entering the workforce directly. He emphasizes the need for educational reform, particularly in high schools, to better prepare students for life after graduation.
Additionally, he addresses the economic implications of property taxes and advocates for their abolition to stimulate growth and support for small businesses and individuals.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
What an amazing place we live, south Dakota.
My mission statement is simpleTo re-energize the true
conservative values of SouthDakota.
You're listening to Toby DodenUnfiltered.
Welcome to Episode 8 of TobyDoden Unfiltered.
(00:23):
I am your host, toby Doden, andwe are going to talk about a
couple of really, really funtopics today.
Some may see it mildlycontroversial, but it certainly
is not intended that way.
In fact, I'm looking forward tohaving a discussion today
largely about higher educationin South Dakota, specifically
college, our state universities,our technical colleges.
To have any discussion todaylargely about higher education
(00:43):
in South Dakota, specificallycollege, our state universities,
our technical colleges and,quite frankly, who should be
attending these schools and whoshouldn't be attending these
schools.
And so, right off the top, Ithink it's really important to
point out this fact I'm fromAberdeen.
(01:05):
Obviously, we have a stateuniversity in Aberdeen, northern
State University.
Northern State University is areally big part of the Aberdeen
community.
It's been a part of theAberdeen community for as long
as I can remember and wellbefore that.
They've got good athleticprograms, they've got some
(01:26):
really good educational programsand largely they have graduated
a lot of very successful peopleover the years.
Same thing with SDSU, dakotaState, usd, etc.
Etc.
But what I want to talk aboutspecifically today is who
actually should be going tocollege, who actually should be
(01:48):
going to technical schools andwho shouldn't be going to any
higher education at all.
And so, before I get into that,I want to point out very, very
clearly because there's alwayssome negative people that want
to twist around the things thatI say and try to make it seem as
(02:09):
though I was, you know,indicating something I wasn't
actually indicating.
And so, listen, I am notanti-college.
Rather, it's the opposite.
I am pro-college.
I am pro-college for youngadults that need college to
(02:30):
obtain their career goals andobjectives.
I am anti-college for peoplewho know they shouldn't be going
to college but were persuadedto do so by people around them.
I'm talking about guidancecounselors, teachers, parents,
(02:53):
community leaders.
I was one of those individuals.
In 1993, I graduated from GrotonHigh School.
I would say I had a veryordinary junior high and high
school experience.
I was in band, I was in sports,I did all the fun stuff every
(03:14):
other kid would do.
I wasn't a great student.
I didn't apply myself.
I was bored when I was in class.
My mind was always driftingsomewhere.
Oftentimes it was trying tofigure out ways to start little
businesses and be anentrepreneur even at that age.
And so, you know, I did justenough to get by in high school
(03:39):
and I spent more time creativethinking and doing things
outside the box, and that didnot fit the platform of
education that was afforded me.
And so I had two parents thatdidn't go to college, which was
very common for people in theirgeneration.
(04:00):
They were born in the 40s.
A lot of people born back inthe 20s and 30s and 40s and 50s
didn't attend college, and so,like many married couples of
their age and their time, theyswore that their children would
have a better education thanthey did and they would send
their kids to college.
And so I had three oldersiblings quite a bit older
(04:22):
actually.
If you want to take this littleclip and send it to one of my
siblings, that would make mevery happy.
They're a lot older than me,but anyway, my mom and dad very
strongly encouraged my sister,my brother and my youngest
sister to go to college, andthey did.
All three of went to college.
(04:44):
They got great degrees andlargely, you know, two of the
three have had great careers inthe degree that they studied in
college One of my siblings notso much Nice career just has
very little, if anything to dowith what he studied in college.
(05:05):
And so by the time I was goinginto my senior in high school,
my parents were, like you'regoing to college.
And I'm like, but I don't wantto go to college.
And so I would go to school, myguidance counselor would say
Toby, you have to go to college,it's the only path for
successful people.
And then every teacher wouldtell me the same thing Toby, I
(05:26):
heard you're not going tocollege, I think you need to go
to college, it's the only pathfor successful people.
And then I would, you'd be outin the community and I would run
into somebody in the communityand they'd say hey, toby, I
heard you're not going to go tocollege, I think you should go
to college, it's the only pathfor success.
And then I would get home atnight my parents would tell me
the same thing.
And it was this vicious cycleover and over and over.
(05:48):
So what did I do?
I enrolled to Minot StateUniversity in Minot, north
Dakota, and I went to college.
And I remember unloading mylittle hatchback car, getting
everything moved into my dormroom, and the very night I moved
in thinking I should not behere.
This is an utter waste of time.
(06:09):
It's a waste of the school'sresources.
It's a waste of my resources,it's a waste of my classmates'
time, because I'm taking upspace, time and energy that I
know I don't want, need or willuse in any way, shape or form.
So this has been going on fordecades, right, and so there's a
(06:33):
lot of people like me that,because of institutional
persuasion, end up attending afour-year university, end up
attending a four-year university, knowing full well the odds of
(06:53):
them actually graduating fromthat university and or actually
using that specific degree is avery, very low percentage, and
so I wanted to look into thefacts and the data a little bit
about this.
Again, this is South Dakotaspecific.
The South Dakota stateuniversities have a six year
(07:16):
graduation rate of 52%.
One of our state universitiesgraduation rate is below 50%, at
48%.
Now, this is not an indictmenton the universities.
This is an indictment on themass amount of people that are
attending these universities,that should not have been
(07:36):
attending these universities.
If you can look me square inthe eye and say half of the
people no-transcript, it doesn'tmake any sense.
(08:03):
So now, are there underlyingissues as to why half of the
people aren't graduating withinsix years?
Listen, I'm sure there are lotsof other reasons.
It's not just because maybethey shouldn't have enrolled,
maybe they enrolled in the wrongprogram, maybe they didn't get
the right aid.
I mean, there's a lot ofreasons.
I understand that.
But if we're going to makecommon sense conclusions based
(08:28):
on those facts that 48% of thepeople that enroll in college in
South Dakota don't graduatewithin six years, we have to at
least acknowledge that in largepart it's because of people that
are getting persuaded by theirschools, their guidance
counselors, their teachers andtheir parents to go to school
(08:49):
when they probably had betteroptions.
And so next I wanted to dig intothe income.
I wanted to see the individualsthat enrolled in a state
university in South Dakota andsubsequently graduated from that
(09:11):
university.
What is the median annualincome for those individuals?
And I wanted to compare whatthe income is to the individuals
that either didn't graduatefrom college or didn't attend
college at all.
(09:31):
Because largely this is theargument that a lot of people
have made when you say you know,should we be giving young
adults that are just graduatinghigh school more alternative
options to four-yearuniversities that might fit
their skill set better.
(09:52):
Moving forward, they point tothe income disparity between
college graduates andnon-college graduates.
And yes, if you just Googleaverage income, whether it's
South Dakota or nationally,average income of college
(10:15):
graduates versus average incomeof non-college graduates,
there's a pretty good disparity.
But what they don't tell you,because it doesn't fit their
narrative, is that when theylook at income specifically for
the non-college graduates, right, everybody that doesn't go to
college gets calculated intotheir average salary.
(10:38):
Right, that includes peoplewith cognitive abilities.
Right, like there, it's just afact.
There is a subset of thepopulation that has a low IQ,
that cannot learn at acollegiate level, that, quite
frankly, many of which can'tlearn at a high school level,
right, some of it's God-given.
(10:59):
Physical disabilities, right,intellectual and development
disabilities, mental healthissues, chronic health issues.
And, let's be real, like somepeople just have a lack of
desire.
You can call it laziness.
The nice way to say it is lackof desire.
(11:22):
There's a lot of people outthere that just don't have the
desire to be high achievers orhigh learners or high earners,
for that point.
There's a lot of really, reallysimple people that are happy,
just, you know, heading to work,getting off, having a beer and
going home, and there's nothingwrong with that Like, like.
That is America right.
(11:43):
That like and this is largely myproblem with the attitudes of
some educational elitists isthey only think their
contemporaries are educated,people that are highly educated,
maybe their vocabulary islarger, maybe they know certain
(12:06):
facts that the ordinary peopledon't know, but at the end of
the day, most of it isnonsensical when it comes to
being a productive citizen and agood team member wherever you
work.
So if we were to eliminate alot of the really, really low
(12:27):
earners because of a lack ofdesire, because of physical
limitations, mental limitations,cognitive limitations, if we
eliminate all them and justfocus on the group of people
like me that fit where I fit,like I, I've always had a desire
to be a higher earner and andand I've always had a high motor
(12:50):
and I've always had this driveto get better and better and
better and learn new things.
But I didn't need the collegeuniversity, I didn't need
liberal professors for me todevelop into the person I am
today, and there's a lot of.
(13:11):
There's millions and millions,tens of millions of Americans
and dozens and dozens ofthousands of South Dakotans that
fit into my category.
If we were to just look at thatgroup's pay, I'll bet you it
would be very similar and insome cases, much higher than the
(13:33):
average pay from professionalsthat are graduating from college
.
And again, because I knowthere's going to be that guy out
there who's going to say ohToby's anti-college.
No, sir, I am not.
I am pro-college.
Many, many of my contemporaries, people I know, have gone to
college, had great careers.
I interact with people everyday that have college degrees
(13:57):
that couldn't do what they didwithout their college degrees.
So don't you dare try topigeonhole me as anti-college.
I am simply anti-college forpeople in high school that we
know you can tell at a mile awayand I was one of them should
never step foot on a collegecampus.
And so what are the answers?
(14:19):
What are the answers?
Well, I don't think it's thatcomplicated, honestly.
First off, we need a massiveoverhaul of the junior high and
high school curriculum in SouthDakota state schools High
schools, I'm talking about, highschools I'm talking about there
(14:46):
should be mandatory personalfinance classes, consistently
yes, from junior high all theway through high school.
There should be careerexploration programs, robust
career exploration programs.
There should be partnershipswith local businesses for real
world experiences.
High schools should be heldaccountable for preparing
(15:12):
students for post-high schoollife, not just college, and that
is where our high schools havefailed, and they've been failing
for decades.
It's not the teacher's fault.
It's not the administration'sfault.
This is a systemic issue and itneeds to be changed from the
(15:32):
top down.
Ask yourself this question howmany actual life skills were you
taught in high school?
Were you taught how to balancea checkbook?
Were you taught how to manageyour time?
Were you taught how to buildteams?
(15:54):
Were you taught the basicprinciples of how to start your
own business?
Did you learn sales techniques?
Did you learn any psychology?
Did you learn how to read andinterpret what people are
telling you based on their bodylanguage and their eyes?
(16:17):
These are things that people inthe private sector business
people.
These are things that people inthe private sector business
people.
These are things that we learnas we go out through life.
What an advantage it would havebeen to have learned that in
high school.
They had home ec class, but itwasn't mandatory.
(16:37):
Why wouldn't we want to teach 16, 17, and 8-year-olds that are
about to go off on their owneither to college or into the
workforce.
Why wouldn't we want to spendless time in the depressing
classroom and more time doinghands-on, real-world, real-life
(17:00):
training and mentoring with ourteens In Northeast South Dakota?
Let me give you an example ofwhat's wrong with our junior
high and high school program asfar as their inability to mentor
(17:21):
and train young teenagers aboutlife skills In Northeast South
Dakota.
My group is about as successfulas any group of businesses in
Northeast South Dakota.
We have a lot of verysuccessful businesses.
We have dozens and dozens anddozens of very successful
(17:44):
leaders in our group, a groupthat I lead.
Not one single time, not asingle time, have I been
contacted by a high school tocome in and talk to young men
(18:04):
and women who are in the sameposition.
I was 33 years ago when I madethe wrong decision and spent two
and a half years of my life andtens of thousands of dollars in
student loan debt on themistake that I made by listening
(18:25):
to people around me to go tocollege.
Not one time.
So if our schools and our statewas serious about teaching our
young students to prepare themfor life, why wouldn't they
bring people like me and peoplefrom all over the state people
(18:46):
in my group.
Why wouldn't they bring them inas positive role models?
Because there's so manysystemic issues right now and
again.
It's not going to change withone school.
It's not going to change withone guidance counselor.
It's not going to change withone principal school.
It's not going to change withone guidance counselor.
It's not going to change withone principal.
This is something our entirestate needs to look at.
Is a complete and massiveoverhaul of our junior, high and
(19:11):
high school curriculum.
Now, I realize it's a smallsample size, right?
The Doden Investment Group, youknow, I don't even know maybe
around 20 operating businesses.
We have a lot of employees.
I have, I think, our largestcompany employs about 120 to 130
(19:35):
people.
I'm not going to share specificdetails because it's nobody's
business, but I will tell youthis Out of my entire group of
businesses, there is only fourpositions that require a college
degree.
Four One's an attorney.
(19:59):
The rest are accounting Four.
Well, what do the income rangeslook like?
Way better than the average.
You look at the medianhousehold income in South Dakota
, which I believe is around$67,000.
(20:20):
The median individual income, Ibelieve, is around $40,000,
right, a large percentage of thepeople that work in my group
are in the top 25 percentile ofwage earners in South Dakota.
I have dozens and dozens ofteam members in our group Again
(20:43):
small sample size DotonInvestment Group.
I have dozens and dozens ofpeople who are in the top 10% of
wage earners in South Dakota,and I've got a bunch that are in
the top five, all the way up to1% of wage earners in South
Dakota A lot of highlycompensated individuals that
(21:04):
never spent a nickel going tocollege.
And so, again, I implore you tosee this for what it is.
It is a pro-college celebration.
Teachers, cpas, doctors,attorneys, engineers,
psychologists, psychiatrists areI mean, I can just go on and on
(21:32):
and on.
Hundreds and hundreds andhundreds and hundreds of very
noble careers require a collegedegree, and those people should
be celebrated for accomplishingthat task.
But do you know who should alsobe equally celebrated?
The 18 and 19-year-olds that godirectly into the workforce and
take jobs that desperately needto be done, and 18 and
(21:56):
19-year-olds that are choosingto go into mentorships and
apprenticeships for skilledtrades positions that are going
to eventually pay them more than95% of the college educated
people in South Dakota.
We have skilled labor positionsin our group that are making
(22:19):
over $100,000 a year in ourgroup that are making over
$100,000 a year.
There are skilled tradescareers all over my group, all
over Aberdeen, all over thestate of South Dakota that are
paying $60,000, $80,000,$100,000 a year and oftentimes
even more than that, it's true,oftentimes even more than that,
(22:42):
it's true.
Gone are the days of plumbersand electricians, right, hvac
people, construction workers.
Like people that are doingthose jobs and getting the
proper training, getting theproper licensing and applying
themselves are making more moneythan many of the people that
(23:10):
spent four, five, six, sevenyears in college.
So this is not an income thing.
There are a ton of reallywell-paying jobs out there in
skilled trades Againconstruction, hvac, heating,
cooling, electrician, plumbers,construction workers, automotive
(23:31):
technicians, auto bodytechnicians.
Think of all the car dealershipsin the state of South Dakota.
Right, there's three inAberdeen, there's one in Groton,
one in Redfield.
There's a bunch of I meanhundreds.
There's one in Groton, one inRedfield, there's a bunch of two
, follow me, hundreds.
There's like all the cardealerships in South Dakota.
I promise you, every single oneof them is short on auto
(23:56):
technicians.
I would hire 10 automotivetechnicians today to work at
Aberdeen Chrysler Center and ifthey are good at their craft and
they apply themselves, they canmake anywhere from 60 to in
excess of $100,000 per year.
Hvac companies will tell youthe same thing.
(24:18):
I talk to them all the time.
Electrician I've talked to twopeople in the last month that
own pretty decent-sized electriccompanies and they have I mean
they have eight or ten openpositions all over the state.
At all times there's nobody tofill the jobs.
So you want to talk aboutstimulating South Dakota's
(24:41):
economy?
Imagine if the state of SouthDakota could create another
1,000 or 2,000 skilled tradesindividuals per year.
Imagine what that would do toour economy.
When Aberdeen Chrysler has fivemore technicians, billion Auto
in Sioux Falls has five moretechnicians.
Every HVAC company in the statehas one or two more HVAC
(25:03):
professionals.
It's a big deal and it's onlygetting worse by the day.
And this is something that thestate of South Dakota has to
address and take very, veryseriously in the next one to two
years to put together a verysolid plan moving forward to
make sure that number one we areproperly educating and
(25:28):
mentoring our soon-to-be highschool graduates and giving them
all of the information on whatpost-high school options they
have in front of them.
That includes going to theworkforce directly.
That includes a technicalcollege and that includes a
four-year college, right?
(25:50):
We need to re-educate theparents.
We have to re-educate theguidance counselors.
We have to re-educate theparents.
We have to re-educate theguidance counselors.
We have to re-educate theteachers and the administration.
Just look at the facts Half ofthe people in this country are
in jobs that don't require acollege degree.
Yet our schools want to pusheverybody to college.
(26:12):
It doesn't make any sense.
Our schools want to pusheverybody to college.
It doesn't make any sense, andI think there's a lot of data
out there that would back thisup.
When you have a stateuniversity and 20 or 30% of the
people that are there don't wantto be there, do you think that
(26:33):
is helping or hurting thestudents that are actually there
because they want and need tobe right?
It's like in high school whenyou had that class clown in the
back that was constantly cuttingup, distracted the entire class
, right.
So I do hope that this buildsmomentum.
(26:54):
I do hope there are statelegislators that are willing to
discuss this and I hopeeverybody in the state of South
Dakota has an open mind and canat least open up a dialogue and
say what can we do better toprepare our high school students
to make the right decision forthem as they approach graduation
(27:18):
?
So there was a recent proposal,a bill that was pre-filed for
the next legislative session, inwhich is set to begin in just a
few days, and what this billwas aiming to do is to reduce
(27:38):
property taxes for owners thatoccupy single family homes in
South Dakota.
So a lot of people around thestate of South Dakota your
neighbors, legislators SouthDakota, your neighbors,
legislators, community leaderseverybody's been talking about
(27:59):
property taxes.
It's the new buzz phrase for2025.
Let me give you a littlebackground on property taxes.
There aren't too many people inthe state of South Dakota that
can talk more intelligentlyabout the negative impact of
property taxes than me.
One of my companies, plazaRental, owns a massive amount of
(28:19):
property.
Lots of my other companies owntheir own property, and so we
deal with real estate andproperty tax issues all the time
, and so let me just give you abrief background of what
happened and why property taxexpense, and now property tax
(28:40):
relief, has become the new buzzphrase in South Dakota for 2025.
So here's what happened COVIDcomes along in early 2020.
Right 2020, right In SouthDakota, specifically Aberdeen
COVID didn't have too much of animpact outside of like March
(29:01):
and April of 2020.
I remember at Aberdeen Chryslerit was very lean right.
You know, we even participatedin the Paycheck Protection
Program, which I think 99% ofsmall businesses nationwide did,
because essentially whathappened was the government was
(29:24):
either forcibly shutting downyour business or they were
making decisions that were goingto have such an adverse impact
on your business that, in orderto to let you know, in order for
small business owners like meto be able to pay our employees
and pay our rent, and pay ourutilities and pay our taxes,
(29:45):
they borrowed us money throughthe Paycheck Protection Program
and if we met a bunch ofstandards it would get forgiven.
And again, millions ofbusinesses all over the country
did that.
Well, as soon as we exited fromthat phase, the federal
government was literallyfunneling trillions of dollars
(30:08):
into the United States economyand specifically into each of
the 50 states.
There was massive amounts ofmoney, billions of dollars, were
given to individual statesduring COVID that, in addition
to, you know, historically lowinterest rates and all kinds of
(30:32):
other reasons, put our countryinto a super inflationary period
.
Why?
Because the supply was low.
Because when the federalgovernment incorrectly shut down
supply chains, manufacturersand all that kind of stuff.
For months it reduced thesupply and then, when things
(30:57):
started opening back up, therewas a massive amount of demand.
Well, the demand was here.
The supply was here.
Well, you don't have to be aneconomics professor to
understand that when the supplyis here and the demand is here,
(31:18):
prices shoot through the roof.
And that's what happened in thehousing market in South Dakota
starting in late 2020, 2021,2022.
Those times, specifically partof 2023.
So a house that would sell for$150,000 in 2019, by 2021 was
(31:39):
selling for $200,000 to $250,000.
$400,000 homes were selling for$600,000.
And so what did our state andcounty and city governments do?
They said oh boy, the propertyvalues have skyrocketed.
(32:05):
So now we have to go reassessthe value of all this property
so we can charge them more taxes.
Assess the value of all thisproperty so we can charge them
more taxes.
The assessed value is supposedto be a percentage of the actual
value.
(32:26):
So when the actual value of aproperty goes up, they want to
raise the assessed value.
When the assessed value goes up, you pay more taxes.
So a lot of counties, includingours, they have like
predetermined intervals as towhen they do these property
reassessments.
(32:46):
Lots of counties went away fromtheir predetermined assessment
schedule and they did immediateassessments as quickly as they
could because they wanted thatextra tax revenue lickety-split,
so they reassessed everybody'sproperties.
It's happened all over thestate.
(33:07):
I'm talking about Brown County,aberdeen, specifically.
They reassessed everybody'sproperties and so the houses
that skyrocketed in value.
Commercial property went up,apartment property went up.
Real estate went up and it wentup in a hurry and it went up
significantly.
So they raised everybody'staxes.
(33:28):
So now, if you had a $200,000home in 19, 2019, and now in
2021 or 2022, that house is nowworth $300,000.
Your taxes went from $3,000 to$4,500, essentially Massive,
massive increase in real estatetax.
(33:49):
But they could justify it basedon what the properties were
selling for in order to reassessthe assessment value that can
(34:15):
muster up.
Any common sense at all wouldhave known that that housing
bubble was going to burst atsome point.
Property values just weren'tgoing to keep going up 40% a
year.
So what happened?
In order to kill inflation, theFed started jacking up interest
(34:37):
rates.
I mean massive, multi-pointinterest rate increases in a
short, compressed time frameBecause they wanted people to
stop spending money.
It was embarrassing for Bidenand his administration with, you
know, double-digit inflationrates and they knew they
couldn't get reelected withmassive inflation.
(34:59):
Presidents don't get reelectedwhen its citizens can't buy milk
and groceries and gas, right?
So they needed to squashinflation.
So they jacked up ratesimmediately.
Put their thumb on banks.
They did everything they coulddo to slow down the inflation.
So they jacked up ratesimmediately.
Put their thumb on banks.
They did everything they coulddo to slow down the inflation.
So the value of homes in theAberdeen market and all over the
(35:25):
state again I'm talkingspecifically about Aberdeen here
the value of homes and realestate properties started going
like this, started going down.
Estate property started goinglike this, started going down.
So now homes in Aberdeen areback to being worth close to
what they were in 2019.
But the taxes are still way uphere.
(35:49):
So people in Aberdeen that ownhomes are paying taxes on a
$300,000 home that now mightonly be worth $200,000 again of
(36:17):
our government employees to goback and immediately do another
reassessment or to offer up somekind of Real estate and
property tax relief Good one,right?
That's the problem withgovernment.
Once government collects a tax,it will never give it back.
That doesn't work in theprivate sector.
(36:39):
Why is the private sector moresuccessful?
Why is the private sector moreefficient than the government?
Well, business ebbs and flows.
Budgets go up, budgets go down.
Profitability goes up,profitability goes down.
Adapting is the key tofinancial success.
Governments don't operate thatway.
(37:03):
Governments just get fatter andfatter, and fatter and fatter,
until somebody comes along andpops that bubble and starts over
.
And so, yes, we do needproperty tax relief in South
Dakota.
(37:24):
I would argue that propertytaxes should be abolished in
South Dakota.
There are far better and moreequitable ways to collect that
revenue that we currently dofrom property taxes than
collecting them from propertytaxes.
Think about retired individualsand the elderly.
(37:45):
Imagine you were 25 years oldand you and your spouse bought
your first home.
You put it on a 30-yearmortgage.
You stayed there all 30 years,paid off your home, retired from
(38:06):
your job, and now are living ona fixed income.
And now your property taxcontinued to increase to the
point where you can't afford tostay in your home.
This is not hyperbole.
(38:26):
I have heard stories from allover the state of South Dakota
of retired and or elderlyindividuals that have had to
sell their homes because theycan't afford to pay their
property taxes.
I, toby Doden, through mycompany Plaza Rentals, the last
(38:47):
two years have bought homes,many homes, from individuals in
that very circumstance.
Is there anything more sad anddeliberate than overtaxing
(39:10):
retired and elderly individualsthat have given decades of
service to our communities bygouging them on real estate
taxes on a house that they haveworked 30 years to pay off?
It's unconstitutional and as astate like South Dakota, who has
(39:35):
a massive amount of tourism ifyou compare our tourism revenue
compared to our total revenue asa state one of the highest in
the country why aren't weleveraging our tourism to raise
(39:56):
a lion's share of tax revenue sowe can stop over-taxing retired
and elderly citizens in thisstate?
It's a moral.
It's a moral and it'sdeliberate.
If nobody's doing anything tochange it, then it's deliberate.
(40:20):
So as a society, we are okayDeliberately taxing elderly
people out of their homes thelast piece of their life, to
make them feel like they are incontrol.
What about young people?
(40:41):
What about young couples?
Call a mortgage banker, callyour local bank, and ask them
what the number one or numbertwo reason is why young people
can't buy homes.
It's property taxes.
The property taxes get escrowedinto your loan.
So you go buy a house right nowand instead of $200 a month,
(41:05):
your real estate taxes are $450a month.
For a lot of people that putsthem in a position where they
can't afford the home.
Massive injustice, massiveinjustice, massive injustice.
(41:26):
South Dakota is one of the fewstates where home ownership is
still one of the most pridefulthings you will ever obtain
period.
And it is harder in SouthDakota for young people to buy a
home than it has ever ever been, and property taxes being
(41:47):
artificially increased becauseof COVID is one of the main
reasons.
So my team and I are working ona proposal to get the
conversation started, to starttalking about alternative ways
(42:12):
that we can generate revenue sothat we can abolish real estate
taxes in South Dakota.
Now it's not just a singlefamily home issue for the
elderly and retired.
It's not just a single familyhome issue for young couples or
young individuals.
It's an economical thing too.
(42:35):
Owner in South Dakota suddenlyhad to pay no property taxes.
Let me repeat that Imagine ifevery small business owner in
South Dakota had their propertytaxes abolished.
(42:58):
Do you know what that would doto the economy in South Dakota
moving forward?
It would be the largestpropulsion upward in South
Dakota's economy in the historyof our country, and there would
not be a close second.
Small business owners wouldinvest more money into their
(43:21):
people.
That means pay raises, thatmeans benefits, that means
hiring more team members.
They would spend more money oncapital improvements on their
facilities, renovations,remodels, expansions, and what
they didn't invest in theircompany they would spend.
(43:42):
Because that's what people do,because that's always the
argument oh, if you cut taxesfor a small business owner,
they're going to put more intheir pocket.
Yup, but they're also going toput more into their business and
more into their people and moreinto their facilities.
And the money they do put intheir pocket they're going to
(44:03):
spend anyway.
Another vacation.
They're going to go buy moreclothes.
They're going to go buy a newTV, a Lange's TV and appliance.
Like you cannot imagine howdominant the South Dakota
economy would become if propertytaxes were abolished overnight.
(44:28):
And so we are going to keeptalking about that.
We are going to keep talking tostate leaders about that, we
are going to keep talking tostate legislatures about that,
and I think overall, this isjust another topic that can all
get wound together as we starttalking about the state of South
(44:52):
Dakota taking federal money.
Whether it's the state of SouthDakota collecting sales tax,
sales tax or real estate tax, itdoesn't matter where it's
(45:13):
coming from.
Once government entities getthe money, they don't want to
give it back.
Let me give you proof.
What do you think the SouthDakota state budget was in 2019?
A little over $4 billion,roughly $4.4 billion.
In 2025, it's projected to benearly $8 billion.
(45:40):
I think the low end was $7.6billion, $7.5 or $7.6 billion.
So in five years, basicallyduring COVID COVID is what
initiated a lot of this SouthDakota's budget went from
basically $4 billion to over$7.5 billion.
(46:00):
$4 billion to seven billion.
Three billion almost a hundredpercent increase in our state
budget expenditures.
Where's the money?
(46:21):
What is our state spending $3billion on annually that they
weren't four and five years ago?
I could make an argument thatour state government was bloated
five years ago when our budgetwas $4.5 billion, and now our
budget is $7.6 billion.
(46:41):
You think Dusty Johnson's goingto want to bring that budget
down?
Do you think Marty JackJohnson's going to want to bring
that budget down?
You think Marty Jackley isgoing to want to bring that
budget down?
You think Kristi Noem everintended to bring that budget
down.
Do you think Larry Roden isgoing to bring that budget down
(47:02):
At some point?
Folks, the people in SouthDakota, you and me, we're going
to have to make a choice.
Do we want South Dakota toremain South Dakota or do we
want South Dakota to grow intoone of the establishment
oligarchic states like Minnesota?
It's a fair question.
(47:25):
So we're almost at $8 billionnow.
Where are we going to be infive years?
$10 billion, $12 billion?
What are the answers?
Where is the $3 billion per yearbeing spent that we didn't have
(47:45):
five years ago?
Where is it?
Well, we know Governor Noemsnuck over a half billion
dollars of that for thisridiculous prison proposal.
All right, so there's a half abillion.
Where is the other nine or $10billion that has been spent the
(48:10):
last three years?
And don't tell me COVID.
We ain't spending money onCOVID this year and we sure as
hell shouldn't be spending moneyon COVID next year or any other
fake propaganda disease thatthey want to discuss Bird flu.
So, yes, indeed, we are goingto have a decision to make South
(48:34):
Dakota, and that decision iscoming.
I think this is somethingpeople have to start talking
about.
Do we want South Dakota to keepgrowing like other
establishment states, or do wewant to buck the trend?
Do South Dakotans want toshrink our state government and
(48:55):
become the smallest and mostefficient state government in
the country?
A beacon of hope for the otherstates?
A beacon of hope for the otherstates.
Thank you for listening to TobyDoden Unfiltered.
What an amazing place we live, south Dakota.
My mission statement is simpleTo re-energize the true
conservative values of SouthDakota.
You're listening to Toby DodenUnfiltered.
Welcome to Episode 8 of TobyDoden Unfiltered.
(00:23):
I am your host, toby Doden, andwe are going to talk about a
couple of really, really funtopics today.
Some may see it mildlycontroversial, but it certainly
is not intended that way.
In fact, I'm looking forward tohaving a discussion today
largely about higher educationin South Dakota, specifically
college, our state universities,our technical colleges.
To have any discussion todaylargely about higher education
(00:43):
in South Dakota, specificallycollege, our state universities,
our technical colleges and,quite frankly, who should be
attending these schools and whoshouldn't be attending these
schools.
And so, right off the top, Ithink it's really important to
point out this fact I'm fromAberdeen.
(01:05):
Obviously, we have a stateuniversity in Aberdeen, northern
State University.
Northern State University is areally big part of the Aberdeen
community.
It's been a part of theAberdeen community for as long
as I can remember and wellbefore that.
They've got good athleticprograms, they've got some
(01:26):
really good educational programsand largely they have graduated
a lot of very successful peopleover the years.
Same thing with SDSU, dakotaState, usd, etc.
Etc.
But what I want to talk aboutspecifically today is who
actually should be going tocollege, who actually should be
(01:48):
going to technical schools andwho shouldn't be going to any
higher education at all.
And so, before I get into that,I want to point out very, very
clearly because there's alwayssome negative people that want
to twist around the things thatI say and try to make it seem as
(02:09):
though I was, you know,indicating something I wasn't
actually indicating.
And so, listen, I am notanti-college.
Rather, it's the opposite.
I am pro-college.
I am pro-college for youngadults that need college to
(02:30):
obtain their career goals andobjectives.
I am anti-college for peoplewho know they shouldn't be going
to college but were persuadedto do so by people around them.
I'm talking about guidancecounselors, teachers, parents,
(02:53):
community leaders.
I was one of those individuals.
In 1993, I graduated from GrotonHigh School.
I would say I had a veryordinary junior high and high
school experience.
I was in band, I was in sports,I did all the fun stuff every
(03:14):
other kid would do.
I wasn't a great student.
I didn't apply myself.
I was bored when I was in class.
My mind was always driftingsomewhere.
Oftentimes it was trying tofigure out ways to start little
businesses and be anentrepreneur even at that age.
And so, you know, I did justenough to get by in high school
(03:39):
and I spent more time creativethinking and doing things
outside the box, and that didnot fit the platform of
education that was afforded me.
And so I had two parents thatdidn't go to college, which was
very common for people in theirgeneration.
(04:00):
They were born in the 40s.
A lot of people born back inthe 20s and 30s and 40s and 50s
didn't attend college, and so,like many married couples of
their age and their time, theyswore that their children would
have a better education thanthey did and they would send
their kids to college.
And so I had three oldersiblings quite a bit older
(04:22):
actually.
If you want to take this littleclip and send it to one of my
siblings, that would make mevery happy.
They're a lot older than me,but anyway, my mom and dad very
strongly encouraged my sister,my brother and my youngest
sister to go to college, andthey did.
All three of went to college.
(04:44):
They got great degrees andlargely, you know, two of the
three have had great careers inthe degree that they studied in
college One of my siblings notso much Nice career just has
very little, if anything to dowith what he studied in college.
(05:05):
And so by the time I was goinginto my senior in high school,
my parents were, like you'regoing to college.
And I'm like, but I don't wantto go to college.
And so I would go to school, myguidance counselor would say
Toby, you have to go to college,it's the only path for
successful people.
And then every teacher wouldtell me the same thing Toby, I
(05:26):
heard you're not going tocollege, I think you need to go
to college, it's the only pathfor successful people.
And then I would, you'd be outin the community and I would run
into somebody in the communityand they'd say hey, toby, I
heard you're not going to go tocollege, I think you should go
to college, it's the only pathfor success.
And then I would get home atnight my parents would tell me
the same thing.
And it was this vicious cycleover and over and over.
(05:48):
So what did I do?
I enrolled to Minot StateUniversity in Minot, north
Dakota, and I went to college.
And I remember unloading mylittle hatchback car, getting
everything moved into my dormroom, and the very night I moved
in thinking I should not behere.
This is an utter waste of time.
(06:09):
It's a waste of the school'sresources.
It's a waste of my resources,it's a waste of my classmates'
time, because I'm taking upspace, time and energy that I
know I don't want, need or willuse in any way, shape or form.
So this has been going on fordecades, right, and so there's a
(06:33):
lot of people like me that,because of institutional
persuasion, end up attending afour-year university, end up
attending a four-year university, knowing full well the odds of
(06:53):
them actually graduating fromthat university and or actually
using that specific degree is avery, very low percentage, and
so I wanted to look into thefacts and the data a little bit
about this.
Again, this is South Dakotaspecific.
The South Dakota stateuniversities have a six year
(07:16):
graduation rate of 52%.
One of our state universitiesgraduation rate is below 50%, at
48%.
Now, this is not an indictmenton the universities.
This is an indictment on themass amount of people that are
attending these universities,that should not have been
(07:36):
attending these universities.
If you can look me square inthe eye and say half of the
people no-transcript, it doesn'tmake any sense.
(08:03):
So now, are there underlyingissues as to why half of the
people aren't graduating withinsix years?
Listen, I'm sure there are lotsof other reasons.
It's not just because maybethey shouldn't have enrolled,
maybe they enrolled in the wrongprogram, maybe they didn't get
the right aid.
I mean, there's a lot ofreasons.
I understand that.
But if we're going to makecommon sense conclusions based
(08:28):
on those facts that 48% of thepeople that enroll in college in
South Dakota don't graduatewithin six years, we have to at
least acknowledge that in largepart it's because of people that
are getting persuaded by theirschools, their guidance
counselors, their teachers andtheir parents to go to school
(08:49):
when they probably had betteroptions.
And so next I wanted to dig intothe income.
I wanted to see the individualsthat enrolled in a state
university in South Dakota andsubsequently graduated from that
(09:11):
university.
What is the median annualincome for those individuals?
And I wanted to compare whatthe income is to the individuals
that either didn't graduatefrom college or didn't attend
college at all.
(09:31):
Because largely this is theargument that a lot of people
have made when you say you know,should we be giving young
adults that are just graduatinghigh school more alternative
options to four-yearuniversities that might fit
their skill set better.
(09:52):
Moving forward, they point tothe income disparity between
college graduates andnon-college graduates.
And yes, if you just Googleaverage income, whether it's
South Dakota or nationally,average income of college
(10:15):
graduates versus average incomeof non-college graduates,
there's a pretty good disparity.
But what they don't tell you,because it doesn't fit their
narrative, is that when theylook at income specifically for
the non-college graduates, right, everybody that doesn't go to
college gets calculated intotheir average salary.
(10:38):
Right, that includes peoplewith cognitive abilities.
Right, like there, it's just afact.
There is a subset of thepopulation that has a low IQ,
that cannot learn at acollegiate level, that, quite
frankly, many of which can'tlearn at a high school level,
right, some of it's God-given.
(10:59):
Physical disabilities, right,intellectual and development
disabilities, mental healthissues, chronic health issues.
And, let's be real, like somepeople just have a lack of
desire.
You can call it laziness.
The nice way to say it is lackof desire.
(11:22):
There's a lot of people outthere that just don't have the
desire to be high achievers orhigh learners or high earners,
for that point.
There's a lot of really, reallysimple people that are happy,
just, you know, heading to work,getting off, having a beer and
going home, and there's nothingwrong with that Like, like.
That is America right.
(11:43):
That like and this is largely myproblem with the attitudes of
some educational elitists isthey only think their
contemporaries are educated,people that are highly educated,
maybe their vocabulary islarger, maybe they know certain
(12:06):
facts that the ordinary peopledon't know, but at the end of
the day, most of it isnonsensical when it comes to
being a productive citizen and agood team member wherever you
work.
So if we were to eliminate alot of the really, really low
(12:27):
earners because of a lack ofdesire, because of physical
limitations, mental limitations,cognitive limitations, if we
eliminate all them and justfocus on the group of people
like me that fit where I fit,like I, I've always had a desire
to be a higher earner and andand I've always had a high motor
(12:50):
and I've always had this driveto get better and better and
better and learn new things.
But I didn't need the collegeuniversity, I didn't need
liberal professors for me todevelop into the person I am
today, and there's a lot of.
(13:11):
There's millions and millions,tens of millions of Americans
and dozens and dozens ofthousands of South Dakotans that
fit into my category.
If we were to just look at thatgroup's pay, I'll bet you it
would be very similar and insome cases, much higher than the
(13:33):
average pay from professionalsthat are graduating from college
.
And again, because I knowthere's going to be that guy out
there who's going to say ohToby's anti-college.
No, sir, I am not.
I am pro-college.
Many, many of my contemporaries, people I know, have gone to
college, had great careers.
I interact with people everyday that have college degrees
(13:57):
that couldn't do what they didwithout their college degrees.
So don't you dare try topigeonhole me as anti-college.
I am simply anti-college forpeople in high school that we
know you can tell at a mile awayand I was one of them should
never step foot on a collegecampus.
And so what are the answers?
(14:19):
What are the answers?
Well, I don't think it's thatcomplicated, honestly.
First off, we need a massiveoverhaul of the junior high and
high school curriculum in SouthDakota state schools High
schools, I'm talking about, highschools I'm talking about there
(14:46):
should be mandatory personalfinance classes, consistently
yes, from junior high all theway through high school.
There should be careerexploration programs, robust
career exploration programs.
There should be partnershipswith local businesses for real
world experiences.
High schools should be heldaccountable for preparing
(15:12):
students for post-high schoollife, not just college, and that
is where our high schools havefailed, and they've been failing
for decades.
It's not the teacher's fault.
It's not the administration'sfault.
This is a systemic issue and itneeds to be changed from the
(15:32):
top down.
Ask yourself this question howmany actual life skills were you
taught in high school?
Were you taught how to balancea checkbook?
Were you taught how to manageyour time?
Were you taught how to buildteams?
(15:54):
Were you taught the basicprinciples of how to start your
own business?
Did you learn sales techniques?
Did you learn any psychology?
Did you learn how to read andinterpret what people are
telling you based on their bodylanguage and their eyes?
(16:17):
These are things that people inthe private sector business
people.
These are things that people inthe private sector business
people.
These are things that we learnas we go out through life.
What an advantage it would havebeen to have learned that in
high school.
They had home ec class, but itwasn't mandatory.
(16:37):
Why wouldn't we want to teach 16, 17, and 8-year-olds that are
about to go off on their owneither to college or into the
workforce.
Why wouldn't we want to spendless time in the depressing
classroom and more time doinghands-on, real-world, real-life
(17:00):
training and mentoring with ourteens In Northeast South Dakota?
Let me give you an example ofwhat's wrong with our junior
high and high school program asfar as their inability to mentor
(17:21):
and train young teenagers aboutlife skills In Northeast South
Dakota.
My group is about as successfulas any group of businesses in
Northeast South Dakota.
We have a lot of verysuccessful businesses.
We have dozens and dozens anddozens of very successful
(17:44):
leaders in our group, a groupthat I lead.
Not one single time, not asingle time, have I been
contacted by a high school tocome in and talk to young men
(18:04):
and women who are in the sameposition.
I was 33 years ago when I madethe wrong decision and spent two
and a half years of my life andtens of thousands of dollars in
student loan debt on themistake that I made by listening
(18:25):
to people around me to go tocollege.
Not one time.
So if our schools and our statewas serious about teaching our
young students to prepare themfor life, why wouldn't they
bring people like me and peoplefrom all over the state people
(18:46):
in my group.
Why wouldn't they bring them inas positive role models?
Because there's so manysystemic issues right now and
again.
It's not going to change withone school.
It's not going to change withone guidance counselor.
It's not going to change withone principal school.
It's not going to change withone guidance counselor.
It's not going to change withone principal.
This is something our entirestate needs to look at.
Is a complete and massiveoverhaul of our junior, high and
(19:11):
high school curriculum.
Now, I realize it's a smallsample size, right?
The Doden Investment Group, youknow, I don't even know maybe
around 20 operating businesses.
We have a lot of employees.
I have, I think, our largestcompany employs about 120 to 130
(19:35):
people.
I'm not going to share specificdetails because it's nobody's
business, but I will tell youthis Out of my entire group of
businesses, there is only fourpositions that require a college
degree.
Four One's an attorney.
(19:59):
The rest are accounting Four.
Well, what do the income rangeslook like?
Way better than the average.
You look at the medianhousehold income in South Dakota
, which I believe is around$67,000.
(20:20):
The median individual income, Ibelieve, is around $40,000,
right, a large percentage of thepeople that work in my group
are in the top 25 percentile ofwage earners in South Dakota.
I have dozens and dozens ofteam members in our group Again
(20:43):
small sample size DotonInvestment Group.
I have dozens and dozens ofpeople who are in the top 10% of
wage earners in South Dakota,and I've got a bunch that are in
the top five, all the way up to1% of wage earners in South
Dakota A lot of highlycompensated individuals that
(21:04):
never spent a nickel going tocollege.
And so, again, I implore you tosee this for what it is.
It is a pro-college celebration.
Teachers, cpas, doctors,attorneys, engineers,
psychologists, psychiatrists areI mean, I can just go on and on
(21:32):
and on.
Hundreds and hundreds andhundreds and hundreds of very
noble careers require a collegedegree, and those people should
be celebrated for accomplishingthat task.
But do you know who should alsobe equally celebrated?
The 18 and 19-year-olds that godirectly into the workforce and
take jobs that desperately needto be done, and 18 and
(21:56):
19-year-olds that are choosingto go into mentorships and
apprenticeships for skilledtrades positions that are going
to eventually pay them more than95% of the college educated
people in South Dakota.
We have skilled labor positionsin our group that are making
(22:19):
over $100,000 a year in ourgroup that are making over
$100,000 a year.
There are skilled tradescareers all over my group, all
over Aberdeen, all over thestate of South Dakota that are
paying $60,000, $80,000,$100,000 a year and oftentimes
even more than that, it's true,oftentimes even more than that,
(22:42):
it's true.
Gone are the days of plumbersand electricians, right, hvac
people, construction workers.
Like people that are doingthose jobs and getting the
proper training, getting theproper licensing and applying
themselves are making more moneythan many of the people that
(23:10):
spent four, five, six, sevenyears in college.
So this is not an income thing.
There are a ton of reallywell-paying jobs out there in
skilled trades Againconstruction, hvac, heating,
cooling, electrician, plumbers,construction workers, automotive
(23:31):
technicians, auto bodytechnicians.
Think of all the car dealershipsin the state of South Dakota.
Right, there's three inAberdeen, there's one in Groton,
one in Redfield.
There's a bunch of I meanhundreds.
There's one in Groton, one inRedfield, there's a bunch of two
, follow me, hundreds.
There's like all the cardealerships in South Dakota.
I promise you, every single oneof them is short on auto
(23:56):
technicians.
I would hire 10 automotivetechnicians today to work at
Aberdeen Chrysler Center and ifthey are good at their craft and
they apply themselves, they canmake anywhere from 60 to in
excess of $100,000 per year.
Hvac companies will tell youthe same thing.
(24:18):
I talk to them all the time.
Electrician I've talked to twopeople in the last month that
own pretty decent-sized electriccompanies and they have I mean
they have eight or ten openpositions all over the state.
At all times there's nobody tofill the jobs.
So you want to talk aboutstimulating South Dakota's
(24:41):
economy?
Imagine if the state of SouthDakota could create another
1,000 or 2,000 skilled tradesindividuals per year.
Imagine what that would do toour economy.
When Aberdeen Chrysler has fivemore technicians, billion Auto
in Sioux Falls has five moretechnicians.
Every HVAC company in the statehas one or two more HVAC
(25:03):
professionals.
It's a big deal and it's onlygetting worse by the day.
And this is something that thestate of South Dakota has to
address and take very, veryseriously in the next one to two
years to put together a verysolid plan moving forward to
make sure that number one we areproperly educating and
(25:28):
mentoring our soon-to-be highschool graduates and giving them
all of the information on whatpost-high school options they
have in front of them.
That includes going to theworkforce directly.
That includes a technicalcollege and that includes a
four-year college, right?
(25:50):
We need to re-educate theparents.
We have to re-educate theguidance counselors.
We have to re-educate theparents.
We have to re-educate theguidance counselors.
We have to re-educate theteachers and the administration.
Just look at the facts Half ofthe people in this country are
in jobs that don't require acollege degree.
Yet our schools want to pusheverybody to college.
(26:12):
It doesn't make any sense.
Our schools want to pusheverybody to college.
It doesn't make any sense, andI think there's a lot of data
out there that would back thisup.
When you have a stateuniversity and 20 or 30% of the
people that are there don't wantto be there, do you think that
(26:33):
is helping or hurting thestudents that are actually there
because they want and need tobe right?
It's like in high school whenyou had that class clown in the
back that was constantly cuttingup, distracted the entire class
, right.
So I do hope that this buildsmomentum.
(26:54):
I do hope there are statelegislators that are willing to
discuss this and I hopeeverybody in the state of South
Dakota has an open mind and canat least open up a dialogue and
say what can we do better toprepare our high school students
to make the right decision forthem as they approach graduation
(27:18):
?
So there was a recent proposal,a bill that was pre-filed for
the next legislative session, inwhich is set to begin in just a
few days, and what this billwas aiming to do is to reduce
(27:38):
property taxes for owners thatoccupy single family homes in
South Dakota.
So a lot of people around thestate of South Dakota your
neighbors, legislators SouthDakota, your neighbors,
legislators, community leaderseverybody's been talking about
(27:59):
property taxes.
It's the new buzz phrase for2025.
Let me give you a littlebackground on property taxes.
There aren't too many people inthe state of South Dakota that
can talk more intelligentlyabout the negative impact of
property taxes than me.
One of my companies, plazaRental, owns a massive amount of
(28:19):
property.
Lots of my other companies owntheir own property, and so we
deal with real estate andproperty tax issues all the time
, and so let me just give you abrief background of what
happened and why property taxexpense, and now property tax
(28:40):
relief, has become the new buzzphrase in South Dakota for 2025.
So here's what happened COVIDcomes along in early 2020.
Right 2020, right In SouthDakota, specifically Aberdeen
COVID didn't have too much of animpact outside of like March
(29:01):
and April of 2020.
I remember at Aberdeen Chryslerit was very lean right.
You know, we even participatedin the Paycheck Protection
Program, which I think 99% ofsmall businesses nationwide did,
because essentially whathappened was the government was
(29:24):
either forcibly shutting downyour business or they were
making decisions that were goingto have such an adverse impact
on your business that, in orderto to let you know, in order for
small business owners like meto be able to pay our employees
and pay our rent, and pay ourutilities and pay our taxes,
(29:45):
they borrowed us money throughthe Paycheck Protection Program
and if we met a bunch ofstandards it would get forgiven.
And again, millions ofbusinesses all over the country
did that.
Well, as soon as we exited fromthat phase, the federal
government was literallyfunneling trillions of dollars
(30:08):
into the United States economyand specifically into each of
the 50 states.
There was massive amounts ofmoney, billions of dollars, were
given to individual statesduring COVID that, in addition
to, you know, historically lowinterest rates and all kinds of
(30:32):
other reasons, put our countryinto a super inflationary period
.
Why?
Because the supply was low.
Because when the federalgovernment incorrectly shut down
supply chains, manufacturersand all that kind of stuff.
For months it reduced thesupply and then, when things
(30:57):
started opening back up, therewas a massive amount of demand.
Well, the demand was here.
The supply was here.
Well, you don't have to be aneconomics professor to
understand that when the supplyis here and the demand is here,
(31:18):
prices shoot through the roof.
And that's what happened in thehousing market in South Dakota
starting in late 2020, 2021,2022.
Those times, specifically partof 2023.
So a house that would sell for$150,000 in 2019, by 2021 was
(31:39):
selling for $200,000 to $250,000.
$400,000 homes were selling for$600,000.
And so what did our state andcounty and city governments do?
They said oh boy, the propertyvalues have skyrocketed.
(32:05):
So now we have to go reassessthe value of all this property
so we can charge them more taxes.
Assess the value of all thisproperty so we can charge them
more taxes.
The assessed value is supposedto be a percentage of the actual
value.
(32:26):
So when the actual value of aproperty goes up, they want to
raise the assessed value.
When the assessed value goes up, you pay more taxes.
So a lot of counties, includingours, they have like
predetermined intervals as towhen they do these property
reassessments.
(32:46):
Lots of counties went away fromtheir predetermined assessment
schedule and they did immediateassessments as quickly as they
could because they wanted thatextra tax revenue lickety-split,
so they reassessed everybody'sproperties.
It's happened all over thestate.
(33:07):
I'm talking about Brown County,aberdeen, specifically.
They reassessed everybody'sproperties and so the houses
that skyrocketed in value.
Commercial property went up,apartment property went up.
Real estate went up and it wentup in a hurry and it went up
significantly.
So they raised everybody'staxes.
(33:28):
So now, if you had a $200,000home in 19, 2019, and now in
2021 or 2022, that house is nowworth $300,000.
Your taxes went from $3,000 to$4,500, essentially Massive,
massive increase in real estatetax.
(33:49):
But they could justify it basedon what the properties were
selling for in order to reassessthe assessment value that can
(34:15):
muster up.
Any common sense at all wouldhave known that that housing
bubble was going to burst atsome point.
Property values just weren'tgoing to keep going up 40% a
year.
So what happened?
In order to kill inflation, theFed started jacking up interest
(34:37):
rates.
I mean massive, multi-pointinterest rate increases in a
short, compressed time frameBecause they wanted people to
stop spending money.
It was embarrassing for Bidenand his administration with, you
know, double-digit inflationrates and they knew they
couldn't get reelected withmassive inflation.
(34:59):
Presidents don't get reelectedwhen its citizens can't buy milk
and groceries and gas, right?
So they needed to squashinflation.
So they jacked up ratesimmediately.
Put their thumb on banks.
They did everything they coulddo to slow down the inflation.
So they jacked up ratesimmediately.
Put their thumb on banks.
They did everything they coulddo to slow down the inflation.
So the value of homes in theAberdeen market and all over the
(35:25):
state again I'm talkingspecifically about Aberdeen here
the value of homes and realestate properties started going
like this, started going down.
Estate property started goinglike this, started going down.
So now homes in Aberdeen areback to being worth close to
what they were in 2019.
But the taxes are still way uphere.
(35:49):
So people in Aberdeen that ownhomes are paying taxes on a
$300,000 home that now mightonly be worth $200,000 again of
(36:17):
our government employees to goback and immediately do another
reassessment or to offer up somekind of Real estate and
property tax relief Good one,right?
That's the problem withgovernment.
Once government collects a tax,it will never give it back.
That doesn't work in theprivate sector.
(36:39):
Why is the private sector moresuccessful?
Why is the private sector moreefficient than the government?
Well, business ebbs and flows.
Budgets go up, budgets go down.
Profitability goes up,profitability goes down.
Adapting is the key tofinancial success.
Governments don't operate thatway.
(37:03):
Governments just get fatter andfatter, and fatter and fatter,
until somebody comes along andpops that bubble and starts over
.
And so, yes, we do needproperty tax relief in South
Dakota.
(37:24):
I would argue that propertytaxes should be abolished in
South Dakota.
There are far better and moreequitable ways to collect that
revenue that we currently dofrom property taxes than
collecting them from propertytaxes.
Think about retired individualsand the elderly.
(37:45):
Imagine you were 25 years oldand you and your spouse bought
your first home.
You put it on a 30-yearmortgage.
You stayed there all 30 years,paid off your home, retired from
(38:06):
your job, and now are living ona fixed income.
And now your property taxcontinued to increase to the
point where you can't afford tostay in your home.
This is not hyperbole.
(38:26):
I have heard stories from allover the state of South Dakota
of retired and or elderlyindividuals that have had to
sell their homes because theycan't afford to pay their
property taxes.
I, toby Doden, through mycompany Plaza Rentals, the last
(38:47):
two years have bought homes,many homes, from individuals in
that very circumstance.
Is there anything more sad anddeliberate than overtaxing
(39:10):
retired and elderly individualsthat have given decades of
service to our communities bygouging them on real estate
taxes on a house that they haveworked 30 years to pay off?
It's unconstitutional and as astate like South Dakota, who has
(39:35):
a massive amount of tourism ifyou compare our tourism revenue
compared to our total revenue asa state one of the highest in
the country why aren't weleveraging our tourism to raise
(39:56):
a lion's share of tax revenue sowe can stop over-taxing retired
and elderly citizens in thisstate?
It's a moral.
It's a moral and it'sdeliberate.
If nobody's doing anything tochange it, then it's deliberate.
(40:20):
So as a society, we are okayDeliberately taxing elderly
people out of their homes thelast piece of their life, to
make them feel like they are incontrol.
What about young people?
(40:41):
What about young couples?
Call a mortgage banker, callyour local bank, and ask them
what the number one or numbertwo reason is why young people
can't buy homes.
It's property taxes.
The property taxes get escrowedinto your loan.
So you go buy a house right nowand instead of $200 a month,
(41:05):
your real estate taxes are $450a month.
For a lot of people that putsthem in a position where they
can't afford the home.
Massive injustice, massiveinjustice, massive injustice.
(41:26):
South Dakota is one of the fewstates where home ownership is
still one of the most pridefulthings you will ever obtain
period.
And it is harder in SouthDakota for young people to buy a
home than it has ever ever been, and property taxes being
(41:47):
artificially increased becauseof COVID is one of the main
reasons.
So my team and I are working ona proposal to get the
conversation started, to starttalking about alternative ways
(42:12):
that we can generate revenue sothat we can abolish real estate
taxes in South Dakota.
Now it's not just a singlefamily home issue for the
elderly and retired.
It's not just a single familyhome issue for young couples or
young individuals.
It's an economical thing too.
(42:35):
Owner in South Dakota suddenlyhad to pay no property taxes.
Let me repeat that Imagine ifevery small business owner in
South Dakota had their propertytaxes abolished.
(42:58):
Do you know what that would doto the economy in South Dakota
moving forward?
It would be the largestpropulsion upward in South
Dakota's economy in the historyof our country, and there would
not be a close second.
Small business owners wouldinvest more money into their
(43:21):
people.
That means pay raises, thatmeans benefits, that means
hiring more team members.
They would spend more money oncapital improvements on their
facilities, renovations,remodels, expansions, and what
they didn't invest in theircompany they would spend.
(43:42):
Because that's what people do,because that's always the
argument oh, if you cut taxesfor a small business owner,
they're going to put more intheir pocket.
Yup, but they're also going toput more into their business and
more into their people and moreinto their facilities.
And the money they do put intheir pocket they're going to
(44:03):
spend anyway.
Another vacation.
They're going to go buy moreclothes.
They're going to go buy a newTV, a Lange's TV and appliance.
Like you cannot imagine howdominant the South Dakota
economy would become if propertytaxes were abolished overnight.
(44:28):
And so we are going to keeptalking about that.
We are going to keep talking tostate leaders about that, we
are going to keep talking tostate legislatures about that,
and I think overall, this isjust another topic that can all
get wound together as we starttalking about the state of South
(44:52):
Dakota taking federal money.
Whether it's the state of SouthDakota collecting sales tax,
sales tax or real estate tax, itdoesn't matter where it's
(45:13):
coming from.
Once government entities getthe money, they don't want to
give it back.
Let me give you proof.
What do you think the SouthDakota state budget was in 2019?
A little over $4 billion,roughly $4.4 billion.
In 2025, it's projected to benearly $8 billion.
(45:40):
I think the low end was $7.6billion, $7.5 or $7.6 billion.
So in five years, basicallyduring COVID COVID is what
initiated a lot of this SouthDakota's budget went from
basically $4 billion to over$7.5 billion.
(46:00):
$4 billion to seven billion.
Three billion almost a hundredpercent increase in our state
budget expenditures.
Where's the money?
(46:21):
What is our state spending $3billion on annually that they
weren't four and five years ago?
I could make an argument thatour state government was bloated
five years ago when our budgetwas $4.5 billion, and now our
budget is $7.6 billion.
(46:41):
You think Dusty Johnson's goingto want to bring that budget
down?
Do you think Marty JackJohnson's going to want to bring
that budget down?
You think Marty Jackley isgoing to want to bring that
budget down?
You think Kristi Noem everintended to bring that budget
down.
Do you think Larry Roden isgoing to bring that budget down
(47:02):
At some point?
Folks, the people in SouthDakota, you and me, we're going
to have to make a choice.
Do we want South Dakota toremain South Dakota or do we
want South Dakota to grow intoone of the establishment
oligarchic states like Minnesota?
It's a fair question.
(47:25):
So we're almost at $8 billionnow.
Where are we going to be infive years?
$10 billion, $12 billion?
What are the answers?
Where is the $3 billion per yearbeing spent that we didn't have
(47:45):
five years ago?
Where is it?
Well, we know Governor Noemsnuck over a half billion
dollars of that for thisridiculous prison proposal.
All right, so there's a half abillion.
Where is the other nine or $10billion that has been spent the
(48:10):
last three years?
And don't tell me COVID.
We ain't spending money onCOVID this year and we sure as
hell shouldn't be spending moneyon COVID next year or any other
fake propaganda disease thatthey want to discuss Bird flu.
So, yes, indeed, we are goingto have a decision to make South
(48:34):
Dakota, and that decision iscoming.
I think this is somethingpeople have to start talking
about.
Do we want South Dakota to keepgrowing like other
establishment states, or do wewant to buck the trend?
Do South Dakotans want toshrink our state government and
(48:55):
become the smallest and mostefficient state government in
the country?
A beacon of hope for the otherstates?
A beacon of hope for the otherstates.
Thank you for listening to TobyDoden Unfiltered.
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