Toby Doeden - Unfiltered

Episode 8

• Toby Doeden - Unfiltered • Episode 8

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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.

Speaker 1:

What an amazing place we live, south Dakota. My mission statement is simple To re-energize the true conservative values of South Dakota. You're listening to Toby Doden Unfiltered. Welcome to Episode 8 of Toby Doden Unfiltered.

Speaker 1:

I am your host, toby Doden, and we are going to talk about a couple of really, really fun topics today. Some may see it mildly controversial, but it certainly is not intended that way. In fact, I'm looking forward to having a discussion today largely about higher education in South Dakota, specifically college, our state universities, our technical colleges. To have any discussion today largely about higher education in South Dakota, specifically college, our state universities, our technical colleges and, quite frankly, who should be attending these schools and who shouldn't be attending these schools. And so, right off the top, I think it's really important to point out this fact I'm from Aberdeen. Obviously, we have a state university in Aberdeen, northern State University. Northern State University is a really big part of the Aberdeen community. It's been a part of the Aberdeen community for as long as I can remember and well before that. They've got good athletic programs, they've got some really good educational programs and largely they have graduated a lot of very successful people over the years. Same thing with SDSU, dakota State, usd, etc. Etc. But what I want to talk about specifically today is who actually should be going to college, who actually should be going to technical schools and who 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 always some negative people that want to twist around the things that I say and try to make it seem as though I was, you know, indicating something I wasn't actually indicating. And so, listen, I am not anti-college. Rather, it's the opposite. I am pro-college. I am pro-college for young adults that need college to obtain their career goals and objectives. I am anti-college for people who know they shouldn't be going to college but were persuaded to do so by people around them. I'm talking about guidance counselors, teachers, parents, community leaders. I was one of those individuals.

Speaker 1:

In 1993, I graduated from Groton High School. I would say I had a very ordinary junior high and high school experience. I was in band, I was in sports, I did all the fun stuff every 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 drifting somewhere. Oftentimes it was trying to figure out ways to start little businesses and be an entrepreneur even at that age. And so, you know, I did just enough to get by in high school and I spent more time creative thinking and doing things outside the box, and that did not fit the platform of education that was afforded me.

Speaker 1:

And so I had two parents that didn't go to college, which was very common for people in their generation. They were born in the 40s. A lot of people born back in the 20s and 30s and 40s and 50s didn't attend college, and so, like many married couples of their age and their time, they swore that their children would have a better education than they did and they would send their kids to college. And so I had three older siblings quite a bit older actually. If you want to take this little clip and send it to one of my siblings, that would make me very 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, and they did. All three of went to college. They got great degrees and largely, you know, two of the three have had great careers in the degree that they studied in college One of my siblings not so much Nice career just has very little, if anything to do with what he studied in college.

Speaker 1:

And so by the time I was going into my senior in high school, my parents were, like you're going to college. And I'm like, but I don't want to go to college. And so I would go to school, my guidance counselor would say Toby, you have to go to college, it's the only path for successful people. And then every teacher would tell me the same thing Toby, I heard you're not going to college, I think you need to go to college, it's the only path for successful people. And then I would, you'd be out in the community and I would run into somebody in the community and they'd say hey, toby, I heard you're not going to go to college, I think you should go to college, it's the only path for success. And then I would get home at night my parents would tell me the same thing. And it was this vicious cycle over and over and over.

Speaker 1:

So what did I do? I enrolled to Minot State University in Minot, north Dakota, and I went to college. And I remember unloading my little hatchback car, getting everything moved into my dorm room, and the very night I moved in thinking I should not be here. This is an utter waste of time. It's a waste of the school's resources. It's a waste of my resources, it's a waste of my classmates' time, because I'm taking up space, time and energy that I know I don't want, need or will use in any way, shape or form.

Speaker 1:

So this has been going on for decades, right, and so there's a lot of people like me that, because of institutional persuasion, end up attending a four-year university, end up attending a four-year university, knowing full well the odds of them actually graduating from that university and or actually using that specific degree is a very, very low percentage, and so I wanted to look into the facts and the data a little bit about this. Again, this is South Dakota specific. The South Dakota state universities have a six year graduation rate of 52%. One of our state universities graduation rate is below 50%, at 48%.

Speaker 1:

Now, this is not an indictment on the universities. This is an indictment on the mass amount of people that are attending these universities, that should not have been attending these universities. If you can look me square in the eye and say half of the people no-transcript, it doesn't make any sense. So now, are there underlying issues as to why half of the people aren't graduating within six years? Listen, I'm sure there are lots of other reasons. It's not just because maybe they shouldn't have enrolled, maybe they enrolled in the wrong program, maybe they didn't get the right aid. I mean, there's a lot of reasons. I understand that. But if we're going to make common sense conclusions based on those facts that 48% of the people that enroll in college in South Dakota don't graduate within six years, we have to at least acknowledge that in large part it's because of people that are getting persuaded by their schools, their guidance counselors, their teachers and their parents to go to school when they probably had better options.

Speaker 1:

And so next I wanted to dig into the income. I wanted to see the individuals that enrolled in a state university in South Dakota and subsequently graduated from that university. What is the median annual income for those individuals? And I wanted to compare what the income is to the individuals that either didn't graduate from college or didn't attend college at all. Because largely this is the argument that a lot of people have made when you say you know, should we be giving young adults that are just graduating high school more alternative options to four-year universities that might fit their skill set better.

Speaker 1:

Moving forward, they point to the income disparity between college graduates and non-college graduates. And yes, if you just Google average income, whether it's South Dakota or nationally, average income of college graduates versus average income of 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 they look at income specifically for the non-college graduates, right, everybody that doesn't go to college gets calculated into their average salary. Right, that includes people with cognitive abilities. Right, like there, it's just a fact. There is a subset of the population that has a low IQ, that cannot learn at a collegiate level, that, quite frankly, many of which can't learn at a high school level, right, some of it's God-given. Physical disabilities, right, intellectual and development disabilities, mental health issues, chronic health issues.

Speaker 1:

And, let's be real, like some people just have a lack of desire. You can call it laziness. The nice way to say it is lack of desire. There's a lot of people out there that just don't have the desire to be high achievers or high learners or high earners, for that point. There's a lot of really, really simple people that are happy, just, you know, heading to work, getting off, having a beer and going home, and there's nothing wrong with that Like, like. That is America right.

Speaker 1:

That like and this is largely my problem with the attitudes of some educational elitists is they only think their contemporaries are educated, people that are highly educated, maybe their vocabulary is larger, maybe they know certain facts that the ordinary people don't know, but at the end of the day, most of it is nonsensical when it comes to being a productive citizen and a good team member wherever you work. So if we were to eliminate a lot of the really, really low earners because of a lack of desire, because of physical limitations, mental limitations, cognitive limitations, if we eliminate all them and just focus 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 and and I've always had a high motor and I've always had this drive to get better and better and better and learn new things. But I didn't need the college university, I didn't need liberal professors for me to develop into the person I am today, and there's a lot of. There's millions and millions, tens of millions of Americans and dozens and dozens of thousands of South Dakotans that fit into my category. If we were to just look at that group's pay, I'll bet you it would be very similar and in some cases, much higher than the average pay from professionals that are graduating from college. And again, because I know there's going to be that guy out there who's going to say oh Toby'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 every day that have college degrees that couldn't do what they did without their college degrees. So don't you dare try to pigeonhole me as anti-college. I am simply anti-college for people in high school that we know you can tell at a mile away and I was one of them should never step foot on a college campus.

Speaker 1:

And so what are the answers? What are the answers? Well, I don't think it's that complicated, honestly. First off, we need a massive overhaul of the junior high and high school curriculum in South Dakota state schools High schools, I'm talking about, high schools I'm talking about there should be mandatory personal finance classes, consistently yes, from junior high all the way through high school. There should be career exploration programs, robust career exploration programs. There should be partnerships with local businesses for real world experiences. High schools should be held accountable for preparing students for post-high school life, not just college, and that is where our high schools have failed, and they've been failing for decades. It's not the teacher's fault. It's not the administration's fault. This is a systemic issue and it needs to be changed from the top down.

Speaker 1:

Ask yourself this question how many actual life skills were you taught in high school? Were you taught how to balance a checkbook? Were you taught how to manage your time? Were you taught how to build teams? Were you taught the basic principles of how to start your own business? Did you learn sales techniques? Did you learn any psychology? Did you learn how to read and interpret what people are telling you based on their body language and their eyes? These are things that people in the private sector business people. These are things that people in the private sector business people. These are things that we learn as we go out through life. What an advantage it would have been to have learned that in high school. They had home ec class, but it wasn't mandatory.

Speaker 1:

Why wouldn't we want to teach 16, 17, and 8-year-olds that are about to go off on their own either to college or into the workforce. Why wouldn't we want to spend less time in the depressing classroom and more time doing hands-on, real-world, real-life training and mentoring with our teens In Northeast South Dakota? Let me give you an example of what's wrong with our junior high and high school program as far as their inability to mentor and train young teenagers about life skills In Northeast South Dakota. My group is about as successful as any group of businesses in Northeast South Dakota. We have a lot of very successful businesses. We have dozens and dozens and dozens of very successful leaders in our group, a group that I lead.

Speaker 1:

Not one single time, not a single time, have I been contacted by a high school to come in and talk to young men and women who are in the same position. I was 33 years ago when I made the wrong decision and spent two and a half years of my life and tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt on the mistake that I made by listening to people around me to go to college. Not one time. So if our schools and our state was serious about teaching our young students to prepare them for life, why wouldn't they bring people like me and people from all over the state people in my group. Why wouldn't they bring them in as positive role models? Because there's so many systemic issues right now and again. It's not going to change with one school. It's not going to change with one guidance counselor. It's not going to change with one principal school. It's not going to change with one guidance counselor. It's not going to change with one principal. This is something our entire state needs to look at. Is a complete and massive overhaul of our junior, high and high school curriculum.

Speaker 1:

Now, I realize it's a small sample size, right? The Doden Investment Group, you know, I don't even know maybe around 20 operating businesses. We have a lot of employees. I have, I think, our largest company employs about 120 to 130 people. I'm not going to share specific details because it's nobody's business, but I will tell you this Out of my entire group of businesses, there is only four positions that require a college degree. Four One's an attorney. The rest are accounting Four. Well, what do the income ranges look like? Way better than the average. You look at the median household income in South Dakota, which I believe is around $67,000. The median individual income, I believe, is around $40,000, right, a large percentage of the people that work in my group are in the top 25 percentile of wage earners in South Dakota. I have dozens and dozens of team members in our group Again small sample size Doton Investment Group. I have dozens and dozens of people 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 to 1% of wage earners in South Dakota A lot of highly compensated individuals that never spent a nickel going to college.

Speaker 1:

And so, again, I implore you to see this for what it is. It is a pro-college celebration. Teachers, cpas, doctors, attorneys, engineers, psychologists, psychiatrists are I mean, I can just go on and on and on. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of very noble careers require a college degree, and those people should be celebrated for accomplishing that task. But do you know who should also be equally celebrated? The 18 and 19-year-olds that go directly into the workforce and take jobs that desperately need to be done, and 18 and 19-year-olds that are choosing to go into mentorships and apprenticeships for skilled trades positions that are going to eventually pay them more than 95% of the college educated people in South Dakota.

Speaker 1:

We have skilled labor positions in our group that are making over $100,000 a year in our group that are making over $100,000 a year. There are skilled trades careers all over my group, all over Aberdeen, all over the state 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, it's true. Gone are the days of plumbers and electricians, right, hvac people, construction workers. Like people that are doing those jobs and getting the proper training, getting the proper licensing and applying themselves are making more money than many of the people that spent four, five, six, seven years in college. So this is not an income thing. There are a ton of really well-paying jobs out there in skilled trades Again construction, hvac, heating, cooling, electrician, plumbers, construction workers, automotive technicians, auto body technicians.

Speaker 1:

Think of all the car dealerships in the state of South Dakota. Right, there's three in Aberdeen, there's one in Groton, one in Redfield. There's a bunch of I mean hundreds. There's one in Groton, one in Redfield, there's a bunch of two, follow me, hundreds. There's like all the car dealerships in South Dakota. I promise you, every single one of them is short on auto technicians. I would hire 10 automotive technicians today to work at Aberdeen Chrysler Center and if they are good at their craft and they apply themselves, they can make anywhere from 60 to in excess of $100,000 per year. Hvac companies will tell you the same thing. I talk to them all the time. Electrician I've talked to two people in the last month that own pretty decent-sized electric companies and they have I mean they have eight or ten open positions all over the state. At all times there's nobody to fill the jobs.

Speaker 1:

So you want to talk about stimulating South Dakota's economy? Imagine if the state of South Dakota could create another 1,000 or 2,000 skilled trades individuals per year. Imagine what that would do to our economy. When Aberdeen Chrysler has five more technicians, billion Auto in Sioux Falls has five more technicians. Every HVAC company in the state has one or two more HVAC professionals. It's a big deal and it's only getting worse by the day.

Speaker 1:

And this is something that the state of South Dakota has to address and take very, very seriously in the next one to two years to put together a very solid plan moving forward to make sure that number one we are properly educating and mentoring our soon-to-be high school graduates and giving them all of the information on what post-high school options they have in front of them. That includes going to the workforce directly. That includes a technical college and that includes a four-year college, right? We need to re-educate the parents. We have to re-educate the guidance counselors. We have to re-educate the parents. We have to re-educate the guidance counselors. We have to re-educate the teachers and the administration.

Speaker 1:

Just look at the facts Half of the people in this country are in jobs that don't require a college degree. Yet our schools want to push everybody to college. It doesn't make any sense. Our schools want to push everybody to college. It doesn't make any sense, and I think there's a lot of data out there that would back this up. When you have a state university and 20 or 30% of the people that are there don't want to be there, do you think that is helping or hurting the students that are actually there because they want and need to be right? It's like in high school when you had that class clown in the back that was constantly cutting up, distracted the entire class, right. So I do hope that this builds momentum. I do hope there are state legislators that are willing to discuss this and I hope everybody in the state of South Dakota has an open mind and can at least open up a dialogue and say what can we do better to prepare our high school students to make the right decision for them as they approach graduation?

Speaker 1:

So there was a recent proposal, a bill that was pre-filed for the next legislative session, in which is set to begin in just a few days, and what this bill was aiming to do is to reduce property taxes for owners that occupy single family homes in South Dakota. So a lot of people around the state of South Dakota your neighbors, legislators South Dakota, your neighbors, legislators, community leaders everybody's been talking about property taxes. It's the new buzz phrase for 2025. Let me give you a little background on property taxes. There aren't too many people in the state of South Dakota that can talk more intelligently about the negative impact of property taxes than me. One of my companies, plaza Rental, owns a massive amount of property. Lots of my other companies own their own property, and so we deal with real estate and property tax issues all the time, and so let me just give you a brief background of what happened and why property tax expense, and now property tax relief, has become the new buzz phrase in South Dakota for 2025. So here's what happened COVID comes along in early 2020.

Speaker 1:

Right 2020, right In South Dakota, specifically Aberdeen COVID didn't have too much of an impact outside of like March and April of 2020. I remember at Aberdeen Chrysler it was very lean right. You know, we even participated in the Paycheck Protection Program, which I think 99% of small businesses nationwide did, because essentially what happened was the government was either forcibly shutting down your business or they were making decisions that were going to have such an adverse impact on your business that, in order to to let you know, in order for small business owners like me to be able to pay our employees and pay our rent, and pay our utilities and pay our taxes, they borrowed us money through the Paycheck Protection Program and if we met a bunch of standards it would get forgiven. And again, millions of businesses all over the country did that. Well, as soon as we exited from that phase, the federal government was literally funneling trillions of dollars into the United States economy and specifically into each of the 50 states. There was massive amounts of money, billions of dollars, were given to individual states during COVID that, in addition to, you know, historically low interest rates and all kinds of other reasons, put our country into a super inflationary period. Why? Because the supply was low. Because when the federal government incorrectly shut down supply chains, manufacturers and all that kind of stuff. For months it reduced the supply and then, when things started opening back up, there was a massive amount of demand. Well, the demand was here. The supply was here. Well, you don't have to be an economics professor to understand that when the supply is here and the demand is here, prices shoot through the roof.

Speaker 1:

And that's what happened in the housing market in South Dakota starting in late 2020, 2021, 2022. Those times, specifically part of 2023. So a house that would sell for $150,000 in 2019, by 2021 was selling for $200,000 to $250,000. $400,000 homes were selling for $600,000. And so what did our state and county and city governments do? They said oh boy, the property values have skyrocketed. So now we have to go reassess the value of all this property so we can charge them more taxes. Assess the value of all this property so we can charge them more taxes. The assessed value is supposed to be a percentage of the actual value. So when the actual value of a property goes up, they want to raise the assessed value. When the assessed value goes up, you pay more taxes. So a lot of counties, including ours, they have like predetermined intervals as to when they do these property reassessments.

Speaker 1:

Lots of counties went away from their predetermined assessment schedule and they did immediate assessments as quickly as they could because they wanted that extra tax revenue lickety-split, so they reassessed everybody's properties. It's happened all over the state. I'm talking about Brown County, aberdeen, specifically. They reassessed everybody's properties and so the houses that skyrocketed in value. Commercial property went up, apartment property went up. Real estate went up and it went up in a hurry and it went up significantly. So they raised everybody's taxes. So now, if you had a $200,000 home in 19, 2019, and now in 2021 or 2022, that house is now worth $300,000. Your taxes went from $3,000 to $4,500, essentially Massive, massive increase in real estate tax. But they could justify it based on what the properties were selling for in order to reassess the assessment value that can muster up. Any common sense at all would have known that that housing bubble was going to burst at some point. Property values just weren't going to keep going up 40% a year. So what happened?

Speaker 1:

In order to kill inflation, the Fed started jacking up interest rates. I mean massive, multi-point interest rate increases in a short, compressed time frame Because they wanted people to stop spending money. It was embarrassing for Biden and his administration with, you know, double-digit inflation rates and they knew they couldn't get reelected with massive inflation. Presidents don't get reelected when its citizens can't buy milk and groceries and gas, right? So they needed to squash inflation. So they jacked up rates immediately. Put their thumb on banks. They did everything they could do to slow down the inflation. So they jacked up rates immediately. Put their thumb on banks. They did everything they could do to slow down the inflation. So the value of homes in the Aberdeen market and all over the state again I'm talking specifically about Aberdeen here the value of homes and real estate properties started going like this, started going down. Estate property started going like this, started going down. So now homes in Aberdeen are back to being worth close to what they were in 2019. But the taxes are still way up here. So people in Aberdeen that own homes are paying taxes on a $300,000 home that now might only be worth $200,000 again of our government employees to go back and immediately do another reassessment or to offer up some kind of Real estate and property tax relief Good one, right?

Speaker 1:

That's the problem with government. Once government collects a tax, it will never give it back. That doesn't work in the private sector. Why is the private sector more successful? Why is the private sector more efficient than the government? Well, business ebbs and flows. Budgets go up, budgets go down. Profitability goes up, profitability goes down. Adapting is the key to financial success. Governments don't operate that way. Governments just get fatter and fatter, and fatter and fatter, until somebody comes along and pops that bubble and starts over. And so, yes, we do need property tax relief in South Dakota.

Speaker 1:

I would argue that property taxes should be abolished in South Dakota. There are far better and more equitable ways to collect that revenue that we currently do from property taxes than collecting them from property taxes. Think about retired individuals and the elderly. Imagine you were 25 years old and you and your spouse bought your first home. You put it on a 30-year mortgage. You stayed there all 30 years, paid off your home, retired from your job, and now are living on a fixed income. And now your property tax continued to increase to the point where you can't afford to stay in your home. This is not hyperbole. I have heard stories from all over the state of South Dakota of retired and or elderly individuals that have had to sell their homes because they can't afford to pay their property taxes. I, toby Doden, through my company Plaza Rentals, the last two years have bought homes, many homes, from individuals in that very circumstance.

Speaker 1:

Is there anything more sad and deliberate than overtaxing retired and elderly individuals that have given decades of service to our communities by gouging them on real estate taxes on a house that they have worked 30 years to pay off? It's unconstitutional and as a state like South Dakota, who has a massive amount of tourism if you compare our tourism revenue compared to our total revenue as a state one of the highest in the country why aren't we leveraging our tourism to raise a lion's share of tax revenue so we can stop over-taxing retired and elderly citizens in this state? It's a moral. It's a moral and it's deliberate. If nobody's doing anything to change it, then it's deliberate. So as a society, we are okay Deliberately taxing elderly people out of their homes the last piece of their life, to make them feel like they are in control.

Speaker 1:

What about young people? What about young couples? Call a mortgage banker, call your local bank, and ask them what the number one or number two reason is why young people can't buy homes. It's property taxes. The property taxes get escrowed into your loan. So you go buy a house right now and instead of $200 a month, your real estate taxes are $450 a month. For a lot of people that puts them in a position where they can't afford the home. Massive injustice, massive injustice, massive injustice. South Dakota is one of the few states where home ownership is still one of the most prideful things you will ever obtain period. And it is harder in South Dakota for young people to buy a home than it has ever ever been, and property taxes being artificially increased because of COVID is one of the main reasons. So my team and I are working on a proposal to get the conversation started, to start talking about alternative ways that we can generate revenue so that we can abolish real estate taxes in South Dakota. Now it's not just a single family home issue for the elderly and retired. It's not just a single family home issue for young couples or young individuals. It's an economical thing too. Owner in South Dakota suddenly had to pay no property taxes. Let me repeat that Imagine if every small business owner in South Dakota had their property taxes abolished.

Speaker 1:

Do you know what that would do to the economy in South Dakota moving forward? It would be the largest propulsion upward in South Dakota's economy in the history of our country, and there would not be a close second. Small business owners would invest more money into their people. That means pay raises, that means benefits, that means hiring more team members. They would spend more money on capital improvements on their facilities, renovations, remodels, expansions, and what they didn't invest in their company they would spend.

Speaker 1:

Because that's what people do, because that's always the argument oh, if you cut taxes for a small business owner, they're going to put more in their pocket. Yup, but they're also going to put more into their business and more into their people and more into their facilities. And the money they do put in their pocket they're going to spend anyway. Another vacation. They're going to go buy more clothes. They're going to go buy a new TV, a Lange's TV and appliance. Like you cannot imagine how dominant the South Dakota economy would become if property taxes were abolished overnight. And so we are going to keep talking about that. We are going to keep talking to state leaders about that, we are going to keep talking to state legislatures about that, and I think overall, this is just another topic that can all get wound together as we start talking about the state of South Dakota taking federal money. Whether it's the state of South Dakota collecting sales tax, sales tax or real estate tax, it doesn't matter where it's coming from. Once government entities get the money, they don't want to give it back. Let me give you proof.

Speaker 1:

What do you think the South Dakota state budget was in 2019? A little over $4 billion, roughly $4.4 billion. In 2025, it's projected to be nearly $8 billion. I think the low end was $7.6 billion, $7.5 or $7.6 billion. So in five years, basically during COVID COVID is what initiated a lot of this South Dakota's budget went from basically $4 billion to over $7.5 billion. $4 billion to seven billion. Three billion almost a hundred percent increase in our state budget expenditures. Where's the money? What is our state spending $3 billion on annually that they weren't four and five years ago? I could make an argument that our state government was bloated five years ago when our budget was $4.5 billion, and now our budget is $7.6 billion. You think Dusty Johnson's going to want to bring that budget down? Do you think Marty Jack Johnson's going to want to bring that budget down? You think Marty Jackley is going to want to bring that budget down? You think Kristi Noem ever intended to bring that budget down. Do you think Larry Roden is going to bring that budget down At some point?

Speaker 1:

Folks, the people in South Dakota, you and me, we're going to have to make a choice. Do we want South Dakota to remain South Dakota or do we want South Dakota to grow into one of the establishment oligarchic states like Minnesota? It's a fair question. So we're almost at $8 billion now. Where are we going to be in five years? $10 billion, $12 billion? What are the answers?

Speaker 1:

Where is the $3 billion per year being spent that we didn't have five years ago? Where is it? Well, we know Governor Noem snuck over a half billion dollars of that for this ridiculous prison proposal. All right, so there's a half a billion. Where is the other nine or $10 billion that has been spent the last three years? And don't tell me COVID. We ain't spending money on COVID this year and we sure as hell shouldn't be spending money on COVID next year or any other fake propaganda disease that they want to discuss Bird flu. So, yes, indeed, we are going to have a decision to make South Dakota, and that decision is coming. I think this is something people have to start talking about. Do we want South Dakota to keep growing like other establishment states, or do we want to buck the trend? Do South Dakotans want to shrink our state government and become the smallest and most efficient state government in the country? A beacon of hope for the other states? A beacon of hope for the other states. Thank you for listening to Toby Doden Unfiltered.