Send us Fan Mail The Big Idea Professor Adam Braus pitches a fix nobody's tried: instead of taxing property at a flat rate, tax it like income — progressively. Own a modest home? You're barely taxed. Own a $50 million real estate empire? You pay real money. It's a property tax with a conscience, and Adam argues it could solve the housing crisis, fix California's broken Prop 13 system, and take a swing at the billionaire-hoarding problem all at once. Scot Maupin, doing his usual generous-interrogator thing, pokes at yachts, shell companies, and whether landlords will just pass the cost to renters — and Adam's got an answer for all of it. What's Broken Right Now Prop 13 locks property taxes to a home's original purchase price — not what it's worth today. Buy a house in 1985 for pocket change, and decades later you're still paying taxes on pocket change, even as the home is worth millions.This hits commercial property too — including, allegedly, golf courses that shuffle ownership through shell-share tricks so they're never technically "sold."The result: California's budget is starved relative to its actual wealth, and the state leans harder on income tax to compensate — which hits working people disproportionately harder than a property tax would.Meanwhile, in places like Montana and Hawaii, wealthy outsiders are buying up land and driving housing costs through the roof — not because there's a housing shortage, but because of hoarding and speculation.The Fix: Progressive Property Tax Instead of one flat rate on a property's value, tax brackets stack on a person's total property holdings: First $200K (or so): little to no tax — protects ordinary homeowners and grandmas on fixed incomes.$200K–$2M: a low rate, comparable to today's lowest-tax states.$2M–$10M+: rates climb toward the top of the national range (2%+).+$50M: a "super bracket" — 2.5–3%+ on the excess.The pitch: this could roughly double California's property tax revenue (from ~$100B to $170–200B), funneled toward building housing, ending homelessness, and politically popular wins like paid leave — while lowering the tax burden on working people (no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security). How It Closes the Loopholes A beneficiary registry (already used in Australia and some U.S. states) ties every property to a real human owner — so you can't dodge the tax by splitting ownership across an LLC for every house, or spreading deeds across family members.Commercial real estate is included. Adam's pitch turns this into a two-for-one: tax pressure forces a sell-off of empty downtown office space (a post-COVID glut), and the state can buy it cheap and convert it into actual housing — bringing residents (and life) back to dead downtowns.The Objections, Pre-Debunked Scot plays it straight and asks the obvious questions: "Won't the rich just flee to Florida or Montana?" Adam's counter: capital flight of real estate is mostly harmless — the buildings can't be packed in a suitcase. If a billionaire sells, the property stays in-state; prices just come down, which is the point."Won't this just raise rents?" Possibly nudges the very top of the market, but the broad base of affordable housing should barely move — maybe even gets cheaper as demand shifts."Will yachts and jets count?" No — keep it simple, this is real estate only.Where the Idea Comes From Adam name-checks Gary's Economics (and its scrappier YouTube cousin, Barry's Economics) for the broader "tax wealth, not work" framing, and ties the proposal back to existing progressive wealth-tax proposals from Bernie Sanders (the famous "8% bracket above $1B," pegged to average market returns) and Elizabeth Warren (flat 2% above $50M) — positioning the progressive property tax as a more politically palatable, state-level cousin of those ideas. Detour of the Episode A spirited tangent on Maine's Senate race, Graham Platner — oyster farmer, combat veteran, and the episode's pick for "proof this message can win" — plus a running bit on whether wind turbines can literally use up the wind. (They cannot. Probably.) Quotable "I'm so wealthy that I can't pay the tax on my wealth." — the complaint Adam says is doing a lot of work to protect a small number of very rich people. Want me to also draft a short, punchier episode description (the 2–3 sentence blurb for podcast apps) or social media copy to go with these notes? Support the show Help these new solutions spread by ... Subscribing wherever you listen to podcastsLeaving a 5-star review Sharing your favorite solution with your friends and network (this makes a BIG difference)Comments? Feedback? Questions? Solutions? Message us! We will do a mailbag episode. Email: solutionsfromthemultiverse@gmail.com Adam: @ajbraus - braus@hey.com Scot: @scotmaupin adambraus.com (Link to Adam's projects and books) The Perfect Show (Scot's solo podcast) Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.
