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So obviously on the show we have talked a lot about porn and if you've been here for a while, even back on comment section, you would know that, you know, we have talked about the women who make it, the companies that exploit those women, the trafficking, the impacts on mental health, specifically men's mental health. And so we finally get to the question, what do we actually do about it. We're sitting here complaining and lamenting, but what is the solution? Well, James Fishback, who is running for governor in the state of Florida has an idea. A 50% hoe tax. That's not officially called ho tax, but I much prefer that term and it makes me chuckle. I like the sound of that better. But basically what Fischback is proposing if he was to be elected Governor is a 50% sin tax which would help fund schools and would discourage sex work. And this could be a solution or many are arguing it could just be another slippery slope. So all of this started on January 12th when James Fishback announced that if he were to be elected in Florida, he would impose this 50% income tax on OnlyFans workers. And this is the video that he released.
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Florida Governor in year one I will push for the first of its kind Only fans sin tax. If you are a so called only fans creator in Florida, you are going to pay 50% to the state on whatever you so called earn via that online degeneracy platform. And that money, that money will be used to fund our education system, will be used to fund the crisis pregnancy centers.
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So I think you guys get the point again, 50% Hotax specifically on OnlyFans workers. Now what you need to know about James Fishback if you've not been following him on social media and noticing what is happening in Florida is that he is running as the alternative anti establishment Republican candidate against Byron Donalds in Florida. And while Byron Donald is racking in millions upon millions of campaign donations and he has Washington D.C. behind him, Fishback's currency is virality and he is specifically trying to reach Gen Z and things like this. These viral moments are doing just that now. Anyway, back to the point. Fishback did not just stop there, he took it a step further and he specifically targeted one OnlyFans creator, a woman named Sophie Rain who currently lives in Florida. And she is actually one of the high OnlyFans earners on the entire platform. And according to one People article, she has brought in more than $43 million in her time on OnlyFans. His article reads, the Florida based influencer told people about her yearly Income then clocking in at around 43 million and how it has changed her life. She said that she's been able to buy herself her dream car, a 2024 Porsche GT3 and rents a beautiful waterfront property in Miami. Now I think Fishback saw all of this and he decided to use her as an example. He tweeted at her and he said, hey Sophie Rain, pay up or quit OnlyFans. As Florida governor, I will not allow a of smart and capable young women to sell their bodies online. And now this sparked an entire back and forth between him and Sophie Rain. It has now gone viral. She first responded with this and says, sounds like you subscribed and got buyer's remorse after dropping your annual salary on an OnlyFans girl. But she also didn't stop there because then she put out a longer video. This was her response.
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So he's proposing a sin tax on BOPS where we would have to pay 50% to the state on top of the 37 I already paid to the government. And I would be more than happy to pay that if multibillion dollar corporations were also being properly taxed. But surprise, they're not. I never usually get into politics, but there are clearly better ways to raise funds from actual corrupt businesses in our country. I think that people also fail to realize that there are so many creators on this platform that do this job because they're struggling. So to tax them like that when they're literally doing it just to support their families is sad.
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My favorite part of that entire video is where she says that people do this job to survive and it's so immoral to take 50% of their income. Like, I'm sorry, are there not other options if you cannot make ends meet, if you cannot afford groceries? I don't think OnlyFans creating an account, I don't think that that is the only option or actually the best option. All of that reminds me of something that we talked about last year on the show. When Nepo baby Sammy Sheen on her family's reality show said that she wanted to move out of her mom's house. But her only two options were working at a local candy store and going on onlyfam. She was like, well, I guess that's it. That's the only job I can get. Like, objectively that is a lie. Like, I'm sorry Sammy, I am sorry Sophie. The only option is not OnlyFans. That is a cope. It is an excuse to make yourself feel better about why you're going into this line of work at Least just be honest. At least own it and say, yeah, I'm going into sex work, I want attention and I'm hopefully gonna get quick cash by being the vice of millions of men. That is actually what you're doing. So at least just be honest. Anyway, somebody commented and said, I love how you act like you have a useful job like the rest of us. You create so smut that poisons our society. There's a difference. So like I said, they had a back and forth going viral, post after viral post and video. It was going on for the last few days on X, which obviously is quite entertaining. My friend Graham Stephan responded to this and he said he's just giving free marketing to Sophie Rain. This type of publicity is easily worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Between all the back and forth views this banter generates, he is getting played. And while obviously that is true and he is directing attention to Sophie Rain, I don't think Fishback sees it as himself getting played. I do actually think that he is smarter than that. Like this is probably a very specific PR strateg from he and his team. He makes a big controversial statement. He picks a fight with an individual. People are now picking sides. He's going viral. People are now then coming to his page. They're learning about his social media grassroots campaign in Florida. All the while he is still making an important point about a significant issue that he cares about, which is porn. But getting back to the point and getting to the question of whether this could actually work or whether it is moral or consistent with my values. First of all, we need to go to Sophie and obviously, as you guys saw in her video, her main argument is that he wants to tax her and not large corporations. And so she sees that as the problem. She tweeted this and she said, I pay my 37% income tax proudly. I would be glad to pay more if big businesses weren't paying $0 in taxes. Which in my opinion is just a stupid argument. Because those corporations that she is referencing in this post pour billions and billions of dollars back into the economy. They employ thousands of Americans like that. It's just economics. Plus, I personally am not gonna waste breath being angry at these companies that are simply using the system to their advantage. You know, work smarter, not harder. Which you can do when you invest with Stash Financial because you don't need to overhaul your life to start investing, just automated. With Stash, your new year money goals can quietly run in the background while you focus on everything else. And Stash isn't just another investing app. It is a registered investment advisor that combines automated investing with expert personalized guidance so that you don't have to worry about gambling or figuring it out on your own. It is simple, it's smart and it is totally stress free. 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Like, if you want to talk about OnlyFans, the company being taxed, or Pornhub, you might say like, sure, we can give them a syntax like what Fishback is proposing, but what then stops those companies from going out and recruiting more Onlyfans creators or recruiting more subscribers, more men to subscribe to those pages just to try to recoup their losses in what they're now paying in taxes? James Fishback is offering an alternative and saying, let's just stop it right here with the creators. Now again, we do have to admit that while Fishback might have strong feelings on this issue, he could also just be doing this for attention and the shock value, you know, taking a play out of Trump's book. But the thing is, this isn't some grand new idea. And I think that that's what a lot of people are missing online because I'm seeing a lot of comments of saying this would never work. This is crazy, this is completely hypocritical. But Florida is not the only state that is considering this. Take this headline right here. Utah GOP lawmaker pushes 7% porn tax to Fund Teen Mental Health Services. My point is this is not a new idea in our current political landscape. And while I certainly do want to find a way to curb the production and the distribution of something that is such a net negative on society, I do have thoughts. I do have concerns, as do a lot of people online. And many people think that this whole idea is just way too messy. One person commented and said, honest question, why not just ban OnlyFans in Florida? Another person said, honestly, insane politicians are resulting to shit like this to stir up controversy and engagement. Rather than outright banning use of the platform in Florida, let's tax the 1 to 5 Floridians that actually were successful from OnlyFans and claim that it's going towards the school systems like Miami isn't fueled from drugs and prostitution. Now obviously both of these are good points and my personal biggest concern is that we already cannot trust our government to appropriately distribute the taxes that we already pay. So how will this be any different? And it is a point that Sophie actually made in her video, which you guys saw earlier in her response. But Fishback, because of course he is running for office, is arguing that under him as governor, it would be clear, it would be honest, it would be transparent, it would go towards raising teachers salaries and things like that. Who knows, is what every politician says when they're running for office. So who knows? We'll have to see him actually do the job to know. But moving on to arguably the more important point, the second concern is that taxing things just outright, that politicians deem sinful or improper, is a slippery slope. That is what a lot of people are arguing when they are talking to Fishback about this idea. You know, if we do it to porn. And they might turn around and say, Brett, you know, what you talk about on YouTube is inappropriate, we deem it improper. So we are now going to take 50% of your income. And their second concern there is the one that has most probably people hung up online, specifically on right wing Twitter. And it is understandable. And this actually, funnily enough, sparked a whole debate on my own team about everybody's thoughts on this issue. Now, the two main sides of this debate that I just broke down can be summed up between these two comments. This person said, you are a lumpin proletariat whoring yourself out and it is not a job. We as a society should discourage it by any means necessary while avoiding censorship. This sounds like a great way to do it. And then the next person says, so many small government conservatives all of a sudden are in favor of taxes just because it is against Onlyfans girls. And the thing is, both of those people are correct. Like neither of them are totally wrong. I understand what both of them are saying, but here's the thing, and this is kind of where I stand. And I'm going to walk you through my thought process on all of this because I've been like chewing on it all day long. I do consider myself to be a small government conservative and I believe that taxation is theft. And I do believe that things like this in general are a slippery slope. But in my opinion, my personal opinion, in this specific situation, the slope has already been slipped. Like there is no more slipping. That can be done. And so, yes, obviously I always want to stay consistent with the things that I talk about and the things that I believe. But I also think that you have to have a healthy dose of reality. You have to look around at the reality of the world that we live in and go, okay, well like, does this actually make sense or am I just trying to live in like libertarian utopia because the government is already taxing people, they are taxing people and companies right and left because the government deems their products to be harmful or have a negative impact on society. That is already happening. And I would argue that these are things that are objectively bad. Now, others might say that they are subjective. They might say, how do you really know what's a sin? I would say from God. But obviously some people might not agree with that. But these are called excise taxes and these are mostly imposed on alcohol and tobacco manufacturers, the people who are creating these products and distributing them out into society. And these laws and these tax rates, they can vary from state to state, by product to product, all of that. And these states will openly use these syntaxes to hopefully better the community. This article reads. States use the revenue from syntaxes to apply towards achieving social and economic goals. What Fishback is talking about doing in Florida, a few of the ways in which states may use their syntax dollars is through funding gambling and drug related rehab facilities, building infrastructure and improving education, which is what he wants to do in Florida. But again, I understand if people are not convinced, if they do not think that that is a good idea, because these days all of that money might be, you know, well intended, but it might just be sent off to Somali terrorist groups. The point being, Fish Pack's idea is not that wild. Casinos and gambling companies, they have to pay out a percentage of their net revenue on top of all of their normal business taxes. Weed has excise taxes very much like alcohol and tobacco. So do vanish vape products and on and on and on. There are many categories like this. The Trump administration is actually doing their own version of this kind of disincentivizing as they restrict the purchase of, you know, sugary foods, processed foods, sodas on snap. I would argue that that is a similar strategy of discouraging the population from buying something or using something. So my point in bringing all of that up is that Fishback's idea in theory is not new. What he is proposing right here though, is just it's being applied in a new way. And Sophie is arguing once again that OnlyFans should pay the the cost because it is the company, they are the ones distributing her content. But my response to that would be that she herself is a company. She is allegedly a $43 million a year company. She is the producer, the manufacturer, if you will, of the content that she sells online and then distributes through the platform of OnlyFans. Now, obviously what Fishback is wanting to do is a new application of this type of law. But an excise Tax on something like pornography. It does not seem totally out of left field considering the other things that our government and different states do tax. This is literally a practice and an idea that has been around since ancient Greece. Brothels and independent prostitutes paid income tax, which was then used to fund public buildings, monuments and repair roads. Although initially it seems like they intended the tax for the building of temples to honor the gods, especially the patron deity of the city, Athena. So all of this to say I understand the concerns, I understand the critiques in my frame of mind, I get it. I definitely lean more small government and libertarian, but I also live in the real world. I'm not going to clutch my pearls over something that we already do, that our federal government does, that our different states do, and that we have been doing as a civilization for thousands and thousands of years. Just tack it on to all of the other things that we get taxed on every single day. And maybe somebody would reply to this and say, you know, Bret, this is a lazy response, but like, it just seems realistic and sometimes you have to be realistic. And I also think that I think about it like I think about other forms of income tax. If you really want to avoid paying income tax, move to Tennessee, move to Nevada, move to states where you will not be taxed on your income. Like if you want to not be taxed on your onlyfans income under Fishback as governor, leave Florida or do not become an onlyfans creator. We all have choices in where we can live, what we can do in order to optimize our income. You are not exempt from that. Now to even further this conversation, some people were bringing up taxing the other party. One woman, Wendy O on X, said, have you considered taxing the men that pay for these subscriptions as well? Fair is fair. I agree. I don't hate that at all. And this is also something that is fairly common, that is not out of left field because in some states these syntaxes, these excise taxes which we have been talking about can be applied to both the manufacturer and the consumer or either or. But at the end of the day, the consumer almost always end up paying more because of the manufacturers and the producers are taxed, they'll just raise their prices to cover that break. So anyway, in some way, shape or form, the consumer will always be taxed. Now to bring everything back to this whole debate, the point that I kept seeing come up specifically on right wing Twitter, the point that was brought up on my own team was the potential that attacks like this could be politicized. That it was setting a precedent for something that would only hurt us, it would bite us as Republicans in the ass later on. The dangers of pornography is most often in 2026, you know, a right wing talking point. So if we do something like this that is really polarizing, that is, you know, politicized, is controversial, what is then stopping somebody on the left from one day taxing something of ours that they hate? And will we not like that? And now we've created this whole precedent and this whole slippery slope, like somebody said, I get where he's coming from. But using taxes to disincentivize bad behavior is a progressive tactic. We should just ban porn outright. I will never support increasing taxes. Sorry. And again, philosophically, I get that. But. But per usual, the left is already one step ahead, as they often are, because when they have power, they actually wield it. And so a couple of years ago, they started taxing the firearm industry and its consumers. Just take a look at this headline from 2024. You can see here. This took place in Colorado and the article reads, colorado voters approved Proposition KK on election day, adding a 6.5 excise tax on gun and ammunition sales. Colorado was not the first state to impose such a tax, but it is the first to do so via a citizen's vote. California, the only other state with an excise tax on gun sales, passed a similar 11% excise tax through Assembly Bill 28, which Governor Newsom signed into law. So taxes have already become weaponized. They are already politicized. The left has also tried to regulate and suppress the gun industry into extinction. They are weaponizing that. You can't produce this type of ammunition. You can only produce this much, this type of gun. The whole thing is insane. But it's all been happening for years. And sure, the state of Tennessee, the federal government, they could tax my YouTube income if they don't like the things that I say. But they could even more easily just deplatform me. And they have already tried to do that time and time again over the last few years. They have tried and they have been successful with countless other people. And that is why you should subscribe to googlecrofidential.com because they can't kick me off of my own platform. Just saying, with prostitution being the oldest profession in the world, like, I do not think we're gonna be banning it or getting rid of it anytime soon. Especially now that we are learning that the United States has increasingly been issuing work visas for onlyfans models, citing their quote, unquote extraordinary abilities, which qualifies them for an O1 visa. Like, you really cannot make this stuff up. It just keeps happening. It is snowballing. So, listen, if it's not gonna be banned, if we're not gonna ban it outright and help society in that regard, if we're not going to eliminate all taxes across the board and excise taxes to be consistent there, then why not just treat this like every other vice and sin? It seems only fair for the current reality that we live in.