31 tion and physical harassment. Needless to say, it was difficult to generate an income when the workload created by government required 70- 100 hours a week of work for many years. At various times I had my house and my pos- sessions used as weapons against me. When I traveled after I moved to Tennessee, every time I returned home, there was one thing of sentimen- tal value or financial value gone. It happened so consistently, I was sure it was no accident. My research showed that this was “standard oper- ating procedure” in such circumstances. So I decided to dispose of almost all my possessions. I made a list of everything that had any sentimen- tal or financial value, and I sold them or gave most of them to my relatives and friends. Indeed that was quite a Christmas if you knew me at that time – I had one relative who received a Renoir print for Christmas. When I settled the litigation I said to myself, “No one is ever going to use my possessions as a weapon against me again. I will buy the small- est possible home. I’m going to buy something where I can have my own well – where I don’t have to depend on fluoridated water systems. I will buy a home in an area where costs and taxes are extremely modest. I will use the remnants of remaining furniture – I will not redecorate.” I have three small properties in Hickory Valley, Tennessee. My combined property taxes on all three are approximately $500 a year. So let’s say that there are terrible state and local municipal funding problems and my property taxes are tripled, then I’m paying $1,500. I know of people in states or high-cost areas with high property taxes. If they double their prop- erty taxes, the taxes can destroy the value of the real estate. It can’t destroy the value of my real estate – my value is too small. I didn’t try to buy a home in an area where I thought I could make decent capital gains. I wanted a home that –if it were firebombed, it was the bank and the insurance company’s problem, not mine. I could come up quickly in a new place. I wanted to put my money in the things that had worked for me. I knew that if I invested in Netflix and Amazon I could make money, but I didn’t come here only to make money. I came here to make a difference. So I invested in launching and building the Solari Report and Solari Investment Advisory Services and in build- ing a global network of people making a differ- ence around the world. One of the reasons I chose to stay in Tennessee was because of the due diligence I did on the state budgets and the state pension fund system. They were conservatively managed. Every time I deal with state and local governments here in Tennessee, I get somebody who is competent, who is perfectly pleasant, but tough. These atti- tudes are certainly reflected if you look at their pension fund arrangements. Our state pension funds have one of the highest funding ratios in the country. If you come to Tennessee, people live much more modestly than many other states. We have no income tax, but we do have a high sales tax. In my hometown of Hickory Valley, if you go to the city council meeting once a month, the first thing that the mayor and city council do is open the mail, go through the bills, and write the checks. There is no staff and no payroll other than our part-time policemen. This is one of the reasons my property taxes are so low. Our mu- nicipality is a very modest operation that never built up the overhead that has happened around the rest of the country. In fact, if everyone in Hickory Valley stopped paying their taxes, they have enough municipal reserves to operate for several decades. If you look at where we are concerning the eco- nomic outlook, I have enjoyed fewer capital gains since 2000 on my property than I would have if I were in Chicago or San Francisco. However, I have enormous protection from increases from unfunded state and local obligations, a failure of local municipal services and from inflation. If inflation increases, overhead could be hit signifi- cantly. If we get a significant fall in the value of the US dollar, it could be even more significant. A low cost overhead protects me relatively to