multaneous sip. Best thing that's ever happened to you today. Go.

Oh, I've just been welcomed to someone else's simulation. What if our dreams are the real world and this is the simulation? Whoa, whoa. Okay, that wasn't very deep, but we're going deep.

So this Disney and DeSantis thing is way more interesting than it should be, meaning that I started out thinking it was sort of a thin story, that there wasn't much to it, but there's really a lot of interesting elements to it, and I don't know if they're fully appreciated. So let's talk about that.

Just an update if you don't know: Disney years ago in the '60s negotiated a deal with the state of Florida where they would have some autonomy in a certain part of the state that they owned. So it was their own property and they could put in their own city services, you know, water, sewage, roads, stuff like that, as well as other powers. But that's mainly what they wanted to do, was take care of the infrastructure. And I guess they got tax breaks or no taxes or something like that. And in return they built the Disney properties and the state would benefit from the people coming in and having a big business where there had been nothing but unused land before. And then Disney would benefit from the efficiency and the tax breaks. And that was a good idea until Disney opened its mouth about the poorly labeled "Don't Say Gay" law that really wasn't about that. It was more about not having teachers teach little kids things about sexuality or even things about gender identity, stuff like that. So that was the basic idea.

Then Governor DeSantis retaliated, and we'll talk about whether that word really fits. I don't think it does. He retaliated, so to speak, by revoking Disney's special deal. And it was just because Disney spoke up about the law. Now all right, that's the setup just so everybody's up to speed.

Here are the things that people have been saying about it. One is that Disney had an unfair deal because they weren't paying taxes unlike other corporations. They weren't paying taxes, and so why is that good for Florida if Florida is giving up some autonomy and they're not getting taxes? It's a bad deal for Florida, right?

No, no. There's a reason that Florida made the deal. No, I don't own Disney stock except that it's a component of an index fund. Good question, by the way. You should always ask that question if you see me mention any product or even a CEO. Ask it. Just remind me, because I just don't remember to do it. Because there are some of these companies that I have some stock in, and I do think it influences me even when I don't feel it. Of course it does. Money always does. But I don't have any specific stake in Disney.

So here's the thing. Disney employs 60,000 people in Florida. So that's 60,000 employees who get a paycheck, and then what happens with their paycheck? Money comes out of it. That's called taxes, and it goes to Florida. Now that's 60,000 people who either wouldn't be there to work or would have had competing jobs or would have been higher unemployment. It would have been something different. But 60,000 employees is quite a few people.

How about the tourists? All those tourists who come into Florida, they're paying hotel taxes, right? So a hotel tax is almost like an income tax on somebody who doesn't live there. It's just sort of an indirect income tax. So Florida actually has a way, in a conceptual way, to levy an income tax on other states because if you make some money in another state and you want to spend it in Florida on a vacation, some of that money is going to go into the hotel tax and go into Florida's pocket.

So how many millions of people go to Disney every year? And they're filling Florida's coffers through the hotel tax. And then all these people are eating and drinking and buying goods, and there's this ripple effect. The size of the footprint of Disney's economic benefit to Florida is kind of enormous, isn't it? Am I wrong? If you're talking to an actual commercial successful economist, would they say if you said to an economist, "Disney doesn't pay taxes in Florida," would they just laugh at you? I'm pretty sure that Disney creates more taxable situations, which is different. They create more taxable situations than anybody in Florida.

I don't know who's the biggest employer in Florida besides the government. Outside the government, who's the biggest? And maybe schools. Outside of government and schools, is it Disney? No, military could be military, but that doesn't count. Well, Disney's one of them. Somebody says NASA. I would think Disney's the bigger one in terms of tax impact.

So now that's not counting the fact that Disney built their own infrastructure. So instead of the town paying for roads, Disney paid for them. Isn't that like a tax? It's in place of a tax, which was the whole idea. We won't have a lot of taxes, but those taxes would have paid for the roads, but you're going to pay for the roads. So just like a tax, you just have more flexibility to put the roads where you want them. And who knew be