You mean that the notion that property is sacrosanct is artificial? Yes, I agree with that. If anything should be sacrosanct, it should be human life and well-being, not things.
I think thatās true only in the current system. A system that prioritizes other things would mean thatās not true.
By mature I mean good enough that enlightened people from our time will think how grown up and fair they are then, a nice objective rule based on when I see it.
The above comments are correct that the dead wealth problem still exists, though inflation helps get this dead cash into circulation. Rather than getting too specific I rather hand wave and say we need a system which allows for wealth but makes it a more real time reward for behavior benefiting society or at least sectors of interest, whuffie though even in DAOITMK there were problems with that monetary system.
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Bet you didnāt call the professor that before you had the degree in hand. 
Do you propose another mechanism to fund local governments then?
my property taxes pay for things like the fireman. I like him and want him to stay in his job.
Although, admittedly, the number of police officers making 6 figures is just not right, and I would like to see that change. If anyone deserves that money its the teachers. And ideally we donāt need as many police when we have enough good teachers.
But then I look at the system here in America, and realize that itās not for the masses. Itās for the owners of the masses.
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Those do not sound like libertarian ideas to me. Libertarians I know think taxation is theft, and donāt want to debate the merits of different forms of taxation, any more than I want to debate which kind of bank robbery is best. As @MarjaE pointed out, those ideas are also false; but that never stopped a libertarian.
The libertarian answer to that one is bizarre, that those who wish to will hire their own firemen. The idea of public good is not a libertarian idea, even if the public good is a city that is not in flames. The truly unfortunate thing is this thinking has permeated the Republican Party, and through them the media and the public. We can no longer see things like education as public good - we can only discuss them in terms of higher-paying jobs for worker bees, and so there goes the humanities.
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sorry, i only meant i see some logic in the reasons libertarians argue against annual property taxes.
i know they donāt like taxes of any kind. ( which truth be told makes some sense in a certain knee-jerk emotional way, but doesnāt make sense to me on any intellectual level. they seem to like the commons, but donāt want to pay for itās upkeep! )
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22%!?
Seems about right for a weak-ass service industry economy developed by sociopaths that profit on the margins by trading money that amounts to no more than wishful thinking.
I worked in various service based industries for many years, the only benefit was perspective.
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i personally hate that property taxes are the key funds for education and infrastructure. it means that well-off places and people do well, and less well-off places and people donāt.
texas is a great example of a place where thereās no state tax, so property taxes have to make up the difference. itās a system tailored made for keeping poor people poor.
they have a system referred to as robin hood taxes to try to make up the difference, and it doesnāt work.
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i agree ā and i could see a property tax linked to income, or a property tax with exceptions for those who live in the home, who are out of work or unable to work, being just.
like i think youāre saying ā the issues of the worst-paying jobs, difficulty in affording higher education, and the like, could be improved if the US would use tools like income taxes, investment taxes, and financial transaction taxes to fund single-payer healthcare, education, and infrastructure. it would relieve the burden of low-income earners needing so much money just to get by.
the US pays some of that already, but they do it by employing a gigantic military, and thatās the long, inefficient, way around.
I think because with basic income, you can get (some) conservatives to go along with the idea. Thereās a segment of right-wingers that really hate all the bureaucracy involved in getting help to people who need it. The whole idea of food stamps as an entirely separate type of currency that can only be spent on certain items is pretty infantilizing. And the amount of resources wasted on having that alternative currency seems wasteful.
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I appreciate that you donāt like itā¦ who likes taxes (other than me, who likes them)
What is the workable alternative to property taxes, was my question. IQ tax? Education Tax? Child tax? Only have commercial/industrial taxes? Gas tax? Carbon tax?
What else of value can be taxed, as taxes are an important part of civilization?
(i see many of the answers to my questions were in the next comment to Mindysan)
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yeah, sorry! i didnāt mean to ignore your question.
iām on the side of going after the places where the money leaves the every-day economic sphere and enters the stratosphere. the US economy is doing great, but people are doing poorly. i think the reason that happens is there are basically two different economies emerging. the economy represented by the 1%, and the economy represented by these worst-paying jobs.
the money from the lower economy feeds the upper economy, and only slowly, if even ever, trickles down. that imbalance ā so far as i can see ā can only be addressed by adequate taxation. thereās lots of ways. itās only that iām not convinced real estate taxes ( especially when itās owner occupied ) is the best way.
But another way of getting around the debate on taxes is having the distribution of resources instead of money, if that makes sense. Honestly, I have no idea how that would feasible work as shifting from the current system of taxation of cash, but imagine how productive we could all be if we didnāt have to worry about a roof over our heads, our basic health, a basic level of subsistence and education for our kids. It seems like all our discussions and debates rest on the problems that have been created around the modern market economy that demands everything has a bottom line. What if somethings just werenāt in that system and were just resources we all had access to because of the fact that we exist as human beings?
Again, Iām trying to jump over this debate about the morality of taxation that many of us are havingā¦ Zizek has said that part of our problem is that we canāt imagine an alternative to the modern system, does something like this get out of that maybe?
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Isnāt money a representation of resources? Most developed countries provide housing, health care, food and education in some form. The US is definitely an exception when it comes to health care. I think directly providing those services would make more sense, sure, but I also think it would be politically easier to move to a basic income first.
You know, grad students are exploited, too. In a lot of science fields, theyāre spending 5-7 years doing skilled work with skills that they could take to industry right then, without their PhD and be making easily 3-4 times as much. Even in fields where thereās not that competition from industry, theyāre getting payed less than minimum wage to teach university classes.
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Not to defend my own low pay (for teaching class, I earned slightly less than the food industry average listed in that article), but the situations are not parallel. Choosing not to get an industry job because you want to continue your education is different from having to work long hours for practically nothing because your skills are not valued. I also got tuition remission and free health insurance from my program. I have significantly better job prospects because of it.
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I was just going to say that to @anon62122146. Iām currently a grad student, and I would love more pay for what I do and am actually working to better, if not my own lot, the lot of those who come after me. We donāt get free insurance, and those of us in the humanities make our universities minimum (there is a pretty large gap between us and the science people). Butā¦ I get to spend time in a classroom, research a topic I care about, and spend time talking to people about things Iām interested in. So, yeah, there is a degree of exploitation there, and the job market is pretty unstable right now for my field, but itās still in many ways a position of privilege in relation to other sorts of work. In many ways, itās apples and oranges.
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Yeah, as far as I understand it, theyāre actually obligated to pay PhDās more, so most of the lower-level classes are taught by grad students and adjuncts. Itās not a good system, but academia is something you choose for yourself, so you know that youāre not going into it for the money. Your skill set is still valued, even if you donāt get paid as much. I could quit right now and find a salaried industry job.
Oh, and the job market is bad in my field too, at least in the US. My postdocās in Europe.
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I bet very few people yell at you for not putting sour cream on their regular taco. 
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