Simple math. An $800,000 house, fully paid off, no mortgage — just property tax. That's $1,000 a month to the state for the privilege of storing your cars and belongings in a building you supposedly own. $800,000 locked into an illiquid asset, plus $12,000 a year in perpetual rent to the government. Alternatively: two storage units at $300 a month, $800,000 still liquid, invested however you please. The "homeowner" pays three times more and owns nothing — because the moment they stop paying property tax, the state takes the house. Ownership is a word they let you use. Nothing more.
Americans are scammed so thoroughly they defend the scam with pride. "Building equity." "The American Dream." "It's an investment." No — it's $800,000 locked into a depreciating structure on land the state can seize if you miss a few tax payments, while they extract rent from you forever. You can gaslight yourself and your neighbors, but the state knows exactly who really owns your house. They do. You're just the maintenance staff with a mailbox.
Property tax is lifelong serfdom dressed in homeownership language. The more you make, the more they take. The larger home you buy, the more you pay. It's a caste system with curb appeal — know your designated tier, stay in your tax bracket, and keep working to fund the extraction. The system has already pre-fabricated your tax-paying cage. Now get a mortgage and get to work.
Americans tried to fight this once. In 1978, a taxpayer revolt in California produced Proposition 13, capping property tax rates at roughly 1% of assessed value with limited annual increases. A genuine peasant uprising against the feudal extraction — and it worked, partially. But the system adapted. Assessments reset on sale, meaning new buyers subsidize their neighbors who bought decades ago. The cap didn't abolish serfdom. It just created two tiers of serfs: the grandfathered ones paying less for the same house, and the new ones paying full price. Divide and pacify. The state kept its revenue stream. The revolt was absorbed.
Property tax should not exist. If you pay off your house in full, you should own it — unconditionally, permanently, without annual tribute to the state. But unconditional ownership would mean independence, and independent people are harder to control. The entire mortgage-property tax complex exists to ensure dependency: take on thirty years of debt, pay interest to the bank, pay tax to the state, work until you're old, and call yourself a homeowner the entire time. The bank profits. The state profits. You get a mailbox and a lawn you're legally required to maintain. The "homeowner" is just a tenant who's been convinced they're not.