The American dream of home ownership — the foundational building block of familial wealth — has been central to our culture for generations, but it’s slowly being killed off when it becomes clear that this dream has a catch: you never really own your home.

Who does? Well first, the bank, but even if you achieve the increasingly impossible dream of paying off your home, you still don’t own it. And who does? The government.

Every year, millions of homeowners are reminded of this uncomfortable truth when their tax bill arrives in the mail, but because, like most taxes, it’s baked into the system we now take for granted, taxes blend together and the truth about property tax fades into the background.

That truth is that, thanks to property taxes, the government can take your home away from you, even if you own every square inch of your home.

Thankfully, across the country, people are finally starting to rise up against this scheme that has turned home ownership into rent-to-never-own, and in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis is continuing his underrated spree as the country’s best governor by floating the idea of eliminating property taxes altogether, replacing it instead with sales taxes, statewide funds and — most importantly — not spending like a drunk shopaholic with five days left to live.

One of the central problems with property taxes is that they have surged along with home values — particularly after the last decade’s market boom — outpacing any disposable income that would be used to actually pay this tax. This poses a remarkably similar problem as the communist-esque push by Democrats to tax unrealized gains, which would force people to sell their assets or take out debt on assets to pay taxes on those same assets.

The root of property taxation goes back to feudal systems and early English practice, where obligations were tied to land ownership and wealth. In America, the idea was adopted early as a way for local governments to fund essential services based on an owner’s stake in the community, with property value used as a metric of what each owner could afford.

But over time, that logic has warped into yet another endless stream of cash for the government to waste on their latest insanity, all while penalizing the long-term success of people who saved to buy a home and worked to pay off their debt, who are finding themselves house rich but cash poor, either locked in or forced to sell to escape.

That doesn’t sound like the American dream to me.

America needs to remain a nation that rewards success, rewards investment and rewards risk. By punishing people who have achieved success through investment and risk by taxing them into extinction, we’re doing the opposite.

Now, whenever one suggests that we abolish property taxes, critics point to the same old disingenuous concerns: local budgets would collapse, schools would be defunded and services would wither! These are usually the same people who decry the defunding of public television by screaming, “What about Elmo?!”

But for every Elmo — who, by the way, is now funded by Netflix — there are countless government scams that are wasting your hard-earned money while the government avoids a transparent debate on what we fund and how we fund it.

Why? Because they see your money as their money. It’s not your home, it’s their home. You’re just living in it… for now.

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