I find this implausible. To own property is to be rich, in the measure that one owns, and to tax the quality of richness should not be presumed to burden the poor more than the rich. As to the elderly, it is only traditional for interest groups to hide behind selected widows, and one should rarely take such appeals at face value. And so I propose critically to examine the bases for alleging the property tax to be regressive.

In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be unsure. ... Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, . . . . They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.(2)

Madison also wrote ". . . the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property." He foresaw that the landless majority might use government to redistribute property. "To secure ... private rights against the danger of such a faction ... is then the great object...... (3)   Read the whole article