Warmists Upset Global Boiling Could Reduce Inflow From Property Taxes

They really do not like government not getting its tithe from the peasants

Climate change demands a long-overdue reform of the property tax system

The wildfires in California have destroyed thousands of homes and businesses and displaced tens of thousands of people—and the crisis is far from over. Man-made climate change is already provoking mass migration, and as environmental conditions worsen, tens of millions of Americans will likely respond by moving. The United States must do much more to prepare our political institutions for the domestic displacements that will result from climate change—as we will discuss at our upcoming event “How to prepare for climate migration in the U.S.”

One urgent area for action is fiscal policy. Climate change will destabilize local property taxation. What is more, the fiscal system built upon the housing market—already a major source of inequality in America—will, unless reformed, be a primary mechanism by which climate change exacerbates economic injustice.

Because localities rely heavily on property taxes, it will become increasingly difficult to raise regular and adequate revenue for local governments where climate change is taking a heavy toll. The massive dysfunction in the market for home insurance should serve as a bellwether for this looming fiscal threat. The U.S. local tax structure is built around homeownership. Nationally, property taxes make up nearly half of local own-source general revenue, and nearly three-quarters of local tax revenue. This percentage has declined slightly over the last 50 years, but American government remains exceptionally dependent on property taxes compared with other OECD countries.

The feudal lords need their tribute, so, what to do, what to do

The good news is that the local property tax is immensely overdue for reform. The spread of property tax limitations and tax competition between fragmented localities has made this source of revenue particularly constrained and inflexible. California’s property tax cap, for example, provides a huge windfall to longtime property owners by tightly constraining assessment increases. A study of California’s wildfires between 1990 and 2015 found that property tax revenue actually increased after the disasters, even though many homes had been damaged or destroyed. Why? Because more properties were sold, and it is only at sale that property assessments are adjusted to their actual market value. That’s right: Property taxes were so absurdly low that wildfires raised revenue. These kinds of distortions in the tax code are well worth revising, even if climate change were not endangering the stability of local public finance.

Reforming the property tax is a decades-long project—but of course, so is responding to climate change. As communities develop their climate adaptation plans, part of those plans must be a fiscal strategy that can weather the coming storms.

So, instead of governments spending money responsibly, the cult wants taxes completely revamped to make sure government gets its due. Weird how people say I was nuts when I said that the anthropogenic global warming (called that at the time) was really about increasing the power of government while taking more money from the people.

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