I used to own rental property and you cant raise the rent high enough on them to cover it all
Not the whole bill, but likely enough of it is covered to match what residents are paying.
In many jurisdictions you pay (significantly) less property taxes for property you're living on vs renting out or using commercially. In SC for example your property is assessed at a 4% rate if you're living on it, while if you're renting or using commercially it's 6%. Residentially used property also gets a huge credit towards school operations bonds - they in effect pay almost no school taxes through property taxes. To top it off past a certain point (65 years old if you're initially applying, past 50 years old if you're taking over an exempted property from a deceased spouse) you get a homestead exemption that essentially forgives the first $50,000 worth of value in your home as non-taxable.
Other states have different laws, but many grant similar exceptions. Some don't even charge property tax. I'd not get too excited about trumpeting the land owner as holding up that tax burden as a lot of bones are being thrown their way.
In the end though the simple truth is that allowing only land owners to vote leads to a society with a permanent lower class that is trampled on. Laws are made by the rich to keep the rich rich and the poor poor. Only a corrupt society fears giving voice to the masses.
As to the original topic? Where did we go wrong? It breaks down into two main categories. For one, in the ever lasting quest to find the cheapest price on everything we outsourced labor and production of everything from pots and pans to vehicles to other nations. Look at it from a broad view - when a boatload of goods from China comes into port, they dont' just shovel that stuff onto the docks for free. It has to be paid for - with our money. Now that money has to have some value. If all we do is print more money and keep giving it to them then our money is worthless and the shipments stop. Our money is really only worth what you can get HERE with it - and about all we do anymore is the pyramid schemed "service based economy". You can get a massage, or go to the doctor, or pay a consultant to tell you how to run your business, but very few things are actually made over here, and that's what counts. Other countries will not continue to keep sending us cool toys to play with while we keep pandering to each other with "services".
Second of all, and it's an important one, somewhere along the line America shunned intellectualism. I'm not sure where and when it occurred, but somewhere along the line in America it become "uncool" to be smart or educated. Kids who do well in school are picked on as "nerds". Normal scientific research is looked as as being somehow untrusted or unnatural. Outdated ideas lead to bans on research for things like stem cells and cloning. It's hard to maintain the technical advantage in cutting edge fields when half of the country still follows the "That just ain't raht." philosophy when it comes to research. We fall behind as other countries surge forward. Partly because of some puritanical notion that we should avoid science, partly because of the urban trend of "keeping it real" (aka keeping it real dumb), we have become a nation of ignoramuses.
Luckily it's a problem that will likely fix itself. If our currency drops low enough other country's goods will stop coming in. People will lose their jobs, and people will have to make due with less. Those out of work people will eventually decide to make stuff, others will buy it because the foreign goods aren't coming in anymore, and so on. We'll eventually reach equilibrium, but we're going to have to take a tumble first, and when we recover we won't be back to the same level of lifestyle. The natural resources just aren't there. I saw it estimated not long ago that if the entire population of the world lived like the average American it'd take 5 planets to support us all. Unfortunately we've got but the 1. As others' quality of life goes up so must ours come down - I just hope we're not that bad off after it balances.
