Why should you be allowed to monopolize a piece of finite and scarce resource, land, for free?
Since you think it's a scam, surely you support 100% capital gains taxes on homes? Since old people getting rich off of an unproductive asset, blocking supply to "preserve neighborhood character", and inflating the price of their artificially-scarce goods would be more of a scam?
There's nothing wrong with retirees being forced to sell and downsize. You don't need a family-sized home when you live alone. Property tax is the least unfair tax of them all.
>finite
You think land is finite? You do realize you can fit the entire human race - both the ~8 billion people currently alive and the estimated ~100 to 117 billion people who have ever lived- inside the Grand Canyon? We have enough land that every single person could have an entire farm of their own, not to mention the "land isn't enough" argument makes no sense in a country with giant parking lots, and no exceptions are made for people living in apartment blocks.
The solution is simple for what you mentioned at the end: make houses a depreciated asset, not an investment. Investment by concept must always go up, scale, and grow, making it inevitably unsustainable. Japan did it and fixed the entire housing issue for the next generations to come. I am sure we are smart enough to do the same. Housing and land are made to live in, not to invest in, and keeping them empty to gauge prices up.
Is the deficit a scam too? It does not take enough taxes, you are heavily subsidized and want to be subsidized further.
The argument is simple. Land ownership with no property tax privatizes gains that others must subsidize. Land value comes from government infrastructure for water, electricity, roads, public transportation, which are expensive to maintain. That, and artificial scarcity, is why your house grows in value, which is why people treat it as an investment.
Japan fixed it by having a dying population, which causes other problems.
Totally absurd to think that you should!