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The Geld | Would You Volunteer to Pay Higher Property Taxes? · I Believe

• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to I Believe, where we talk about America.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Joel Douglas, and I believe in America.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining me.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_03: At Christmas in 1085, William the Conqueror had a problem.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_03: He'd crossed from Normandy and taken England's throne nearly 20 years earlier.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_03: In 1085, England faced the threat of an invasion from Denmark.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: Having conquered a country, he had to defend it.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_03: At Gloucester, William met with his council and ordered a survey.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_03: Who held the land?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: What was it worth?
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_03: What resources could the kingdom provide?
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_03: The following year, officials gathered the information that became the Doomsday Book.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_03: Estates, plows, mills, livestock.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_03: Who had held the property before the conquest?
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_03: Who held it now, and what had happened to its value?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_03: William already had a land tax, he hadn't invented it.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_03: The tax was called the Geld, and surviving accounts from southwestern England tell us what collecting it looked like.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_03: The charge was six shillings, or 72 silver pennies, for each taxable unit of land called a hide.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't a percentage of a house's market value.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_03: Almost a third of the hides in those accounts were exempt, because they were farmed directly for the king and his barons.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_03: The collectors gathered the money.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_03: Other men carried the silver to the treasury at Winchester.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_03: They even claimed expenses for the horses, leather bags, and sealing wax.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: More than 900 years ago, collecting taxes already came with an expense report.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_03: This wasn't a society of homeowners, as we understand that word.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_03: There were free landholders, dependent peasants, and enslaved people, with very different rights and obligations.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_03: They weren't electing William or voting on his budget.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then in America, a key difference is government by the people for the people.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: The king doesn't tax us.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: In 1776, the Declaration of Independence complained of taxes imposed without consent.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: But winning independence didn't settle what a fair tax bill looked like.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: In 1786, farmers in Massachusetts were gathering outside courthouses.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Some had served in the Revolution.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: They'd helped win independence.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: But military service hadn't reliably brought payment.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Cash was scarce.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Debts and taxes were due.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Farmers faced losing their property.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: They petitioned for relief.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: When that didn't produce the changes they wanted, protesters blocked court proceedings.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Daniel Shays, a former Continental Army captain, became one of their leaders.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: The government they resisted was now their own.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, Congress struggled to pay its bills.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Under the Articles of Confederation, the national government depended on the states to supply money.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: It couldn't reliably compel them to provide it.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: The Constitution gave Congress the power to tax.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Revenue bills had to begin in the House of Representatives, and federal receipts and expenditures had to be published.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Taxation was a responsibility of the government Americans were building, with elected representatives to answer for it.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_04: Land and buildings were visible, stayed in place, and could be assessed.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_04: Property taxes also supplied substantial revenue to state governments, but states developed income and sales taxes, and the balance changed.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_04: In 1902, property taxes supplied about 45% of state governments' general revenue from their own sources.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_04: By 1942, that was about 6%.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_04: For local governments, it was still about 81%.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: And now my wife and I are looking at our property tax statement for the year.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: Included with it is a sheet directing us to the county website where we can apply for a 25% homeowner exemption.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: My wife thinks we should not get the exemption.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm on the fence.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not against property taxes in principle.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not suggesting somebody else pick up my tax bill, because we do need to pay for services.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: What I'm saying is, and this is the part that's a little sticky, why is the property tax exemption voluntary?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: If I choose not to seek the exemption, and my neighbors do, then that doesn't make sense to me.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: The question isn't really, do you want to pay your property taxes?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's should you willingly pay more in property taxes?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Our government does a poor job of saying where the money goes and tracking to outcomes.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Their answer to why we pay taxes for roads, schools, and whatever.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: That to me is a terrible justification.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: Look at a school's costs.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: There's all kinds of stuff hidden in there.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: It just says salary, fringe, supplies, equipment.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't show what that really means.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: And selfishly, I say this.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: If my name went on a list because I chose to pay more taxes, and then if my house caught on fire, the county responded more urgently because I paid more, I would understand the justification for paying more.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: I could see what I was getting.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: But what does willingly paying more get us now?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: Again, let's look at schools.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: What are the performance measures the schools have shown as a result of higher or lower property taxes?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to convince me that I should pay more money for schools, then show me test scores that went up.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: And this gets to bigger questions.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: Should the Federal Department of Education exist?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: Should we support school vouchers where parents can choose to send their kid to a public or private school?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: To the people who say no, all that money should go to public schools, I would say, why?
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Did their test scores go up?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: There should be some measure of effectiveness for everything the county, state, or federal government does.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: If there's a fire, how long does it take to respond to the fire?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: If there's a security incident, how long does it take the sheriff to get there?
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: And not just to my house, but to every home in the county.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: I want to see the county grade card, the state grade, the federal grade.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: I want to see the outcome, and I expect to see the outcome improve.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: As an example, how many Americans know that the U.S.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: Department of Agriculture's rural development mission area works to improve the economy, infrastructure, and quality of life in rural American communities?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Its rural housing service agency provides loans, grants, and loan guarantees for single-family and multifamily affordable housing, home repairs, and essential community facilities like schools, hospitals, and fire stations.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: So let's ask a simple question.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: Is housing affordable at American worker wages across rural America?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: There's a simple answer.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, a simple grade, a failing one.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: Should I volunteer to pay higher taxes to an organization that gets a failing grade?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's like either no one knows how, or no one tries, to make the government run better.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: In planning, you make objectives and sub-objectives.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: You work through the sub-objectives to achieve the objective.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: And when you achieve enough objectives, you ought to be able to say whether you've achieved the strategic effect you were after.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: I don't see that track in tax dollars.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: How long does it take the sheriff to respond to every house on a normal day?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: How long does it take to respond to a fire?
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: Did students' test scores go up?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: Are there fewer people who need low-income social program support?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: From 2010 to 2025, the federal house price index for my county went up about 104%.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Over the same period, national consumer prices went up about 48%.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: House prices roughly doubled.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: We live in the county, not the city.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: There are so many more big, beautiful houses, new houses, expensive houses.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I still have a hard time understanding why I would willingly pay more.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: With all those houses adding taxable value, what more is the county providing?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Why would I say, yes, this is a good decision?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: And if home values have gone up faster than inflation, why does government get to spend at a rate equal to home values instead of a rate equal to inflation?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: Even if services cost more, why did they cost more?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: Before asking me to forego relief, show me what it buys, what it costs, and what breaks without it.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: I understand the other side.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: If we reduce property taxes and replace them with sales taxes, we still pay.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that's even worse, because there are landlords who would get a tax break, and low-income groups would have to pay more at the grocery store, but they wouldn't get a cheaper rent bill.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: A complete failure of justice.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: Despite my reluctance to pay more in property taxes, I'm going to vote, begrudgingly, to not reduce property taxes further.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: But do I trust my government?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: No, I don't.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: The money goes into a black hole, and I don't see improved outcomes.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't see a clear path from the tax dollars to what we were trying to achieve.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: So why am I voting that way?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because I have to trust that somebody up there knows what they're doing.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: Lost the date before I found my keys.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: So give it up now for the losers.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: Give it up now for me, and may all the uncrowned rulers rest in peace.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: Kill the ghost within your soul.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: Give it all you gotta let go.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: Time's up to say goodbye, take the fall and dry your ride, free the child, the child be done.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: Time to learn how to give us all through a baby to breathe and need mask.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: Some days we lose, some days we win.