A lot of people have asked what to do because property taxes keep rising and they can see they are unable to retire under such circumstances. The politicians are wiping out the elderly diminishing their savings and exploiting them in every way. There are no exceptions for taxation when you sell your home as there are in Britain. You pay no tax on the profits from a primary residence there. In the USA, you are taxed until you die. and then they want what is left.

Property taxes are the worst of all taxes for they prevent you from really owning your home. Can’t pay the tax – they take it and sell it for pennies on the dollar. You have to pay taxes as if you were still working so all you can do is sell and move south and then pay taxes on your gains. New Jersey even put in an exit tax on the people it has been forcing to leave. California has been hunting former residents who moved demanding taxes on pensions claiming they earned it when living in that state. It is a wonder why we do not yet have a sea of grey hair people with guns and pitchforks storming Washington yet.

This is how empires die. Taxes in Rome kept rising. Its population peaked about 180AD and as corruption began to rise, people began to leave. The higher the taxes, the more people left town. Eventually, people could not afford the taxes and were forced to just abandon their homes. This is the death-spiral of empires. They consume all wealth until none is left. Indeed, Ben Franklin got it right – our fate is always doomed by death and taxes.

By the Middle Ages, the Roman Forum, was the grazing grounds for animals. Edward Gibbon wrote the best epitaph:

“Her primeval state, such as she -might–appear in a remote age, when Evander entertained the stranger of Troy, has been delineated by the fancy of Virgil. This Tarpeian rock was then a savage and solitary thicket; in the time of the poet, it was crowned with the golden roofs of a temple, the temple is overthrown, the gold has been pillaged, the wheel of Fortune has accomplished her revolution, and the sacred ground is again disfigured with thorns and brambles. The hill of the Capitol, on which we sit, was formerly the head of the Roman Empire, the citadel of the earth, the terror of kings; illustrated by the footsteps of so many triumphs, enriched with the spoils and tributes of so many nations. This spectacle of the world, how is it fallen! how changed! how defaced! The path of victory is obliterated by vines, and the benches of the senators are concealed by a dunghill. Cast your eyes on the Palatine hill, and seek among the shapeless and enormous fragments the marble theatre, the obelisks, the colossal statues, the porticos of Nero’s palace: survey the other hills of the city, the vacant space is interrupted only by ruins and gardens. The forum of the Roman people where they assembled to enact their laws and elect their magistrates, is now enclosed for the cultivation of pot-herbs, or thrown open for the reception of swine and buffaloes. The public and private edifices that were founded for eternity lie prostrate, naked, and broken, like the limbs of a mighty giant, and the ruin is the more visible from the stupendous relics that have survived the injuries of time and fortune.”