[The decades of race and gender wars has led to a dearth of the homesteaders who were the backbone of our economic and political system]
By “homesteaders” I mean people who would assume responsibility for a property, committing to paying 30 years worth or property taxes and mortgage payments while caring for the land and home.
The concept is disappearing, so the residential tax base disappears. In my area (northeastern NJ) few young people buy homes; older single-family homes are demolished for multi-family units in which only one unit (at most) houses the owner - the rest are people with no ties to the area who retain the freedom to pick up and leave (to follow jobs and such). Many of those will never own anything (home, car) but rent everything; they also have no children (hence no need for their own space), and their mobility keeps them one step ahead of the urban sprawl. Where there is land available, huge apartment buildings with accompanying dog parks go up; they are designed to attract non-breeding drones who won’t add children to the public school system (by far the largest expense of any municipality here).
This area is dying because when local government taxed the employers away from the area, the young skilled people could follow them - leaving older people tied to mortgages with high taxes and younger less-skilled immigrants who don’t want to pay for anything. The recent fiscal disaster of Red Chinese flu, in which income taxes on businesses are plummeting due to the lockdown, will show just how destructive these policies have been; there are still no government layoffs/furloughs, but little has been collected.