At the time, only the wealthy owned land. Today in the US, 2/3 of people own their homes. Meanwhile, rich people have less of their assets tied up in real property. Someone worth $100,000 probably has most of that in their house. Someone worth $10,000,000 likely will have only a fraction of that in their house, and the rest in financial assets not subject to property taxes.

It's an open debate among economists as to whether property taxes are progressive or regressive. Here's a nice article I found summarizing the debate: https://www.ntanet.org/NTJ/69/2/ntj-v69n02p413-434-local-pro...

That is an interesting reference, thank you.