Prop 13 is rent control by another name. I would love to hear economists speak as damningly about Prop 13 as they regularly do about rent control.
Limiting tax increases reduces the power of the state to coerce individuals.
The two have nothing in common.
Those taxes should be orders of magnitude higher. If you didn't make the land, you're renting it.
Also, land in and of itself isn't desirable if the economy of the area isn't right (lots of rural places around the world are depopulating as cities attract their countrysides).
[1]https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-d7f66b45593b76f812792e...
What is the primary effect of rent control? Everyone renting before the enactment pays proportionally less in rent than those after enactment.
What is the primary effect of Prop 13? Owners who purchased before 1978 pay proportionally less in property taxes than those who purchased after 1978.
These are huge, (in my view) obvious parallels between the two. Both policies encourage the market to become sticky: renters won't leave, for fear of giving up their cheap rent as time goes own; for landowners, they are discouraged to sell, knowing an identical property would raise their annual property tax expenses. As property values go up, it further encourages landowners to hold, becoming a negative feedback loop on the housing supply.
It's even worse than that, since prop 13 isn't a one time thing. Just like rent control, you lock in whenever you purchase.
My neighbor pays double what I do for effectively the same house. It's totally unfair to them.
In short prop 13 causes a triple whammy of sprawl, poor social services, and unfair taxes, whereas rent control merely causes unfair rents.
LVT and prevalent and intermingled[1] public housing is far better, but sadly we're very far from being able to do those.
[1]: To avoid low-effort prejudice and anesthetization, along with actual class-based neighbor isolation. Making the "zip code -> P(isPublic)" function as incompressible as possible is key.
Sure it does, rental income is taxed like any other income (less allowed expenses).