I believe our nation’s founders paid a form of property tax.
Maybe so; but the abolition of the poll tax and the inclusion/encouragement of the non-producers as voters drastically altered the structure of things.
Take Women's Suffrage, I'm not sure that it was a good thing: before it the man of the family voted for the family as a unit - this system was somewhat predisposed to keep families together - but with the introduction of women's suffrage voting shifted from a center of the family-unit to that of an individual. This, in turn, gave the women the incentive to use government to create a safety-net so that they no longer needed men as providers, they could rely on government instead.
Yes there's a lot of other influencing factors; but I'm simply presenting the one facet to illustrate how what was once a stable system could become vastly different with just a small change in the conditions/procedures.
To tie it back into property taxes -- before when the people that were directing government [via vote] were landowners they could be reasonably sure that their [land] rights would be respected; now, however, they are a distinct minority and there is profit to be made by violating their rights. (See Kelo v. New London.)