We Americans seem to have developed some odd beliefs about taxation.

On the one hand, we tax bad behaviors like tobacco use or gambling, hoping simultaneously to discourage such vices and to make a profit from them. In that vein, the eventual legalization and taxation of recreational marijuana in Pennsylvania, like casinos, seems inexorable.

On the other hand, we tax an individual’s income and property value on the exact opposite presumption: that payment of such taxes is a privilege — which, somehow, actually encourages society’s virtues of homeownership and ambition.

Apparently we’ve had enough of this altruistic notion. When it was exposed during the 2016 presidential debates that Republican candidate Donald Trump might have gone several years without paying any income tax on his millions in personal income, we elected him anyway.

“That’s smart,” he remarked.

It’s obvious the electorate expects some of that smartness to rub off on them. Changes are on the way, in Harrisburg as well as Washington. Debate over school property taxes in Pennsylvania is expected to return to the Legislature in 2017.

The Nov. 8 election that put Trump in the Oval Office also provided the GOP votes needed in the state Senate to replace school property taxes with other revenue — about $14 billion a year that would now come from sales and personal income taxes.

In late 2015, the Senate defeated legislation that would have eliminated the school property tax and replace it with higher income and sales taxes. The vote was 25-24 with Democratic Lt. Gov. Mike Stack casting the tie-breaker.

The makeup of the new Senate is expected to reverse that vote.

Changes will be welcome, particularly for Pennsylvania homeowners or those trying to buy a home.

Meanwhile, legislators and other political leaders must pay heed to the tax-attitude paradox: It is — and it should be — both a burden and a privilege for everyone to pay their fair share of taxes and receive benefits as needed from government-funded programs.

Ask the typical Butler County retired homeowner how privileged they feel paying an ever-increasing property tax to fund local schools. Ask a struggling younger parent of school children how it feels to be locked out of homeownership, in part because they can’t afford the property tax.

Both burden and benefit need to be shared equitably and sensibly.