Property taxes allow people to see the direct benefit immediately. As an individual you get control over taxes to an extent through purchases. And because the federal government misspends half of the taxes it collects so instead of giving them more give them less but pay more in taxes directly to the states.
land is one of the few things that is truly scarce and every human needs access to. the value of a particular piece of land is determined much more by public and private investments in the locale than anything the property owner does themselves.
As for the argument that the US should be more decentralized - less money goes to the federal government, more to the states - this may or may not be true, but this applies equally to all taxes, not wealth taxes in particular.