I live in the Midwest and the basement unfinished ceiling reduces taxes is new to me. I will have to look into that. The basement in my current house is more damp in the summer than my previous house and I run a dehumidifier in the spring and summer and I will say it traps a lot of dust in its filter.
My layout has a finished ceiling over it but I do like the painted floor joist look. The one thing about a finished ceiling, if you have a small leak the finished ceiling may catch it before your layout does but you also may not catch it as fast and you also have a much bigger project to repair unless you have something like a drop ceiling when you would just replace the tile or maybe pull it and paint it.
I agree with not being the biggest fan of carpet, especially in the basement but it does seem a little easier on the knees if you have a good pad under it, wither you are standing or crawling under a layout.
With all that said I agree with you, having a fresh slate of an unfinished basement would be more ideal than working around what someone else thought would be a good layout for a basement. I am currently trying to work around that in our basement which was finished by the previous owner and you then inherite all the problems someone else covered up or finished in a poor manner.