> to include homes owned and occupied by able-bodied people who don't work for a living and never earned the kind of money that would be needed to afford such a

> to include homes owned and occupied by able-bodied people who don't work for a living and never earned the kind of money that would be needed to afford such a home. That sort of means testing isn't required (and would be open to system-gaming / perverse incentive creation anyway). You just apply capital gains tax to all properties with the exception of one primary residence per person, and you could even cap the primary-residence exemption at the median value of a home in a particular area. So if you own property and rent it out rather than living there yourself, it gets taxed as an investment, period. So that this cost isn't just passed on to renters, you should make the rental payments for your primary residence tax deductible, again perhaps capped at a median level so as not to perversely encourage higher rents. I think you could construct a tax regime that was revenue neutral pretty easily this way.