IMO, the "hard of thinking" comment shows where we fundamentally disagree. You seem to measure value mainly by economic output, whereas I think economic value is important, but homes create value in ways that GDP doesn't fully capture. If I'd spent my take-home pay on leased cars, luxury holidays and endless consumption, I'd probably have little to show for it today. I'm more "make do and mend" than disposable. YMMV. Instead, I chose to pay down the debt on my home. That gave me security and independence, hopefully helps me fund my own care later in life, and the money I spent still supported builders, tradespeople, surveyors, solicitors, estate agents, gardeners and many others. That's a perfectly legitimate choice that millions of ordinary people have made.
Economic output matters, but so do stable communities. Home ownership doesn't just create wealth - it creates roots, responsibility and long-term investment in neighbourhoods. Those things matter, even if they don't show up in GDP. That's why I think calling owner-occupied homes "idle capital" is a bit of a straw man. House prices aren't high simply because people live in their homes. They're high because we haven't built enough of them, alongside planning constraints and other policy failures. If we really want affordable housing, we should fix the supply problem, not tax people out of homes they've spent decades paying for.
I think our bigger disagreement is about the role of the state. Redistribution has a place, and so does government, but it shouldn't become a tool for continually redefining what people are allowed to keep after they've earned it legitimately. Governments should remove barriers to opportunity, not create uncertainty over whether yesterday's legitimate success becomes tomorrow's double or triple tax target. I think we should all be cautious about giving any government broad powers to tax people based on, retrospectively move goal posts and manufactured criteria while also deciding what constitutes an "acceptable" standard of living, especially when the underlying causes of the problem are left largely untouched. For me, good policy is about making reasonable trade-offs, not looking for a group to throw under the bus.