There's some truth in that, and I support the idea of shifting the tax burden from work to wealth. But I also think this is too simplistic. Remember that Gary was a financial trader, so he has a zero sum game perspective.

The UK had a decades long phase where they built a ton of affordable housing (council housing). This program was largely dismantled under Thatcher. Also over time, building regulations became more restrictive in the wrong ways, which makes supply more expensive.

Regulation plays a large role. But the right keyword is "reform". The right outcomes don't just happen magically if you deregulate.

There are places where housing got drastically increased in recent years, like in Paris under Hidalgo (7000 units/year).

Every metal, and really every commodity, has has recent price hikes above the official BLS CPI numbers.

That says far more about official inflation numbers than it does commodity markets.

You have the causality backward - housing explains ~100% of the variation of inequality. If you liberalized zoning, excess inequality would more or less disappear: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2015a_r...

I know very little about economics so I can only parrot what I've heard from others but the consensus from everyone I've personally heard talk about Gary - not just Abundists - is that he's a crank when it comes to economics.

This doesn't make sense. Each wealthy family can only live in one house at a time. Yes, they might have multiple homes, but a billionaire having a luxury vacation home in Lake Tahoe or a penthouse in Manhattan are not the reason housing is unaffordable. The type of home a billionaire would buy would never be affordable anyway.