I am reminded of the time you said

Enthusiastic owners of property. Owners of a piece of their country--a stake in the land. This was a sturdy but finally unsupportable ambition, sustained for forty years by good times and the good will of the federal government.
This is in fact the tacit dissonance at the center of every moment in _________ {call it post world war II America}, which is why the average day there raised, for the visitor, so many and such vertiginous questions:
What does it cost to create and maintain an artificial ownership class?
Who pays?
Who benefits?
What happens when that class stops being useful?
What does it mean to drop back below the line?
What does it cost to hang on above it, how do you behave, what do you say, what are the pitons you drive into the granite?