First- a tale of 2 colonizers. Namely Spain and England. (Yes- I know the problems colonization and exploitation. Just go with me on this for a minute)

A couple hundred years ago, in 1492 to be exact, Spain ended it’s long battles with Moors. The royal coffers were empty, and something needed to be done quick to replenish them. It was a relatively cheap investment to send Columbus off with a couple of ships in search of a quick route to the east. Instead, he “discovered” the Americas and Spain got access to a shitload of raw materials for relatively cheap.

England also needed money. But more than money, they needed space. Overpopulation and poverty were making the riff raff less manageable.

Spain sent people, generally single men or men who left their families at home, into the New World to suck out all the resources they possibly could as fast as they could. The men they sent generally made their fortunes after a few years and then went home.

England sent entire families into the New World. They banished people for crimes like stealing bread and had them “transported”. After so many years of working off their debts or their criminal sentences, the people were then free to climb up the social and economic ladder in a place with a lot more space and opportunity than at home. They had the first real chance of owning their own farms and property, things that were nearly impossible without nobility or noble connections at home.

Eventually, Spain’s formula for colonization collapsed and took the Spanish economy with it. England’s did not.

That is where the original American dream comes from. The idea of homeownership is central to our national identity because it was something so completely out of the realm of normal before that. Normal people didn’t own farms or land or homes. They were tenants of wealthy land owners who worked their entire lives to improve the finances of another.

And back then, just like now, the future wealth of a person was