Because the working class could afford to buy a house and the property it stands on outright. That was a golden age for income and wealth disparity, which has ballooned beyond all sustainability in recent decades. In real terms, we simply make less.

it’s a meaningful start because we would see how things work in practice. it’s similar to how you build a small model of what you want to build (blueprinting, testing, proof-of-concept, prototyping, …) before you build the real thing