I am in no way arguing against your encouragement to take positive action, etc., but appealing to the increase in the number of millionaires is meaningless for multiple reasons.

In 1956 (I was five years old at the time) my family moved from Seattle to farm raw land in the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project in southeastern Washington.  I think dad had gone over a few months ahead.  We lived in a camper trailer, had an outhouse, and hauled water from a common well at the Bureau of Reclamation camp in the unincorporated railroad town of Eltopia.  We had one of those wringer washing machines, and I recall myself and two younger brothers being bathed in a cattle water trough, after water was heated on the kitchen stove.  We eventually moved into what was a temporary WWII era house hauled out to the farm from Camp Hanford (where the plutonium for nuclear weapons was made), dug a well, put in a septic tank and drain field, and had indoor plumbing.  One neighboring family moved up from southern California to farm and lived in a big tent (think of a military mess tent, probable WWII surplus).  It blew down once in a windstorm and I remember going over with dad to help put it back up.  The tent was set up on a rock outcropping (didn't want to waste cultivatable land for buildings) and evidently once when they came home from Mass the wife found a rattlesnake coiled up in her hatbox.  There were many other interesting housing stories from those days.  Most had a family milk cow (and traded milk when their cow was dry before the next calf).  Our cream separator and hand crank butter churn are still here at our farm.  There were chickens for eggs and meat, hogs, big gardens, and the moms did a lot of canning.  Nobody had much cash to spend at the grocery store.  Dad had been raised on a dryland wheat farm, after the war he went to college on the GI Bill and was an accountant (with his CPA) for Alaska Airlines when we moved to the farm.  He did accounting and prepared tax forms for the neighbors.  Others had welding, electrical, carpentry and mechanical skills to offer.  The women might take in sewing, make quilts, or have baked goods to sell.

The point of the story is that, while we don't live in the 1950's - 1960's, and economic conditions are very different now, there is still room for having a pioneering spirit.  There is nothing wrong with a mobile or manufactured home for affordable housing or going "off grid" if circuмstances might permit, sewing your own clothes, growing part of your own food, even if its tomatoes or microgreens on an apartment balcony.

For a more contemporary story, a friend of mine has a winery, with cherries, apples, and dry beans as cash crops.  He did have the advantage of his wife inheriting irrigated farmland.  Three years ago, their first son and second oldest of seven got married (I believe he was 20 or 21).  As an aside, it was a Solemn Nuptial Mass (the celebrant is assisted by a deacon and subdeacon, or priests filling in those positions)  At age 70 I believe it was the first Solemn Mass I had ever been to, back-in-the-day the best that most parishes could do was a High Mass (a sung Mass with incense).  Anyways, their second child was just born a month ago.  They didn't want to waste money on rent, so they are living in a camper (with indoor plumbing) on the winery, with a makeshift larger kitchen and dining area set up in the adjacent winery building.  They are saving the money they would have spent on rent to hopefully build a modest house on the farm, which can be added onto as the family grows.  The fact that canning supplies were on their wedding gift registry was a good sign.                     

Reply #66 is from moneil.