"Own" is misleading. We need a different verb for it.

            Your own home: the American dream. It's yours. You got the mortgage, paid money down and X dollars a month for thirty years, it's paid up. Your house.

            As long as you pay the ever-rising property tax.

            You sort of own it.

            If you get poor, get old (practically the same thing), lose your job, if inflation creeps up on you, the County will sell your tax, which means the County will sell your home. Some places you have a year to pay it off after the tax sale, some places not. When you get behind in your taxes, you are evicted.

            There are people, there are companies, that make money buying taxes, getting properties at tax sales for peanuts. It's a business, perfectly legal. Business is business.

            Think about condominiums. You buy a condo in Florida in a nice building near the beach. What do you own? You have certainly bought something, quite a lot of money changed hands.

            The common areas, the hallways and so forth, belong to the association, which owns the building and grounds except for the apartments. You are a member of the association. Your share, if it is a large building full of people, is less than one percent. And of course there are costs: management, maintenance and repairs, painting, things the association (a democratic institution) decides must be done to the bushes, the play area, the pool.

            What you have bought is the right to use your apartment as long as you keep up the payments--keep up the payments!--and don't offend the neighbors.

            House, farm, apartment, what you buy is the conditional right to use a property so long as you can keep paying for it one way and another, and the right to pass this right to your heirs. If you have enough money and don't get old and forgetful and alone, probably you can keep using it. This is property ownership. It sounds a lot like rent.

            There are some things an American can pretty much own outright. Your car, once the payments are made, is yours; your right to drive it is conditional, but the car is yours. Owner's license, driver's license: if you don't have one or the other, you can't drive the car. Insurance. Inspection.

            Always there's the question of money.  

Your car is yours. If you can't drive it you can find a place to keep it for free, if you don't mind backwoods, mountains, deserts, and the like. If you're recently homeless, maybe you're living in your car, which you truly own if it is paid up. Maybe the whole family: husband, wife and children. It's good to have a place of your own. The authorities look down on this, though. You'll be able to keep the car, but your children may be confiscated.     

            Your clothes are yours, including shoes, watch, earmuffs and so forth. 

            We've always known that we can't take it with us; nowadays a lot of us can't have it while we're here, either. A lot of folks are fired. A lot of people are living on the streets.

            The USA is a rich country. A lot of poor countries are really poor. You can't imagine.

            Who owns the world, anyway?