Reminds me of one of my favorite analogies from a TV news report: "And the new widget weighs in at just 2kg; that's about the same as 2 1kg bags of flour"
Reading the info about installs strongly suggests that unless you bought a PC with a preload then you have to buy the "2 install" version at £240 (but it's pretty opaque).
Bread is a very poor comparison as the margin per unit decreases at a far lower rate than that for non-material goods. I'm sure MS would argue they're only licensing use to you too - perhaps "it's not much more than a TV license" would be better?
Everything is licensed. Even bread. You have to give it back one day via the toilet or the grave.
I'm largely with you WRT philosophy of 'ownership'.
However in the current legal framework this is wrong and I strongly disprove of the thrust by companies to force more sold products to be treated as licensed - thus for example preventing resale, [non-copyright infringing] sharing and the like.
I consume bread I don't give it back in a materially unaltered way.
Office 2010 Home and Business 2010 (Outlook, Word, Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint) is £159GBP inc tax. It has a usable life of ~5 years. That's £2.65GBP/month (about the same as two loaves of reasonable quality bread a month)