Wow, it’s pretty simple. Owning a home means you don’t pay rent. You pay a mortgage and in such a case you earn equity. When you pay rent, your money is gone ev

Wow, it’s pretty simple. Owning a home means you don’t pay rent. You pay a mortgage and in such a case you earn equity. When you pay rent, your money is gone every month. You may pay it off and then live without paying the mortgage but just up-keep and property taxes or you may sell the house even before mortgage is paid off and possibly even earn a profit but certainly recoup much of your mortgage payments at the least. Your point about it just being about passing wealth to future generations seems to indicate you are just seeing home ownership through some extreme leftist lens. You may not even choose pass on anything and it is still financially beneficial. Why is earning an income important? That’s a “serious” question too. You say we “conflate” housing and investment, housing is investment, we don’t have to conflate these things, they are intrinsically intertwined because we live in a world in which scarcity exists, despite what the left might tell you. The rest of what you are saying is just very naive.