“I was joking, but it does sound like the typical justification for buying a house, doesn’t it?”

Yes, it does sound like that it. The scary thing in retrospect is that the issues you cited were amongst the more tame agruments that permabulls used circa 18 to 24 mos ago when a lot of us earned battle scars. If you go to Housing Panic or Irvine Housing Blog, you will still see some that kind of post.