“For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”

People want and chase money, not what it represents. To me this is coveting money. When people want something for nothing (no work, no production, nothing of value added) that is greed.

On other notes…

People talk about a house as being an investment. To me, investments make income houses do not, unless you rent it out (where as capital gains is just a bet). I think a house is more of a liability, there is no way to avoid the property tax. For this reason, you don’t really own your home, the government does since they can slap a lien aginst it even though its paid off.

Osama bin Laden comes from an extremely wealthy Saudi family. I am pretty sure he has leveraged his family ties to make lots of money over the course of his life (even if he must live a more ascetic life now). I’m not disagreeing with your “money is not the root of all evil” argument, just saying that OBL was a bad example of someone with “no money.”

I read a comment: “The two are different because one can customize their abode”.

But that goes beyond the scope of the analogy. However, I could argue that I can do as I wish with the fuel I purchase. I can go on a camping trip. I can travel to New York City. I can put it in a boat, and go fishing.

While you may not own a home for the equity, many people do. I remember when I bought my house, my boss asked me if I was going to turn around and sell it for a profit. I of course had to explain to him that doing so would be illogical.

If my house increased in value by 100%, it’s a good bet that every other house has also increased by ~100%. Chasing a new home every year would be foolish. However, I can buy other properties, and use them as rentals to long term financial security. At a future time, I can sell them for a profit, and retire more comfortably and keep my home.

Of course, I don’t believe that money is the root of all evil. Consider the following:

Who commits more violent crime? Those that have a lot of money, or those that have very little? How many rich gang bangers are there out there?

I believe that there are evil people, money is a tool for them to do more evil things. I don’t think money make Saddam Hussein evil, I believe he was evil from the start.

Osama bin Laden has no money, yet he seems to be quite evil.

That would make sense if one could leverage a stock as much as one could leverage a house and if houses did not have the same taxable treatments [write off the interest on your mortgage if it puts you over the standard deduction; avoid capital gains -- to a certain amount -- and if your home qualifies] as they do now.

Is this even possible? In my opinion, Economics can explain almost anything.

But generally with houses you don’t get the same choice to buy or lease, like you do with a car. The houses for rent and the ones for sale are different, plus there is a very different feeling about upkeep on your own house (“investment”) versus a landlord’s (“money down the drain”) which leads to much better housing in ownership areas (compare public housing anywhere in the world to equivalent type of private estates/tracts).