Don't globalization and workforce mobility lend themselves to renting vs. owning?

Here's something I've been thinking more and more about - the idea that renting is not only preferable financially today (it's significantly cheaper to rent than buy), but it's also preferential when it comes to job mobility, lifestyle opportunity and globalization.

It's gotta be tough to be stuck with a debt-trap you can't rent out for positive cash flow in today's rapidly flattening world. And I would imagine there are many other folks around the world in the same situation.

Globalization requires workers to be flexible and mobile. In the past, if you lost your job, or sought to further your career, you might have to move across town to a new company. Then it was across the state. Then it was across the country. And now? It's across the world.

Knowledge workers are going to be required to be more and more mobile and flexible when it comes to where they work. So the idea of being stationary in a home for 10 years, 20 years or more just ain't gonna cut it in today's world. You're gonna have to move. And your kids are gonna have to move.

Renters can pick up on a dime and go where the opportunity is. Owners (or people who rent money from a bank) are stuck. Even if they move, and rent out their current debt-trap, if they bought in the past few years, the rental income on their debt-trap will be significantly less than the ownership or carrying costs.

Yes, you can try to get your company to absorb these costs - your burden. But who will employers favor - someone with all kinds of entanglements and issues, or someone ready to go?

Same for entrepreneurs - opportunities are breaking out all over the world. Are you going to be free to chase them? Or is your home going to get in the way of pursuing your dreams?

And finally, globalization has allowed people to leave the US, workers and retirees, and live and experience places they've always dreamed of living. And not just one place - places plural. And no matter where you find yourself in the world, there seems to be one truism holding up:

It's cheaper, much much cheaper, to rent than buy.

And that's the problem.

Or the opportunity.