Please clarify how my comment was stupid.
It is stupid because it shows a complete lack of understanding of life experiences different from your own.
There are many reasons people rent instead of buy. In the USA, they could be compromised financially by medical expenses due to serious illness and sold their home to pay the bills, they could be recently divorced and have lost assets to the SO, they could be young and yet to get into the property racket, they could be priced out of the market due to work circumstances, they could have moved recently new a new part of the country and be renting before they buy, they could be waiting for the inevitable property crash in San Deigo to get in cheap, they could ...
There are a million and one obvious reasons why people might rent instead of buy other than not having prioritized buying a home.
Your remark was stupid because you haven't figured this out. My guess is that you are young white, affluent, middle class and live in North America and haven't travelled much.
There are alot of reasons people rent instead of buy. They are usually not logical. I could put a valid argument for each example you gave. I can't say that I have traveled outside the usa at all, but you can't say that people who have 6k worth of mining equipment are disadvantaged. I bought my first house for less than that.
By no means do I have a poor perspective on people in the usa. In the us anyone can get a house loan, and again the loan payment and insurance will always be less than rent. If for some reason the market crashes and they have cheaper prices, you can walk away without penalty. Situations in other 1st world countries are probably similar. For the 3rd world countries, they barely have electricity and internet, I don't think this discussion really applies to them.