Waterboy, I like the way you put it: leasing is making car payments forever, for all eternity. An eternal payment plan.
Been that way for several years now. Where have you been? 
It’s almost impossible for the average working person to afford a brand new vehicle(or even a newer used one) without getting a loan. Partly because most feel they need to have the latest and greatest and don’t want to save for it. Partly because their money is tied up in other things like house payment, kids, etc. and can only afford a certain amount per month(see one of my previous posts), which also ties into the other reason. If someone wants a Mercedes, but has a used Hyundai budget, then leasing seems like a good idea to them because they can drive that Mercedes for the price of a Hyundai car payment.
One way one could determine if they liked leasing would be to hop on swapalease.com and take over someone’s lease for them.
Leasing is often an attractive option for a company car - particularly if you do a lot of government contracts and have to document your cost of doing business. A lease bill is a lot easier to document than depreciation.
For a personal vehicle, leasing is rarely a prudent choice financially EXCEPT for the occasional ‘deal’ on a high-end vehicle lease. When high-end manufacturers have excess stock that they want to get rid of, they are hesitant to slash prices or offer big rebates because that cheapens the brand. Their next best option is to offer killer deals on leases to clear the inventory. Consumers cannot easily correlate a lease rate to an effective sales price for the car, so the brand is not cheapened.