Investing or buying cashflow?

[Chris Gordon]

Want to get the more experienced folks' opinion on something I'm thinking about....

It's easy to increase cashflow with a greater downpayment / less leverage. However, is that really investing or something akin to buying an annuity?

I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with buying a cashflow stream; it's dependent on your goals. However I don't think it's necessarily investing in the Warren Buffett sense of the word.

I'm interested in if everyone thinks this is a distinction worth  making? If so what's a good way to quickly determine the difference? Cash-on-cash return or Return-on-equity? Cap Rate? Whatever the opposite of cap rate is: figuring out what the returns would look like if you were to 100% leverage the property? 

thanks