Funding a universal basic income in 2025

 So, it's been 2 years, and it's time to up my basic income plan. It was borderline last year accounting for inflation, and with new federal poverty guidelines, eh, yeah, I wanna raise it a bit. I don't think I'm gonna go by specific monthly amounts though, but more flat yearly amounts that can be divided any which way. Last time I had $15000 per adult and $5400 per child, this time I'll do $16000 per adult and $5500 per child. 

The US population is now 346 million. Multiple sources still say there are around 11 million illegal immigrants in the US (so much for the so called "border crisis"), and around 2 million prisoners. This amounts to 333 million eligible basic income recipients. Around 78% of those are adults, and 22% are children, which means 260 million are adults, and 73 million are children. 

This means, that in 2025, the cost of a full basic income of the amounts specified will be $4.562 trillion. This seems like a lot, but as we know, if we actually run the numbers in practice, it ends up being pretty doable, the bark is worse than its bite.

With that said, how will we fund this?

Spending cuts

According to usgovernmentspending.com, we spend $773 billion in "other welfare" programs. Excluding the normal programs which I keep exempt under this plan (medicare, medicaid, section 8 housing, social security, unemployment), we get $544 billion in programs I would wanna cut. This includes stuff like food stamps, WIC, TANF, and all these other BS programs rendered redundant by UBI. Some lefties might not like I cut these programs, but as I see it, it's like cutting medicaid to fund medicare for all, yeah, youre losing something...and getting something better back. 

The defense budget is $927 billion, I'll cut 10% of that, or $93 billion. This should not affect military aid to countries like ongoing conflicts like Ukraine, as those seem to be addressed separately. 

For tax credits, we'll pull the child tax credit, as UBI would replace it ($120 billion), the EITC ($73 billion), deductions on charitable contributions ($55 billion), and the deduction on qualified business income, which, to my knowledge, was a Trump plan ($59 billion). This gives us an additional $307 billion in revenue.

All in all, this gives us:

$544 billion in welfare cuts

$93 billion in defense cuts

$307 billion in cuts to tax credits

+                                                    

$944 billion in spending cuts

We're off to a good start, cutting almost $1 trillion in revenue in order to help fund UBI. Keep in mind, UBI will likely replace whatever programs that were lost, so this helps people, it doesn't hurt them. I know some people want to have UBI on top of welfare, but uh...that causes all sorts of logistical issues given the means testing of various programs, and honestly, I'm the math guy here. I gotta make these numbers work. We would all like a super high UBI on top of all of these other programs, but at the end of the day, the numbers gotta work, and given the rest of this is functionally gonna be raised from tax increases, well, this is what I deem acceptable. 

Taxes

I'm still not seeing updated numbers on carbon taxes, and given the current numbers are good through 2030, I'll go with them, so we can raise $188 billion from a relatively aggressive carbon tax.

 Going off of the most recent BEA analysis discussing personal income and outlays, let's look at how much revenue we can raise now.

I'm getting $12.648 trillion in personal income and outlays. Personal income of receipts and assets (interest and dividend income) is another $3.964 trillion. I saved unemployment and social security for now, as the easiest ways to correct those programs for a post UBI world is simply to tax them at the rate we do everything else, people will still be left better off even at max benefits, so it's actually a net benefit for those people. We're talking $1.465 trillion for social security and $36 for unemployment. Proprietor's income, is, once again, revenue from small businesses and farms, and not all of it is profit. Only about 8.5% is in new numbers I've found, so that's $172 billion in taxable revenue. Landlords tend to make between 5-10% ROI on properties, so that would mean 7.5% of rental income should be taxed. That's $80 billion.

All in all, this should give us a grand total of $18.365 trillion in taxable income. If we account for the spending cuts being $944 billion and the $188 billion from the carbon tax, we need $3.43 trillion in additional revenue. We can do this with a 18.7% flat tax rate. We can aim for 20% like normal if we wanna be on the safe side, although that is going to draw more than we need. 

With that said, let's look at the numbers. We can fund a UBI with:

$944 in spending cuts

$3.861 trillion in taxes

+                                 

$4.805 trillion in revenue ($243 billion in extra revenue)

And before people freak out over the additional 20% marginal tax rate, keep in mind this functions like a negative income tax, with the UBI being $16,000 a year, individuals making less than $80,000 will actually see more money at the end of the day, and married couples making $160,000 will. This isn't even including children. Every child would add $27,500 to that. 

So yeah. You're not gonna lose out unless you're relatively well off. 71% of people make less than $80,000 a year as individuals, and 79% of couples make less than $160,000 a year. I've always said it, my taxes primarily hit the top 20-25% of people in net, although we might see it hit individuals with no children a little harder due to lack of multiple UBIs from offsetting it. Still, given most people don't live along, and $80k is a pretty nice salary, meh, you'll live.

So yeah, that's my basic income plan for 2025. It puts everyone above the poverty line, the numbers work out as they always do, and keep in mind, I'm slightly overtaxing to ensure I get the revenue we need (and because explaining 20% tax is easier than 18.7% or whatever).

The free palestine crowd is still insufferable

 OK, so there's been talk of a cease fire. I don't know if it's actually going through since reports keep going back and forth on that, but between this, and the news that harris "could've won" (no, she wouldn't have) if she had taken a different stance on gaza, but yeah the whole thing is coming back into focus again and the left won't shut the heck up about it.

Like, let's be real. I don't like what Netanyahu is doing. I do believe he's a war criminal, and I believe that the free palestine kiddies have a point, even if I disagree with them on tone. But that said, my god, that tone. Like, whenever these guys get self righteous over it again, I'm just like shut up. Like they screamed at Anthony Blinken. Idk why people like this stuff. Just weirdos screaming at elected officials "WAR CRIMINAL! YOURE A WAR CRIMINAL!" Like...could you like...shut up already? 

And of course I'm looking for decent memes tonight for my friends and I get a bunch of SEE WE WERE RIGHT AFTER ALL on the Harris thing. Like...I did the numbers...I don't see any situation where the number of voters lost was enough to flip the election. At least not with this issue alone. It could've shifting things maybe a point or so, but we lost by 1.7, so...yeah.

And honestly, most of these people are in safe states. The swing states were more concerned over inflation. It is surprising that this issue did impact things as much as they did. It was literally the second most salient issue among nonvoters for Harris, behind inflation. But yeah. 

It's just like...oh my god. Can you PLEASE shut up?

Ya know, I had someone say something else on a similar issue lately that really resonates here. Anti woke right wingers are like, yeah maybe people shouldnt have rights. Anti woke lefties are like...okay I largely agree with you, but can you tone it down by like..A LOT? You're dialing things up to 11 and you need to be at like a 6. Like, really, when people from the left, like myself, criticize the woke, or even the free palestine people, there's a lot of "yeah I kinda agree with you, i kinda see where you're coming from, but could you like NOT act like this? You're alienating the normies. 

And that's kinda how I feel. I do think, in retrospect, that shifting away from israel was a strategy that would've been a net gain from democrats, I was unsure of that during the election, but looking at data now, it's like yeah, +35% if we did among nonvoters, -10% from the people who think we werent pro israel enough. So 25% more votes from nonvoters. Which amounts to like 1.5 million, which is how I got a 1.1% shift. We needed 1.7 to win, but yeah. It would close the gap. 

Like I wanna make that clear. At this point, yes, I think distancing us from Israel IS a good move. It should've been done a year ago in retrospect (and i do own my stance of going along with it at the time), but based on how the situation has evolved, yeah, the war was a disaster, and defending Israel has been an electoral AND a moral loser for us. Like, I dont support Israel's actions. My stance was always that if collateral damage is necessary to win, then so be it. But at this point, it's just mindless slaughter and a lot of these guys are getting their ethics from the book of Joshua...LITERALLY. Like. I wanna be honest, one of the reasons I left Christianity was because I didn't like how God just was like "yeah the best solution is to kill all of these people." I can see flawed humans influenced by the times being like "yeah this is the best WE can do", but God could like, idk, teleport them to another piece of land and solve the problem. Ya know?

And in the 21st century, we're not supposed to like...do...that...any more. The holocaust kinda made us have this "never again" mentality. And even though I'm not super in support of the US being the world police on the subject, yeah I do think not enabling other countries to act like that is kind of a good basis for policy, ya know? 

So again, I wanna make it clear, yeah, the free palestine people have a point. I just hate the hyper fixation, and I think the shrill, self righteous attitude these guys have is just...alienating. Like, again, better ways of getting our point across than screaming WAR CRIMINAL, WAR CRIMINAL. Ya know...like not voting. An even though I don't think that the amount of nonvoters was likely high enough to flip the election, the fact that it was arguably the #2 issue that cost Harris the election behind inflation sends a message nevertheless. Like, I said it early on, but that's how you fricking dissent the right way. You make your voice known at the ballot box. And I'm gonna admit I dont think this issue is important enough to "not vote" over in the grand scheme of things. Out of the hundreds of issues, hyperfixating on this one just baffles me, but it is what it is. People made their voices heard, and they had a right to do it. Now the democrats must respond to what voters want, if they wanna win again in the future.

A relatively objective look at Biden's presidency

 So, Biden gave his farewell address yesterday. The speech was okay. It started out boring, but then he got fairly progressive later on. Always frustrates me to see people walking out the door suddenly get relatively progressive. Remember when Obama left office and started talking about UBI? It's a lot like that. Biden was the "nothing will fundamentally change" guy who was put in office to stop a Bernie Sanders presidency and now he's talking about special interests running the government. Lovely. Should've done that from the beginning. I hate how politicians think something but then act in this stiff boring way when they actually have the power to do something about it. But I digress. More of that in the review itself.

With that said, a fair tear down of Biden's presidency. 

2020 campaign, agenda setting

As stated above, Biden was boring. He was the status quo candidate, the "nothing will fundamentally change" candidate, the "trust me special interests, I'll toe the line" guy. He was the guy who watered down Bernie's agenda into nothingness and ran as Clinton 2.0. He was a rather milquetoast and mediocre candidate. He ran on some policy, but everything was super watered down Bernie policies. In some regards, these were good things. Like I dont support a full green new deal. I could support, however, a mini version, which Build Back Better basically was. But then he chewed universal healthcare down to a public option. He threw all kinds of arbitrary limitations on student loan policy, and yeah. He was like Diet Bernie...but so full of aspertame it overpowers the taste. I didn't vote for him in 2020 for a reason. Because he was so mediocre, and so boring, and didn't do screw all. That and the dems literally screwed Bernie to put him into office. Wasn't gonna reward that.

So yeah, not a fan.

And he barely won vs Trump. Polling was, it was expected to be a relative Obama style landslide, instead, we got a very narrow win where he won by a net amount less than a point. Just like in 2016 and 2024, Trump overperformed, 2020 was different solely because Biden was so far ahead. Winning your first term by the skin of your teeth isnt a good sign. I mean, your reelection campaign is inevitably going to be worse. Trump lost because he lost support and Biden gained it, the energy was on the dems' side, and that's all there was to it. The fundamentals were the same as 2016 and 2024, he just managed to eek out a victory in a way that Clinton 2016 and Harris 2024 didn't. It was more the circumstances, not the man itself. The man was subject to a lot of the trends that other democrats were, he only exceeded them because of timing. 

How Biden attempted to govern

 I think to really judge the guy fairly, you gotta look at both how he attempted to govern, and how he governed. Despite everything I just said, Biden was a relatively progressive president with a relatively progressive agenda. He tried to pass a $15 minimum wage. He tried to pass student loan forgiveness via executive orders. He did manage to pass a lot of COVID era stuff that made peoples' lives better at the time. He did govern in ways to appeal to MAGA priorities too, with legislation like the CHIPS act. He wanted to pass a mini green new deal in build back better, with paid family leave and free preK and daycare and stuff. While not all of his proposals are exactly what I would have liked, they were often decent proposals, and you know? He tried. 

How he actually governed

However, he also failed. A lot of the progressive legislation he wanted to pass never got passed for reasons beyond his control, whether it be the parliamentarian, republicans filabustering, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema refusing to play ball, or SCOTUS shutting him down, his agenda was stifled by an agenda of a thousand cuts. He failed in part because he just isn't a god, he isnt a king, he has separation of powers, and the other branches just obstructed him. Can't blame him for that, although I understand why voters got upset at times. 

Where he really failed on his economic agenda

One thing I will say that I wish he would've tried more on was the public option. A lot of stuff I can honestly say, he tried but failed. I give credit for trying and failing. But on healthcare, dude didn't even try. He completely abandoned the right on one of my highest priorities, and I gotta hold him to account here for it. 

On social issues

On social issues, Biden is likely gonna be remembered for being "woke." He presided over the democratic party during an era of "wokeness", with black lives matter being front and center 2020. However, as we know, wokeness has always been kind of alienating to people, and to some extent, even if Biden himself was kinda reined in with it, the stench is there.

But yeah, i think of what accomplishments he had and it was stuff like Juneteenth. He did a lot for the social justice groups and the black community and the like. Again, not an opponent of that stuff, but I do think it may have contributed to his negative image. 

Beyond that, he governed from the center and actually did try to portray himself as a moderate. he triangulated on immigration, stuff like that.

Beyond that, we just lost ground because of conservative tides on this subject. 2016 cost us the court, and the worst case scenario came to pass where roe v wade was struck down, and while that did kind of give the democrats a second wind in 2022, honestly, once again, despite having the executive, the other branches just screwed us and we actually lost a lot of our rights under a conservative SCOTUS. 

On foreign policy

On foreign policy, I kind of treat Biden with kid gloves. I think he was a relatively competent executive. He tried to keep our alliances going, and tried to aid Ukraine in their war against Russia, and was quite successful. Still, there are a few things I feel like I gotta talk about.

On Afghanistan, he gets a lot of blame there. I think this blame is unfair. I think Afghanistan was a hot mess and we had to pull out at some point. It's like pulling the band aid off your really hairy leg. It's gonna hurt. But it is necessary. Bush got us into these wars, Biden got us out, finally. However, I have to admit, the pullout was chaos, and I understand why people attack him for it. I dont think its his fault. If anything trump made the deal, this just got dumped on Biden and he didn't do well with it. Was he in cognitive decline that early? Perhaps. Maybe that's why it wasn't planned out properly. 

Beyond that, the other one I can say that Biden is wrong on was Israel. We're now looking at this with hindsight, I understand why Biden went along with it at the time, and even I tried to go along with it, you can probably criticize me too here, but honestly....Israel was not engaging in its 2023-2025 war (we just got a cease fire this week apparently) in good faith. They were committing genocide, and Biden, while he tried to handle it internally, he ended up ultimately enabling it. And while I will never get the heads of the self righteous people who made it their #1 issue, let's face it, they kinda had a point. And in retrospect, yeah, polling wise is showing that hurt us. As demonstrated yesterday, this issue wasn't alone to tip the election, but we could've possibly reduced the margins a bit.

On COVID and inflation...

Biden's biggest hits came from COVID and inflation. Sometimes it's best NOT to win elections. As a political scientist and one who studies American political history, honestly? I'm going to be honest. Sometimes you DONT wanna win. 2020 mightve been one of those times. Because then Biden was put in a pickle where he had to handle the recovery and that just left him this inflation time bomb that was waiting to go off. 

Like, people blame Biden for inflation. Biden didn't do crap to cause inflation. Sometimes you just end up being in office when stuff happens, and you get blamed. Same thing happened to Carter. Heck, even presidents like Hoover, Van Buren, etc, who got blamed for economic messes on their watch, and they didn't cause them, they just happened while they happened to be president. 

If anything, I respect Biden's COVID era initiatives and wish some of them were permanent. I would like to see monthly checks, as a UBI supporter. I would like to see what we did with COVID vaccines happen to all medicine. But...the conservative propaganda machine went into overdrive pushing this "NO ONE WANTS TO WORK ANY MORE" narrative, and the american people once again proved themselves to be a bunch of entitled karens. They did it in the 1980s with Reagan, and they did it again. 

Like, I'm sorry, Im out of step with the American people here, but we got a rampant "consumption" problem as Americans. And I'm going to call it as I see it. Unpopular opinion, but people shouldnt be forced to work to give upper class people creature comforts. Shaming people to work is disgusting. And while I admit inflation was a concern, and this concern was rampant, it wasnt even caused by that anyway. It was caused by supply chain issues with the GLOBAL economy and corporate price gouging. But hey, let's just blame the workers. Typical conservatives, and typical Americans.

In traditional terms, the economy was strong. Now, keep in mind, I say traditional terms. I mean by this, low unemployment, and Biden DID manage to get inflation under control during his term. He worked with the fed, they managed to thread the needle of stopping it without causing a recession (imagine if we had 1982 on Biden's watch, he would've been crucified for it), if you actually have moderate or right wing economic views, Biden did everything these people say they want. He created jobs, he had full employment, he got inflation under control. 

Now, for me, with my unique politics, this isn't good enough. Because I want something different. I kinda LIKE the idea of giving people checks and not forcing them to work so middle class people can get their  nails done by someone making $8 an hour. And that's a hill I will metaphorically die on. And even then, I get the pain that people felt with inflation. It sucks to have stuff get 25% more expensive within like 3 years and not get a raise to compensate for that. Inflation sucks. Admittedly, in retrospect, maybe Biden should've actually doubled down on being progressive here. But to be fair, it was risky. If he did what i wouldve wanted him to do, it mightve played into conservative ERMAHGERD HES GIVING PEOPLE MONEY AND DRIVING INFLATION narratives. So idk. Did he do the best he could? I guess?

Like, I'm fully under the impression that the only way to win here is to not play at all. Some election cycles it's better not to win. And he happened to be in charge when some serious crap went down, and his response, while adequate from a traditional viewpoint, was inadequate from a progressive or populist one, and honestly, it just further amplified the perception that Biden wasn't competent. 

2024 and cognitive decline

So, I've been fairly soft on Biden all things considered, but this is where I have to go hard on this guy. This guy should've never run again. He promised to be a one term president in 2020. He decided to run again out of pride and hubris. ANd because the democratic party is...as it is, they enabled this. They never gave us a fair and open primary. The only candidates were Marianne Williamson, who was never taken seriously, and Dean Phillips, who got on the wrong side of the democratic party machine and lambasted by colleagues for not being a "team player" for daring to run against him. And the dems literally did things like shift the first primary to South Carolina specifically to make the entire process favor Biden. 

And, it's scummy when the democrats do this on a normal year. This is why they're struggling. Since 2016, the democratic party has been out of sync with what the country wants, but they keep forcing it on us and making us choose as a lesser evil. This is why I refused to support them in 2016 and 2020. And honestly? Don't think I didn't notice them playing the same games in 2024. They did. I just kinda overlooked it since we had bigger fish to fry. 

But yeah, what made this worse was THE DUDE WASN'T EVEN UP FOR THE JOB. His brain is turning to jello, he's apparently been on cognitive decline for years, he's basically a puppet for administrators in the executive branch and needs to go to bed at like 4:30 some days because he can't handle the job. And we just covered it up until the debate forced their hand. And while i dont think he bombed as badly in the debate as some say, he clearly wasn't able to do the job, and every "hey look i can still do this" speech proved that...no...he can't. 

Like really, this is a major scandal. Like a "turn the key" in lichtman's model type scandal. The president's brain is jello, it's been covered up for years, and he's had handlers just...handling him and hiding it. 

But...to be fair, this is what the democrats brought down on themselves. We could've had bernie, we didn't because they put this guy in charge. He was the damage control for the elite class, a way to blunt the edge of progressivism and progress, and he was put there by the democratic party to retain their brand. And this isn't uncommon for them. The democrats are full of people way too old and often not up for the job. Dianne Feinstein was like full on alzheimers mode when she died and they covered that up for years too. Another congressperson recently was found in a nursing home. Nancy Pelosi just broke a hip. And AOC was passed over for some high level leadership position because of some 77 year old with throat cancer. Like...the democrats have a problem here. They're a bunch of old out of touch people well past retirement age and they just wont hand over power to the next generation. So they keep running for office as their brains turn to jello and they're at death's door, all to prevent people from taking over.

And yes, Bernie is up there too. He's also relatively healthy, competent, and just expressed that the term he was just elected to will be his last. He's also not running for president any more, which does depress me somewhat as I genuinely like him, but I get it. You dont want 80+ people in the white house. 80 should kinda be the hard limit IMO.

And even when the party turned on Biden, he STILL wouldn't hand over the keys. For him, it was pride. Him being told to step aside hurt his pride. He was confident he could do the job, that he could win, despite the evidence. heck he recently made the comment that if Harris ran, she would've won. Uh...yeah. Did I mention this guy's brain is jello?

Harris and 2024

So, this crisis of Biden being too old and his brain being jello really left democrats in a tough spot where they had to scramble and replace him quickly. And given how it was july when we were having this conversation, the only real answer that could unite the party was Kamala Harris. 

And then Harris ended up running a milquetoast campaign that played it too safe and ran to the center, and she refused to distance herself from Biden, you know, the candidate everyone hated because of the inflation and how darned old he was, she lost. And now Donald Trump is going back to the white house, where he represents a clear and present danger to our democracy, and I don't take this lightly, but did I ever mention how he's like hitler lite? Yeah. Not exaggerating there either. I could literally see trump pulling some night of the long knives type crap. Project 2025 is basically that. 

But yeah. That's the worst part of Biden's legacy. That at the end of all of that, he really just gave rise to a more dangerous form of Trump that would have likely been more muted had the dude just served a second term. Biden gave us Trump again. And even then, a more dangerous Trump. Again, if Trump just won a second term, he would've just governed normally. But then because he lost, January 6th happened, and then the guy radicalized during his 4 year out of office, and now his second term is looking far scarier than the first, or even the second he could've have just finished by now. 

But again, Biden, the democrats HAD to win 2020, and they HAD to force milquetoast centrism on us, and then fail at accomplishing even that, and then have the guy go into cognitive decline from age, and now we're back to Trump. Sadly, that is part of Biden's legacy....ultimately giving us a second, more dangerous trump term than we would've gotten if we just let the dude do a second term in the first place. 

With that said, what's my overall rating of his presidency?

With all of that said, I gotta give this guy a straight up C. He couldve gotten a B- for effort, but between the failure to accomplish most of his priorities, and inflation, and his mind turning to jello leading to 2024 being a complete and utter dumpster fire for us, I gotta bring him down. 

Biden, I think, will be underrated in this time. I think he will be remembered more favorably by history, and renovated in a way similar to carter. Republicans HATED carter and blamed him for literally everything wrong with the 1970s...but at the end of the day, he wasn't bad, he just underperformed and dealt with a lot of problems that he couldnt solve due to limitations of the time. Americans often arent understanding when you fail, even if it isn't your fault. They want results, they want them now, and if they don't get them, they're gonna act like they're the worst person ever. What they're not gonna do is sit here for an hour writing about the pros and cons of the guy's presidency like I am now. 

Still, honestly? The fact that his ultimate legacy was putting the democrats in an impossible to win situation that enabled trump and gave us a second trump term, with him more dangerous than he is before, yeah...that hurts him A LOT in my book. Again, I think I was fair here, he dealt with a lot of stuff, a lot of things didnt go his way, it wasn't really his fault, BUT...he leaves the country in a very precarious position, and yeah. I gotta say that he's a C on a letter grade scale.

As far as how this compares to other recent presidents I was old enough to remember and have an informed opinion of at the time:

Trump (1st term)- F

Obama- C+/B-

Bush- D+

Anything before that I'm mostly reading history books as I was an elementary school student during the clinton years, a toddler in the bush sr years, and was only alive for reagan's last year in office. So yeah, better than Bush and Trump. Maybe a little below Obama. 

Discussing a new poll that some claim that Palestine cost Harris the election

 So, a new poll is floating around and people are claiming it implies that we lost the election because of Palestine. Now, to be fair, I think people framing it this way are pushing an agenda, but at the same time, let's go over the figures presented. 

Basically, it looks at people who voted for Biden in 2020 but didn't vote for Harris in 2024. It found a litany of issues that led to them to not support Harris. The biggest ones are the economy and gaza. In the country as a whole, gaza took precedence with 29% of people citing that as their top concern, however, the number dropped to 20% in battleground states. On the flip side, 24% of people said the economy played the biggest role, but this went up to 33% in battleground states. While trends outside of battlegrounds shouldnt be completely ignored, given what they imply for future trends, let's face it, only the 7 battlegrounds actually had a reasonable chance of flipping. Anything from VA/NH/MN on up still went for Harris by several points. And we lost all 7 swing states, both in the rust belt, and the sun belt.

Among those who didnt vote for Harris, 36% claimed that they would have been more likely to support Harris had she broke with Biden's policies more on the issue.  10% said less likely. 54% said it made no difference. In terms of enthusiasm, breaking would've made 35% more enthusiastic, 5% less enthusiastic, and 59% said it makes no difference. 

So....in practice, let's say a net quarter of them would've been more likely to support Harris had she broken from Biden's policies. This still leaves the majority of them upset over other issues like the economy, but it is a more substantial chunk than I would have guessed.

So let's do some math here.

So, based on this quick math on the subject, I get basically a no. No state would have flipped. If anything, Harris's net losses werent that large in the swing states and if anything she gained in many of them from sheer population growth. As such, the numbers measurable aren't big enough to be measured. It is true that she gained significantly less votes than Joe Biden did on the whole (75M vs 81M), but these were in safe states.

Still, say we take the quarter figure and apply it nationally. Harris lost a net of 6,264,244 votes relative to Biden in 2020. If 1/4 of those lost votes voted, what would the difference be? 1,566,061. Overall that would've given her 76,585,318 to Trump's 77,303,573. So even if we got all of those voters to vote for Harris, she still would've lost the popular vote, and the election. Given the electoral college voted almost exactly in line with the popular vote, we wouldnt see a big difference. It wouldn't have swayed the election. 

So all in all, did Gaza cost Harris the election? Not really. I mean, it did hurt her, but honestly? She lost for a lot of reasons. All in all though, I will say this. The net effect of all of these issues did likely cost her the election. And the big takeaway I'm taking away is that she lost because she wasn't far left enough. She wasn't progressive and populist enough on the economy, and she wasn't progressive enough on Gaza. Im not sure Harris could have won in any circumstance given low enthusiasm, but at the very least, I think we could argue that dampened enthusiasm did hurt her, and that most of this came from her not being progressive enough. 

EDIT: I did some further math and came up with this map:

It would have possibly shifted Wisconsin, but yeah, it wouldn't have won us the election. Would've reduced the margin to about 0.5% though, so a little over a point.

We really just let him get away with it...(part 2)

 So, the Jack Smith report dropped recently and it's getting media attention. I don't go into all of the details, but the long story short is that we pretty much had an ironclad case against Trump in terms of inciting an insurrection, and now he's never going to see justice. 

When January 6th happened and people were calling to arrest him, I was more defensive of free speech and being like, well, we don't know if this is incitement and it sets a bad precedent to go after him for just saying stuff like fight like hell. No, apparently, we had proof. Apparently he was watching the TV and basically tweeting things that were basically egging on the protesters. He knew what he was doing. He wasn't innocent. We let the investigations happen and they showed that yeah, he was actually guilty. But then we did nothing. The trump defense team delayed it, it wasn't pushed aggressively enough, and now we just reelected his guy.

Look, there's a reason I didn't just go like third party, whatever this time around. The biggest reason is literally this. In 2016, I was willing to be like, whatever, the dems wanna hold the process hostage, let them F around and find out. This time around, I was like....no, we need to do something about this. He's getting too dangerous. I know we have a meme every 4 years when democrats say its the most important election of our lives, and this time around, it wasn't hyperbole. And we just F-ed up. 

I hope this doesn't mean the downfall of democracy itself. But that's the scary thing, it could mean that. We should've never taken a chance with this guy again. It just incenses me. I feel like had the left been a bit more aggressive in playing it's hand, this would've been avoided. Maybe we would've ended up with JD Vance, Ron Desantis, or Nikki Haley, and I'm not saying any of those options were great, but at least they're sane. As long as we can keep coming back around every 4 years and being like, yeah, let's try this again, there's hope that things can change for the better. Historically, eventually the right lessons are learned, and eventually the progress that needs to happen does happen. Often times, it happens long after they try everything else. Abolitionists were pushing the end of slavery for decades before the cause went mainstream. The labor rights enshrined in the new deal were advocated for a full 50 years before they were implemented, but eventually, they happened. It takes a while for progress to happen, but eventually, it does happen. 

All that goes out the window if we lose democracy. And we just elected a dude I liken to being another "Hitler" type figure. Brace yourselves, the next 4 years are gonna suck. 

PS, for anyone who wants to read the full report: here you go.

Discussing Linus's video on ray tracing being "mandatory"

 So, LTT recently put out a video talking about how ray tracing is becoming mandatory for games. And, given my own unique political perspective which bleeds into this stuff, I wanted to discuss my thoughts.

Honestly, I'm one of those relatively "anti ray tracing" people out there. People might wonder why I sometimes have "anti technological progress" views, and it ain't really that I'm against progress, I'm against progress at all costs, and I'm against CEO tech bro types trying to ram their concept of "reality" down other peoples' throats.

As I see it, ray tracing is one of the worst things to happen to the gaming industry. People think the price of GPUs is because of "inflation", but no, this crap started in 2018...with the introduction of the RTX 2000 series. Nvidia developed this super exclusive technology, backed by other technologies like DLSS, and saw fit to increase the price of hardware by 40% overnight. Prices had been relatively stable from 2010 to 2016, with you being able to get roughly the same tier of card at roughly the same price until then. And we saw relatively rapid gains. We would generally see double performance once every three years or so. Just compare the 8800 GT (2007) to the GTX 460 (2010) to the GTX 760 (2013) to the GTX 1060 (2016). Technological progress wasn't just about better GPUs, but also cheaper GPUs for the money. You would have $500-600 "80" cards become 60 cards overnight. 80 ti flagship cards would become 70 cards. 70 cards would become 50 cards. I was crazy. We saw rapid progress as the legitimate power of these cards improved rapidly and the price came down.

But...to some extent, Nvidia has always been greedy. They did try a new pricing structure with the GTX 200 cards in 2008-2009, given a lack of competition from AMD, but AMD undercut them so hard it corrected the market and kept them in check for years to come. Around 2018 or so, with the introduction of this bullcrap, it became clear that they had the high ground and that AMD had nothing to respond with. So they charged whatever they wanted, and people paid it.

Since then, GPUs have been relatively unaffordable, and now Nvidia is one of the most profitable companies ever. They've cornered the market, got 90% market share, and AMD has honestly done screw all since then. Like, they've barely tried to compete. Their RX 5000 series was technologically behind and on par with the Nvidia 1000 series. The 6000 series came up as being competitive with 2000 and 3000 series Nvidia cards, but due to less mature ray tracing and upscaling technologies, no one bought them. I mean, I did, on principle, and because eventually post COVID the price of them finally corrected the market back to a small level of sanity. But let's be honest, they were markedly worse than nvidia cards in precious ray tracing performance, and of course, upscaling, a technology that Nvidia made to compensate the insane performance costs of ray tracing.

You see, for all the talk of ray tracing being this big thing, it was never ready for prime time. The performance costs of it were crushing, and the hardware was and is expensive. A non ray traced scene can run games at like 60 FPS, the ray traced equivalent will be 25 FPS. All for people to barely notice no difference or subtle differences most of the time. Sure, there are some cases where it looks truly amazing, but these instances are rare, and largely unaffordable anyway. Because Nvidia has had no competition, every generation, their top card has gotten progressively more expensive. The GTX 1080 ti was $700 and that was the top end card for money crazed enthusiasts in 2017. The RTX 2080 Ti was $1000. Again, they decided to start gouging, bumping everything a solid price tier or 40%. Then with the 3000 series the 3090 Ti became $2000. It was COVID, GPU pricing was crazy, they could do whatever they wanted. 4090 the bubble burst but they still charged $1600. And now the 5090 is going back up to $2000.

At the lower end, GPU pricing is getting insufferable too. The GTX 1060 6 GB was $250. The 2060 was $350. The 3060 was $330, with the 3060 Ti being $400. The 4060 was $300, as people clearly signalled they werent paying more than $300 for a 60 card, but the 4060 ti was $400, with the 16 GB model being $500. We're seeing clear price creep, and 60 cards used to be the mainstream mid range option. In many ways, they still are. Even today, steam hardware survey shows most gamers aiming for 3060 or 4060 level hardware (and the 2 perform about the same). AMD equivalents can be had for $50 cheaper and consist of the 6650 XT, which I own, and the 7600. 

And nothing below the slightly cheaper 6600 is worth buying. Trust me. $190 is the new entry level for PC gaming. And it's the bare minimum, already being seen in minimum requirements. It's capable of rudimentary ray tracing, it gets your foot in the door, but that's about it. Games are starting to require 2060s and 6600s which are the minimum cards from both brands actually capable of ray tracing, leaving people with 3060s, 4060s, 6650 XTs, and 7600s really only one small rung above the bare minimum. And we're seeing this, while these cards STILL cost $200-300. A $200-300 card historically got you medium high performance at 1080p 60 FPS. Sometimes it doesn't but some games were already pushing medium 2 years ago as I found out testing my 6650 XT in callisto protocol, which I got for free. And now the GPU is already pushing low, often with upscaling needing to be enabled to maintain performance.

Quite frankly, we're being priced out of PC gaming. The masses are being pushed out of PC gaming. Entry level performance is now $200ish. It used to be $100ish. $250 used to be midrange, now people are spending $400-500 a lot of the time. The high end used to be like $600-800. Now it's $1600-2000. It's insane.

Again, this isn't general inflation. If we took 2016 era pricing and adjusted it, this is what the 5000 series would cost probably.

 GTX 5030- $105

 RTX 5050- $140

RTX 5050 ti- $180

RTX 5060- $260

RTX 5060 ti- $330

RTX 5070- $500

RTX 5070 ti- $600

RTX 5080- $800

RTX 5090- $920

I did a little rounding, but that's around where things should be. I aint saying this is perfect either.  I would like to see the entry level GPUs a little lower. But still, this is a good amount preferable to what we have. This is closer to AMD style pricing, just without the bottom below the 5050 ti model (6600). And by the way, these numbers are WITH inflation. Everything at the low end is a good 15-20% more expensive than that. The 5070 is the only product even remotely approaching its proper pricing. And the high end ones, well, again, tack on about 25-33% onto that, or double it for the top tier. 

This is absolutely crazy. 

But a lot of people, especially wealthy people who dominate hardware forums think this is okay. Like most PC gamers who post on hardware forums are extremely privileged. They are wealthy upper class professionals who make six figures and live picturesque little lives. They have way too much money to spend on frivolous luxuries, which are then justified by the idea that they "create jobs" for other people (so basically, we're your servants.....fun....), and they think nothing about it. They also think nothing of normal people being priced out of the market. Oh, can't afford it? Stop being poor, git gud, stop expecting the market to adapt to you, you need to adapt to the market. A nice attitude to take when you're basically a rich frick who is on the winning side of the market.

But yeah. That's basically why these discussions are insufferable. They are political, and most of the consumers for this stuff are rich hobbyists who because THEY can afford stuff, and they're willing to pay higher prices, we're just expected to suffer.

Honestly, technology is such where at some point, it's like pulling a band aid off, and yes, people are gonna have to adapt to the market. The problem is, by the time that time comes, you should be able to go to the store, and buy a $100 i3, with a $100 "50" tier card, and be able to hit that minimum rung of performance. That was always the plus side to the technological advancements. That yeah, your old hardware can't run stuff any more, but the power scaling of hardware is such where even the entry level is like goku to your old PC's yamcha. 

It's like how in DBZ even the 8 year olds get super saiyan by the end of the series. Like, that used to be this legendary tier of strength, and now it's nothing because the power scaling is so insane. 

But that's the problem, that's no longer happening. The lowest tier Nvidia cards from current series are no longer $100, they're $300. That 4060 is the lowest the current series gets, and I doubt the 5000 series will be any different. Sure, you can maybe get a $200-250ish AMD model, but again, that used to be the midrange. Like, you used to get that and it would be a good performer for about 4-5 years. I just got a 6650 XT like 2 years ago and it's already hitting the bare minimum because of how screwed the market is. 

Honestly, this shouldn't be acceptable. Markets exist to serve people, people don't exist to serve markets, and it's ridiculous that we live like this. But that's capitalism in its raw form, can't afford things? Screw you. Have you ever considered not being poor? Seriously, this system serves like 20% of people properly and then like 80% are left to struggle to varying degrees. It's ridiculous.

We really let him get away with it...

 So....Trump was finally sentenced in the hush money case....no punishment, no penalties. The felony stays on his record, but he faces no real consequences. It's over. We're letting him get away with it.

People may ask, well what else should we have done?

Well, it's my opinion that we should've never let him run in the first place, given the inciting an insurrection charges. We should've moved stuff up and prosecuted more aggressively. And given he was found guilty back in July, we should've held him accountable for it and sentenced him. But then they gave him the softball treatment because he was a whiny (word I won't say) who screamed that everything was a witch hunt against him, and they were afraid of sentencing him and punted it until after the election. And because he won, we literally just let him walk free.

Honestly, I understand, given the situation, not giving him jail time, but honestly, I still would've subjected him to a form of house arrest and forced him to deal with a probation officer all the time. I mean, the dude is surrounded by a security detail all day every day anyway. Just make him wear a fricking ankle monitor, don't let him do some of his more luxurious recreational activities like golf, make him deal with a probation officer, etc. I mean, let him do anything he needs to that's part of his official duties, and I admit, at this point, the punishment is largely symbolic, but the symbolism is the point. No one should be above the law, not even the president. And we're literally showing the world that this dude is above the law. That he can do whatever he wants, and he will ever face consequences for it. This dude is so privileged, and not in an SJW way (although that too), that it's ridiculous. If this were any one of us, we would rot in jail for what he did. Heck, his followers faced legit penalties for January 6th. he's probably gonna pardon them too. 

The whole thing is a fricking joke. We literally just made a travesty out of our justice system here. 

I know people give Biden a lot of crap for pardoning hunter and commuting most of the death row cases, but honestly, at least with biden he's taking a principled stand against the death penalty, and arguably protecting his son from trump's weaponization of the justice system. Because you know that's coming. Trump sees all attempts to hold him accountable for crimes as politically motivated and it's been speculated that he will weaponize it against others. Biden is playing a little defensively on that front. 

Whatever, I can at least tolerate what Biden is doing. I can't tolerate what Trump has done. January 6th, no, that's a line that shouldve never been crossed. I know that the hush money thing wasn't the same thing, but i see it as nailing al capone on tax evasion, at least it's something. And yeah. We're letting him get away with it.