Discussing Atlantic City sociologically, and the problems with capitalism and the "big casino"

 So....this time I want to discuss AC at large sociologically, and why it's basically screwed economically. Again, I did a lot of research into the topic, and in a thread where people were complaining about an issue in the city, someone said "why are you focused on this and not on how the city has a 40% poverty rate?" Well, you can complain about issues with certain establishments and also keep a sociological perspective in mind. heck, I have A LOT to say about Atlantic City sociologically, and being a UBI supporter, I also have a lot of solutions. While these comments weren't addressed at me, and I was just lurking the thread, I figured I would discuss AC sociologically a bit, why it's so screwed economically (TLDR: capitalism), and what would solve it (TLDR: UBI and other second new deal proposals). 

Discussing AC's history, climate, and setting the stage for failure

So....AC didn't always exist. If anything, as a touristy town, it's a relatively new invention. For most of European American history, it mostly didn't exist. It's in the marshes of south Jersey. There was little point for it to do so. Too remote to be useful economically. I know watching videos on it, some doctor used to set up a practice there for unhealthy individuals, since the relatively moderate climate was good for them in an age before modern air conditioning. 

Going into the 20th century, the Mafia turned it into a sort of black market paradise, where it was "the place" to go if you wanted a good time that couldn't be met legitimately (so, gambling, booze, prostitution, etc). The expansion of rail and later road and air travel made it more accessible where it never used to be. This made it a booming town for that sort of tourist activity. And the mob realized if AC wasn't the only place that you could do that sort of stuff, it would just be "a beach with cold water." 

After all, beaches are normally awesome tourist spots when they're warm, people will travel from all over the world for a good beach spot where it's warm year round. Of course, New Jersey isnt that, with the midatlantic having hot summers, cold winters, and also cold springs/falls for beach weather. So its primary tourism season basically lasts from memorial day to labor day, and while it is viable a bit before/after that, it's not PRIME for beach goers. That makes it a seasonal tourist destination, doing well in the summer but poor in the winter. Really, what made the place appealing early on WAS that illegal activity. 

And then, gambling was legalized in the 1970s, but only there. And we got tons of casinos being built into the 1980s, with even our current president getting in on the fun. Ya know, because he was a real estate developer and all. Yeah, he built several casinos there, and then because they all competed with each other given the limited demand, he bankrupted them and struggled to make money off of them. Because the casino industry has always been iffy and relied primarily on being a black market monopoly, and then a legal monopoly in the area to be profitable.

And then over time, places like Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New York legalized gambling, leading to the loss of reasons to go there. I even wrote an article on this back in 2016.  So yeah, AC has fallen on hard times. It's always been in hard times. Even at its best it was shady AF and now it's basically a glittering resort next to a ghetto that's only popular for non gambling reasons for 3-5 months out of the year. 

And let's not even get into the harshness of capitalism

 Capitalism is successful as an economic model because it's a lot like Darwinistic evolution. The "invisible hand" that keeps things efficient is basically natural selection. Life is a constant struggle for survival. Capitalism institutionalizes that struggle. Firms struggle to maintain profit margins. People struggle to maintain an income to survive. Everyone works and struggles all of the time, and the system basically forces everyone to be profitable, or to fall into destitution, where the system basically punishes you. I'd argue on the firm side of the equation, capitalism's harshness is justified. If an idea struggles to be profitable, then maybe it shouldn't continue to exist. Then people are instead pushed toward economic activity that is actually useful. This is one reason I'm not super big on being a luddite and preserving jobs. I get the idea of preserving some level of stability and income in peoples' lives, but if they're not doing useful things, what's the point? Give them a check and let the jobs go.

But that is the other side of the equation. In my own envisioning of capitalism, a UBI is almost a necessity to be built on the system. Take monopoly for instance, it needs a basic income to keep the game playable. Fun fact, monopoly is based on AC. The more you know... But I digress. Point is, if you allow this system to operate naturally, it will replicate the horrors of the state of nature, except in institutionalized form. 

And that's why AC has the issues it has. In a system where people are expected to constantly turn a profit or be punished, a lot of people are punished. There simply isn't enough demand to keep AC financially successful. The place exists purely to serve tourists who want to go there and dump discretionary income there, and without that constant influx of demand that you dont get in a seasonal beach town, you don't get a lot of economic stability. 

And let's discuss the wage slavery aspect

While Widerquist's "Big Casino" essay was a play on Nevada and places like Reno and Las Vegas, Atlantic City is the east coast's version of that. It basically IS the very embodiment of "the big casino." The place exists as a casino resort first, a beach town second, and falls on hard times because of that. Let's think of this place in terms of trickle down economics. The wealthy people who own the casinos get the money. They "create jobs" where you serve rich tourists for the privilege of them coming here, and your choices are to either get a job and work for them, for minimal pay and benefits of course, or you're poor. Sometimes AND you're poor but if you're not employed, you're especially screwed. Because much of the city is privatized, it's owned by the wealthy, you either pay for the privilege of being there, or you work there. You're not allowed to just exist there. As discussed in the previous article, a lot of casinos have strict policies that are sometimes even inconvenient for customers to discourage homeless from existing in their casinos. And while they will exist outside mere blocks away, that makes the areas away from the tourist spots hellish, causing them to devolve into crime that makes the tourists uncomfortable, and further disincentivizes a lot from coming here. Like I really had to work hard convincing my mom that going there was a good idea. She had last been there in the 1980s and was familiar with the more seedy aspects of it. I had to actually explain how the casino areas are safe and there's more there than gambling, they're actually full blown resorts with other stuff to do, because they had to diversify to get people in. 

But, again, that's the thing. Where do normal people exist in this hyper capitalized world? Either you own a casino and make the money, you're a consumer, many of whom are wealthy, or you work there. You're not really allowed to be anything else. Such is the nature of capitalism as a "big casino." Every individual casino has their policies that reinforce this behavior, but none of them really take responsibility for it, and people act like it's just a fact of life, rather than a system we set up that operates certain rules that can be changed at any time. 

So...we got a system where poor people are forced to take jobs serving much wealthier people, or they become part of that homeless class that causes problems in its own right. I'm arguing if capitalism wasn't so harsh, and did give people a more basic option to just...exist, that these problems would be alleviated. The poor wouldnt be so desperate. But that's the thing, the wealthy classes rely on this poor, desperate working class in order to perpetuate their lifestyle. While I find some of the serving others aspect of employment in capitalism distasteful, these guys freak out if their servants don't wanna serve any more, we saw a tiny taste of that in 2021 and half the country (led by these guys) threw a fit over it. 

But that's what capitalism really is. The top 0.1% are the ownership class who own everything and make most of the money. The top 10-20% in general are the primary consumer class, whose fine tastes drive the system and the rest of us are just...the hired help. Yeah, the middle class exists, but the actual middle class has been in decline. For many of us in the younger generations, we're just servants in this crappy system. And the actual class that benefits from this is constantly shrinking. Most of the time, the issue is framed as a problem with joblessness and not enough work. Which is ridiculous. I'd argue we shouldnt make people work in the first place. but now, it's one of inflation and income inequality in the 2020s. The spending habits of the top 10-20% of people are now the main drivers of the economy, while the actual middle is getting squeezed out, and people are struggling to get into the top class, with many failing and falling into the masses of the servant class, where this system affords us the options to serve or to starve.

 Putting it all together 

Basically, atlantic city is the perfect encapsulation of american capitalism and its problems in general. They're just more exaggerated here. You got the luxurious casinos owned by a minority, constantly struggling to turn profits. You got the wealthy upper class that benefits from this system as consumers. And then you got the rest of us who are just the hired help. That's capitalism in general. A system designed to trick most of the world's population into being servants of the wealthy, while we act like it's fair, just, and has to be this way.

I ain't saying there arent benefits to capitalism. I certainly dont encourage the big casino to be what karl widerquist called "the big collective", an authoritarian collectivist state where the government tells you what to do instead and you have no choice to refuse. Rather, I encourage freedom. What we need is a better form of capitalism, a more humanistic form of capitalism. One where, if you wanna go to the big casino and operate by their rules, fine, but you can also exist elsewhere, without having to do anything for the privilege. A system where, if you wanna work to earn extra money in a casino to have a more luxurious lifestyle for yourself, fine, that's your choice, but you're not coerced by poverty, propertylessness, and a system that gives you no place to reasonably go and "just exist" if you dont.

I envision a form of society where rather than pay to play, it's free to play, with a robust store full of voluntary micro transactions for those who want it. The base experience is free, but if you wanna contribute, you earn higher standards of living, and more luxurious conditions. I feel like, we dont do this. We claim to be built on principles of voluntaryism, but when you look more closely, how voluntary is this system? Not really. And everyone knows it, they just do philosophical cartwheels about how poverty is natural and no one is entitled to anything to justify things being this way. But those attitudes are the problem. Yes, assuming society can afford it, everyone should get a UBI. Everyone should be able to secure healthcare, housing, and a decent education on top of that UBI. And we should have robust labor protections, including limits on hours worked, to avoid overwork, in order to fill in any gaps.

If we did that, Atlantic city would be a lot better for the actual residents of it. They'd be able to afford to exist, they'd be able to reject forced servitude, and while that might have economic impacts that drive casinos to either accommodate more labor demands or go out of business, and that might make entitled wealthy people unhappy, I'm fine with it. I support a vision of capitalism based on actual freedom over one that basically amounts to the forced servitude of the majority of the population just to serve a bunch of wealthy people with nothing better to do with their money but to gamble it away and spend it on luxury accommodations. Some might say those wealthy people "create jobs", but i don't want your stinking jobs. That's the point. I dont think that a place like atlantic city should exist, until every legal resident in the country has enough food, a place to live, decent healthcare, and a decent standard of living in general. Id rather raise the bottom and have a world where everyone a bit more the same in terms of the wealth they have access to, than a society of such ridiculous extremes, where you got rich fricks dropping upward of $600+ a night on hotel rooms over the weekend, eating $100 steaks, and then dropping several grand into the casino. Seriously. The idea of forcing people to work maybe made sense in an era where the alternative was not enough to go around and material shortages leading to actual starvation, but it doesnt make sense in the modern era.

Anyway, that's my take on it. Just some thoughts I had as I used this vacation to think about how my ideas would work in practice.  

The racism and classism of peoples' casino/hotel preferences

 So...one of the reasons I stopped posting this past week as much is I went to Atlantic City. I did a metric crapton of research before this and i decided Resorts was the best place to go for me. Normally, I go on vacation down south, but my parents are older now and don't want to travel as far. We normally go to places like Myrtle Beach, Pigeon Forge, or Savannah, so I figured, okay, let's go to the hotel with a Margaritaville in it! We like Margaritaville, right? Also, it was affordable AF. Like, we've always been the scroungers and savers, where we tend to find the cheapest way to do something. It's not that we really cut on actual quality of life when we go. I mean, if we wanted we could sleep in like a Motel 6 with like a 2 star rating and have a horrible experience, but we try to find the best way to do things that's still reasonably affordable. Resorts ticked those boxes between it being clean, affordable, and having reasonably priced food. 

But if you go online, a lot of people HATE resorts for some reason. It baffles me. If the hotel is clean and reasonably priced, what's the problem? Most people seem to push staying in like Borgata, Ocean, or Hard Rock instead. But...those places are a lot more money, and while if you are a high roller, they're a bit nicer, they're just not what we're looking for. Researching what people say about resorts i get complaints like not liking the people who go there, there being "thugs" hanging around the entrance to the casino, the services being limited, and it feeling like living in a shopping mall. Now, as I'll get to later, maybe in this article or the next, AC does have a homeless problem. The city is half resort and half...ghetto, let me put it that way. I'll do a sociological analysis on it later and give my thoughts on it from that perspective. But still, I did my due diligence and researched further, even watching a guy walk through the casino, stay in the rooms, and it's a pretty decent casino. Maybe not the best or flashiest, but definitely not bad either. I mean, I won't name names but I've watched the guy go through other casinos that flat out have a "dead mall" vibe and feel more like a casino from the fallout universe. This doesn't for the most part. I guess the art deco style can fit that retro style fallout has at times, but it's not like run down. It's just not super fancy. 

Funny thing is, my parents also talked about staying where we're staying and their friends were like OH YOU DONT WANNA STAY THERE, WHY DONT YOU STAY IN THE BORGATA? Because 1) it's more money, 2) the room is smaller, 3) its isolated from the boardwalk, and 4), it doesn't have anything that we actually want that we can't get elsewhere?

Anyway, we stayed there, mostly had a good experience. A few minor gripes, but I'm under the impression I could or would run into any of the issues I had in ANY other casino. No, there were no "thugs" hanging by the boardwalk, if anything, after sitting there drinking a drink while watching people come in, I noticed something. A lot of black people go on vacation here. Why? Probably the same reasons, it's affordable. You dont wanna waste a lot of money for minimal gain and you wanna stretch the cash you have as far as it will go, so you go to the affordable place. Are these people who are apparent Borgata/Ocean/Hard Rock fanboys just racist against black people? You decide, but I get the impression some of what they're saying is code for "we want to go somewhere that keeps out the riffraff", ya know, like they're oh so superior. Ya know how when a black dude goes into a mostly white neighborhood people start screaming the neighborhood is going downhill and start moving out, creating a self fulfilling loop that causes the place to start going downhill as all the money and jobs disappear and things become increasingly ghetto? Yeah, that seems to be how these guys sound to me. When these guys start saying the casino is "ghetto", that seems to be what people are saying. 

Also, a lot of it just seems to be putting on airs. Like, Ive never been in the economic class where we've gone to fancy places where we overspent and then we basically brag and virtue signal about how wealthy we are and how we can afford it. But a lot of people DO do that stuff. And I never went for it. I look at resorts and compared to other hotel experiences I've had over the years, it WAS relatively upscale. I mean, when I was down south, we used to talk about wishing about how we could afford to stay IN like, the margaritaville hotel, and here...we basically did that. And it was NICE. Again, we didn't do anything too crazy, and I guess if you want upscale, resorts isn't for you, but hey, it was a solid experience coming from my lower middle class background and the accommodations I'm used to. And honestly? I'll be blunt, it didnt cost much more than staying in a ratty motel 6 style hotel honestly. That's the real kicker. Like...any place that's affordable and clean...this was like...what, $20 more a night? And sure I could stay cheaper but then we'd be cutting WAY down on quality to the point that we'd have roaches and bedbugs in the room and we...dont...want...that...

 Idk. It's just amusing watching how this pans out and what people say about this stuff, and what THEY seem to accustomed to. Yes yes yes, if you wanna spend 2x the money I did to stay in the fanciest places with the fanciest food, go for it, but I don't want that. I'm basic. And some people hate basic, but given my tastes, basic is FINE. As we'll get to in the next article, I'm not really that hardcore on vacationing anyway given some of my political views, since I don't like the idea of people being forced to serve me and me having to pay them for the "privilege" of doing so. You can kinda get that impression from previous articles I've written, like that one I did on food service a while back. I just go because my parents like going, and I'll go with them. 

And yeah, just a few other topics worth mentioning:

The hotel has a very strict policy against actual "thugs" and homeless. They dont let people stay or sleep in their cars in the garages. They dont let people use the bathrooms to change. There's no place to sit unless you're actively gambling or eating anything. ALL of these casinos in atlantic city are strict about that sort of thing to keep the actual riffraff out. If anything, the strictness actually works against legitimate consumers. Just a few examples:

 1) Due to all of the walking I did carrying in my own stuff (which was made needlessly difficult because they wanna incentivize us to pay people to do it for us, because that's what upper class people normally do), and then walking around the boardwalk all day on my first day, my feet were KILLING ME the rest of the trip. Like, I was in pain walking. And these casinos, while nice to walk through and look at, have no place to sit unless you go to the food court to eat something, or to a spot where youre gambling. Unlike places down south, there's no place to actually sit, because they dont want people to just sit and exist. The place exists for you to spend money. If you're not actively consuming, they dont want you there. This had a negative impact of making whatever issues with my feet WORSE during my stay, even though I was a legit consumer with a hotel room. 

2) So...the bathrooms dont want you changing clothes. Okay, dont want homeless people washing up or changing in there, i get it. But let's take this example. On the way out, when we were about to go home, a family member messed up their clothes and had to change. We were literally minutes from checking out. We couldnt use any casino floor bathroom to do this due to the policies against it, we had to go back up to the room to do so. And if we checked out, well then, we ARE screwed aren't we? You mean, we, legit consumers who just spent the past several nights in your rooms and ate every day in your dining establishments, couldnt just go to the bathroom to change our clothes to make sure that we were driving home in clean clothes? I understand why the policies exist, but you understand how this can sometimes make things harder for actual paying customers, right?

3) I know others who have gone to AC where one person goes there because they like to gamble and their spouses, boyfriends, what have you, prefer to stay in the car. Of course, security doesnt want people staying in the car...because that's what homeless people do. Some of them live in their car, park in the garages, and then sleep there. So...again, if youre not actively gambling, they dont want you there, even if you or someone else in your party is a legitimate paying consumer. 

Again, for all of the talk about how resorts is lax because "thugs" hang out around it, it seems to me like they're so strict with anti homeless policies that I actually kinda found it alienating as a paying consumer who had a reason to be there. but I digress. It really is a matter of perspective. Upper class people complain about this crap because omg i dont wanna share a casino with those poors! And here I am being more lower class and if anything I'm like, yeah this is too strict. Dont get me wrong, I understand homeless people in the casino could pose a possible security threat to actual customers, but yeah. It's just a pretty hostile way to go about solving the problem. As always nuance exists, and sometimes blanket policies aren't the best ways to address it. 

Another final topic I wanna talk about in regard to this is the food court. I LOVED the food court. Because one thing I realized in helping to budget for this trip was the biggest, most egregious expense is the food. Most casinos push for upscale dining experiences where you're paying $30 for pasta dishes that should cost $15, or $65-100 for steaks that should cost like $30, etc. And again, it just seems pretentious and has the whole putting in airs thing. like oh, WE'RE the ELITE dining experience. We are pushing LUXURY. Meanwhile all I see it paying twice as much for something I could get elsewhere. Solution? Resorts has an excellent food court full of cheap, affordable dining options. We could get a cheese pizza for like $20, so not much worse than home, burger meals for like $18 that puts fast food to shame, etc. Sure, you arent getting the "luxury" experience, but meh...you can get that upstairs in the fancy places. We dont want fancy, we want affordable. Maybe this is where the "shopping mall" comparisons come from. I know all AC casinos have food courts, but checking out hard rock, it did seem a bit more expensive, and looking online, other casinos had places closer to like, that hard rock style experience with theirs. Like fancier, flashier, but a bit more money. With me, food is food, as long as it tastes good I aint gonna complain. And the food tasted plenty good. The pizza (assuming you get whole pies) was fresh and stringy. The burgers were fresh and of good texture, definitely beats burger king or mcdonalds while costing about the same as them these days. I seriously dont think those places realize they were so successful because they put out mediocre food for cheap. Even I won't settle for THAT stuff on vacation. I guess I had to settle for dunkin for doughnuts in the morning, but that's like a northern thing. For some reason us northerners REALLY like dunkin, even though I find them mediocre as hell. I'm on team krispy kreme all the way but it's hard to find those north of the mason dixon line (yeah i know philly has a couple places with them but most dont). And sure I could go to a luxury establishment like over in hard rock for better doughnuts but it kinda lacked the convenience. Cant win them all but I cant complain. Anyway, we saved tons of money due to the food court, and I think that's why people dislike it so much. "Omg its like a shopping mall", you mean...affordable food court dining options? because that was the only thing mall like to me. That and the stores being in there, and all of them have that. I mean, tropicana reminds me MORE like a mall from what I've seen, just a fancier one. 

And again, I guess, if you want fancy and like fancy, there are better options there. But if I had to go elsewhere I'd probably go to like tropicana or something, not to the big three everyone brags about. Also affordable, and seems to have a lot of interesting stuff on their premises like arcades, movie theaters, stores, places to eat, etc. Why didnt I go there? Well, for what we were going for, resorts seemed to be a better fit. I was thinking more about emulating the southern vacations I go on with places like margaritaville on the premises, getting a better room for less money, and also being in a more central location. Tropicana is on the far end of the boardwalk away from everything, resorts is more in the middle with lots of other casinos with other accommodations nearby like Hard Rock, and even showboat and ocean. So...yeah....

Either way, we werent really there long enough to fully take in what options we did have. I feel like we barely scratched the surface of what was offered and yeah while we plan to go back, it was interesting.

Anyway, I just wanted to write this due to how it intersects with more political topics I normally engage with. I got that "sociological imagination" thing going on and understand how social sciences and trends intersect with daily life to a point that I just cant turn it off and see it everywhere I go. And I just wanted to write this given how much racism and classism I see in regards to people crapping on my own preferences. Really, I'm not gonna trash anyone who likes a bigger fancier casino, but if those types start crapping on MY preferences with really ridiculous criticisms, well....now I'm gonna actually dissect what's actually being said.  

I'm sorry, but if you don't like Zohran Mamdani or Abdul El Sayed speaking about 9/11, you're racist

 Seriously, given my relatively anti woke policy stances, I hate pulling the racism card, but people keep insisting on showing their ### on this issue. 9/11 was perpetuated by Osama Bin Laden, a militant islamic extremist. However, that's not to say all Muslims are responsible for 9/11, similar to how not all Christians are responsible when some whack job Christian blows something up. It seems like we get that nuance with Christianity, but not Islam, and that is basically racist. And really, when I'm the one defending religion, you know you're F-ing up given my "New Atheist" political roots. 

But yeah. A lot of people, especially on the right, are giving those two crap for what they're saying. Rudy Guiliani, who was the mayor during 9/11 and actually came off looking like a hero for it at the time, was bashing Zohran for speaking at the 9/11 ceremony yesterday. While they apparently shared an awkward handshake, Guiliani was talking a lot of crap about Zohran before hand. And it's ridiculous. He's the mayor now, IT'S LITERALLY HIS JOB! Like wtf? Oh he's muslim so he shouldnt be mayor, DAE remember 9/11? Yeah, on this topic, my parents came into my room that night warning me not to blame 9/11 on ALL muslims or to give muslim kids in my school crap for it because they had nothing to do with it. I was really wondering at the time like....wtf, who would do that? But now I look at it 25 years later and I'm like, Oh, YOU ###holes! If anyone is an embarrassment to NYC, its guiliani. If not for 9/11, he'd be a wash out. And any clout he gained from his handling of 9/11, he's destroyed by aligning himself with trump and then going on about THIS crap.

And then you have people online bashing Abdul El Sayed for saying something like on 9/11 he mourns the 3000 lives lost, on 9/12, he mourns the millions lost from our subsequent actions.

...he's not wrong. And I've been critical of our actions post 9/11 as well over the years. I honestly think the drunken rampage we went on since then has done far more damage than the event itself. Between service members lost, the tax dollars spend, the blow to our international credibility Bush caused, the national security state that he built, and, of course, the thousands and millions of civilian casualties our interventions have cost since then, both directly and indirectly, YIKES. The event was bad, dont get me wrong, but theres a reason a lot of us younger people are more critical of interventionism and this weird faux patriotism the GOP puts on. As I've been telling conservatives I've been arguing with, we've seen the results of their preferred policies, they suck, yeah, let's not do that again. 2020s conservatives? Let's do that again but worse! Their boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes them cheer.

Anyway, 9/11 sucked, it was a horrible event, shouldnt have happened, we should mourn the dead. However, it was also a learning experience, and uh...some of us have learned the real lessons, and others of us still haven't. And the latter kinda disturbs me. I can forgive people who thought like this (minus the actual islamophobia) in like 2003....but if you're still sounding like a neocon in 2026, YIKES. And if you let your whole ### hang out with the racism, double yikes. Seriously, seeing so many people melt down over zohran mamdani and abdul el sayed existing is, itself, an eye opening experience. Yeah, we still got some really racist MFers in this country, and the fact that these attitudes are so common disturbs me. For as much as I'd like to imagine america as being post racial animous, the more republicans put their ### out there since Trump started running for office just continues to amaze and disturb me. 

Election Update 9/11/26

 "Sir, another democrat favorable poll has hit the averages..." *Bush face*

  Yeah. That's what it feels like these days. So...I got a lot to talk about with this one. Let's get to it.

Senate

So....we finally got some good data out of South Carolina and Kansas, which mostly corroborated those crazy polling averages that made me revert my Nebraska data, since it actually does seem reasonable to believe Osborn may be winning or at least within a reasonable range of doing so. 

This makes the map look REALLY bad for republicans. Not only are they losing states that were previously unthinkable like Alaska and Texas, but now Kansas and South Carolina are showing up as swing states. Like, what the actual fudge? Yeah, this is NUTS. Trump is REALLY unpopular and he's losing badly. 

House

This I don't have as much to talk about. Average lurched back toward the democrats a bit more, making the forecast more favorable. 

 Governors

 

Here, a few more dem leaning governors got added to this. I dont expect Minnesota or New York to flip any time soon, but I like to track everything within around 12 points or so, so those got added. Maine is technically out of range but I'll keep it for now since it's being tracked pretty regularly and it's already there. 

Conclusion

This week's forecast is really bullish on democrats, even more than normal. I really have to be wondering, is this real? or are republicans REALLY doing this bad? I kinda gotta believe the numbers because I look at trump and I honestly wonder how anyone, even someone who is conservative, can support this guy. Seriously. So maybe he really is doing this bad? Either way, happy to see it, and hope this holds out come election time. Like always though i would advise anyone reading this to use a bit of caution here. If republicans have a reasonable overperformance, all of these crazy gains can be reversed and they'll still hold onto the senate, as I've discussed before. I really do think the republicans taking the house is highly unlikely though.  

Dont fall for Trump's $5000 stimulus checks

 In a desperate ploy to save the republicans in the mid terms, Trump is promising to give every American $5000 if republicans win both the house and the senate. As the UBI guy, I'm just going to warn you guys NOT to do it. There's more at stake this election than UBI. The republicans are a proto fascist party that's a threat to democracy itself. They're toying with AI that could eventually kill us all as I just discussed in the previous article. Yeah, let's not do this.

Even more so, as the UBI guy, let's discuss why this proposal actually sucks. Remember COVID? Remember how he gave everyone $600 checks and then Biden gave them $1400 checks, and then republicans turned around and blamed those checks on inflation and making people lazy? Yeah...I remember too. And here's the thing. UBI, done properly, is supposed to be funded with taxation and spending cuts. We do that to stop inflation. If you fund it without doing that, you increase the money supply, which, without proportionally increased production, devalues the currency. More money for the same amount of stuff means money is worth less. 

This ploy will likely cost $1.25 trillion, assuming we give $5000 to 250 million adults. That will be added to the deficit. Rich people wont pay for it. They probably wont be able to cut anything to fund it without screwing over a lot of people (this is why a lot of people on the left are skeptical of UBI). And for a one time check, the money will be spent and then it's gone, and then everything will cost more. It's a terrible policy.

And then UBI will be toxic for a generation, because the worst possible person did it in the worst possible way. "Oh remember when that guy gave everyone $5000 and it caused inflation?" They already pulled this with Biden over $1400 checks, and those barely contributed to inflation in the grand scheme of things given the complexities of the global economy at the time.

But yeah. Say no to Trump's $5000 checks. If we're gonna do UBI, we should do it right. We do it poorly and we hurt the cause more than we help it. And we dont want Trump to win anyway. Again, there's far more at stake here than a single use $5000 check. 

AI is going to kill us all

 So, this isn't good. People are quitting anthropic and claiming that AI has a >10% chance to kill us all by the end of the decade. That....isn't good. I feel like, we're in a science fiction movie. We got the scientists warning main plot point is a bad idea, a bunch of morons in charge who are like "I DONT CARE DO IT ANYWAY", they do it anyway, and that's the movie. Terminator, Frankenstein, any B sci fi or horror movie that I used to think was too stupid to ever happen in real life, and yet, here we are. 

Regulate this crap. I mean Im under the impression AI intelligence isnt real intelligence, but viruses arent really alive and yet they replicate in ways that kill humans anyway. It's like that. Even if it's simulating intelligence, it can still simulate doomsday scenarios and enact them in real life. It doesnt have to be superintelligent. It just has to mimic it in ways that are dangerous enough to cause the problems. 

You'd think that we'd have smart people in charge who are like "this is a bad idea" but because billionaires who care more about short term profit than the longevity of the species and the Trump administration who is very much in bed with those types, yeah, we're screwed. Keep in mind climate change will eventually screw us over too if not kill us all and they've been ignoring THAT for 50 years. These people dont care as long as they continue to make money short term. It's highly idiotic. Ugh...

So what should be done about Nebraska?

 So...I came across a post online with Nate Silver's polling averages and it had Kansas at like R+3 for the senate. i know the governor's race is expected to be in play, but is Kansas REALLY in play? Well, looking at the polls, it's mostly a lot of dem aligned internal polls. Low quality. But wait, Nebraska is the same thing. No polls on realclearpolitics, and the polls reported by other sites are low quality internal polls that don't pass muster on more reputable outlets. I also checked out south carolina, same thing. Annie Andrews floods the averages with internal polls suggesting she's winning even though South Carolina is basically safe R. 

So...this is making me rethink including Nebraska in my model. The reason I've been so interested in this race is because Dan Osborn got within 7 points in 2024. If we actually have shifted 8 points since then, it's plausible he can win. At the same time, it's also possible the 2024 matchup was more favorable to him. After all, the state went by 20 for Trump in 2024, Osborn overperformed by 13 points. But if we're seeing R+13 states like Ohio, Iowa, and Texas performing close to 50-50 as we have been, that means under NORMAL conditions, we should still see Nebraska go like R+12 or something. Osborn is an overperformer here. And he could overperform again. I don't know. 

The problem is, if I include it in my model as is, I should also add kansas and south carolina and their junk data. Seriously, the polls on Nebraska are just as bad. All Osborn sponsored polls, low reliability. Probably way too D optimistic. 

So...what should be done with Nebraska? Well, I could revert to some placeholder data and just throw a number in there that may be realistic or not realistic, but I dont know what that number should be. I'm seeing anything from D+1 to R+12 as realistic in the current environment, and if I split the difference it would be somewhere in the ballpark of R+5.5. Osborn last time performed around R+6.6. He could perform better than that, but I don't know where.

If I were to rate the race in terms of general probability, I'd be inclined to say either lean R or likely R. Lean R is the range between R+1 and R+4 in my model. Likely R is R+4 to R+8. 

If I did a kneejerk probability rating, I'd probably be inclined toward the upper part of lean, giving the possibility of a flip somewhere around 1 out of 6. That's 83% which is just short of the 84% of an R+4. So I'm leaning toward either an R+4 or an R+6. Maybe an R+5 to split the difference. If I were to estimate a range of performance I'd say it'll likely go between like R+11 or so to D+1. Once again, R+5. 

So....with that said, I'll axe the polling data which is partisan, low quality, and unreliable, and assume an R+5 rating. I mean, all of the factors I'm considering like the range of possible performance, to relative position of Nebraska vs other states, to Osborn's past performance, seem to converge around R+5. So until I get reliable data, as in, reputable data that RCP actually reports, I'll consider it R+5. 

So with that said, here's my updated senate prediction:

Yeah, that looks a bit more realistic. Anyway, that's my updated senate prediction.