Documenting performance expectations across hardware generations

 So I decided to do an interesting thought experiment about how standards of performance have changed over time, given the discussion on ray tracing as of late and how I basically said people don't wanna do things as we did in the distant past. 

I was originally gonna focus on SNES/Genesis as the baseline as it was originally the last 2D console, but I've found interesting stats with gen 4, which also apply to gen 3. Virtually all consoles on the nintendo and sega side of things ran at 60 FPS at around 240p. To discuss specifics:

Gen 3 

 NES- 256x240 @ 60hz

Sega Master System-  256x192 @ 60hz

Gen 4

 SNES- 256x240 @ 60hz

Sega Genesis- 320x224 @ 60hz

Sega CD- 320x224 @ 60hz

Sega 32x-  320x240 @ 60 Hz

So, resolution wise, standards were pretty low, but games could run up to 60 FPS. Apparently a lot of 2D games ran at this frame rate (although with some slow down), although if you wanted to run 3D games like Doom or Star Fox you'd chug along at like 15 FPS on the SNES, and down to 20-30 on the 32x. I know for a fact these systems weren't running 3D games at a full 60 FPS because the lag was kinda terrible in retrospect. 

With that said, let's make a transition to 3D.

Gen 5

Sony Playstation- 256x224/320x240 @ 60hz (2D games, 60 FPS, 3D games, 30 FPS)

Nintendo 64- 320x240 to 640x480 @ 20-30 FPS

 Sega Saturn- 320x224 to 704x480 @ 30-60 FPS

Here, they don't even go by hz. I guess all consoles are capable of 60 on paper, but it seems obvious that the standard was 60 FPS for 2D and 20-30 FPS for 2D. A lot of N64 games ran at 20 FPS and that...tracks, in retrospect. It is surprising to see that the N64 and saturn were capable of 480p, but didn't use it. But given the frame rate, I'm not surprised. Looking at a few 3D titles on the saturn that measured FPS, I'm noticing quake hovered around 20 and tomb raider would have frame drops as low as 10 or so.

So yeah. Gaming was rough back in the day. I will admit, UNLIKE RAY TRACING, the jump to 3D was the most mind blowing gaming experience of my life. Like, you had to be there but I remember getting an N64 for the first time and being like HOLY CRAP coming off of the Sega Genesis and 32x. Doom was the most impressive experience I had before this point. 

But yeah, you were largely lucky to get 30 FPS. It was worth it, don't get me wrong. Again, gaming improved at a quantum leap back then.

Oh, and because PC games were kinda weird back then, I'll discuss those too. A lot of them used horribly low resolutions too. 320x200 was the low end, 640x480 was typical, and 1024x768 meant you were pretty ballin' back then. And of course games would run up to 60, but it ultimately depended on your hardware. I'd imagine 640x480 @ 30 FPS was your average experience. 

Gen 6

 Sega Dreamcast- 640x480 @ 60 FPS

 Sony Playstation 2- 640x480 @ 30-60 FPS

 Nintendo Gamecube- 640x480 @ 30-60 FPS

Microsoft Xbox-  640x480 to 1280x720 @ 30-60 FPS

With gen 6, we seen a general bumping up to 640x480 being standard, which made sense given we still operated on CRT TVs and HD TVs weren't prevalent yet. While games could run up to 60 FPS, it seems like outside of the dreamcast (which had weaker visuals) many games didn't target them, and many instead aimed for 30 FPS. Even on the PS2, which seemed to often target 60, sometimes you'd have games with "half frames" so it actually functioned at 30, and a lot of heavier 3D ports also targetted 30.

Back then, 30 FPS was acceptable because 3D was pretty primitive. I mean,a lot of devs wanted to maximize graphics and frame rates were considered an afterthought. Im under the impression most gen 6 games on average ran a bit better than gen 5, but yeah. 

As for PC, on windows XP you'd run games from 800x600 up to 2560x1440 depending on hardware. Of course, 2560x1440 was quite high end, similar to 4k today. A lot of gamers aimed for closer to the lower end of that spectrum. 60 FPS was common for lighter titles, with people aiming for 30 with heavier.

Also, because the XP era spanned both gen 6 and gen 7, yeah, you can probably imagine there was a bit of variation between say, the early 2000s when gen 6 was in place, and the late 2000s. A lot of early 2000s games often ran more at like 640x480 up to around 1280x1024 in my experience, although i had to run at the lower end of that if the games ran at all. In the late 2000s, I definitely remember targetting 30 in more demanding games. If you wanted to run like Doom 3, or FEAR, or Crysis, you were often settling for 30 on more modest rigs. Still, we started seeing 60 FPS becoming commonplace in the late 2000s as we went into gen 7, and a huge appeal to PC gaming was that PC gamers were running games at higher frame rates, resolutions, and graphics than the consoles could put out. So we did eventually see that standard creeping up by gen 7. As for the consoles...

Gen 7

Microsoft Xbox 360- 720p-1080p @ 30-60 FPS

Sony Playstation 3- 720p-1080p @ 30-60 FPS

Nintendo Wii- 640x480 @ 30-60 FPS

Here we see the shift to HD, with the PS3 and 360 typically running at 720p/30 FPS standard. And some games to my knowledge actually ran a bit worse, like think 576p or something in some cases. And frame rates would often chug under 30 in demanding scenes. Yeah, resolutions improved, but frame rates were still limited at the time. 

And of course this is where nintendo kinda went in the direction of underpowered consoles where the Wii was more like....a game cube with motion controls. And it also had 30-60 FPS demanding on the game. A lot of first party titles were 60, but a lot of games ran at 30 and were lucky to run at all. And of course, the Wii generally had reduced visuals too.

PC gaming, as discussed above, also made a transition to higher resolutions as well. Although in this era I largely stayed on a CRT for much of it and ran stuff at a low resolution to maximize frame rates. Again, 30 was still acceptable, especially in heavier titles, but 60 was increasingly commonplace. 

Gen 8

Microsoft Xbox One- 720p-1080p @ 30-60 FPS

Sony Playstation 4- 720p-1080p @ 30-60 FPS

Microsoft Xbox One X- 1080p 60 FPS - 4k @ 30-60 FPS  

Sony Playstation 4 Pro- 1440p-4k @ 30-60 FPS

Nintendo Wii U-  720p-1080p @ 30-60 FPS

 Nintendo Switch- 720p-1080p @ 30-60 FPS

So this is where things get relatively modern. 720p is now considered the minimum. Some games on weaker iterations of consoles would only get 720p @ 30 FPS, although there were a lot of titles that ran at 30-60 FPS at like 900p and stuff from what I remember. The second half of the generation really pushed boundaries here. The "pro" versions of each handheld released half way through the generations really upped the bar, making 1080p/60 FPS the standard, and with higher resolutions possible. 

PC gaming also raised the bar. I mean, I found 30-60 FPS acceptable in the first half of gen 8 on my dated rig, but 60 became increasingly the norm, with 30 FPS becoming straight up unacceptable as time went on. This trend started in gen 7 I'd say, where 60 FPS started becoming more commonplace due to the higher level of hardware PC gamers tended to enjoy, but yeah, between the pro models of consoles and PC hardware far exceeding console baselines by the second half of the generations, it eventually got to the point of "bro, you still game at 30 FPS? what's wrong with you?" Higher end gamers would push for even higher frame rates and resolutions, but I typically stayed around 1080p/60 to maximize my own builds' longevity.

And of course nintendo stayed at gen 7 levels of fidelity since they started doing their "generation behind but it's cheap" thing. 

Gen 9

Sony Playstation 5- 1080p-4k @ 60-144 FPS

Sony Playstation 5 Pro- 1440p-4k @ 60-120 FPS 

Microsoft Series X-  1080p-4k @ 60-120 FPS

Microsoft Series S- 720p-1440p @ 30-120 FPS

 Nintendo Switch 2- 720p-4k @ 30-60 FPS

 Much like PCs, we seem to be having much higher resolutions and variable frame rates. While 1080p/60 FPS is often considered the baseline, we must not forget that a lot of games want to push boundaries, so some games will actually only run at 30 FPS. FSR is also often used to pad frame rates where you're not getting native solution in games. 

Still, on paper, the bar is rather high. The consoles were largely intended to produce high quality visuals at high frame rates, but some dip#### devs still find it acceptable to foist 30 FPS garbage on us. It's often considered unacceptable when they do.

And this is why ray tracing isn't acceptable even now. In the past few console generations, PCs were often a full generation ahead of the consoles in terms of frame rates and resolution standards. We saw gen 6 console standards implemented during gen 5, we saw gen 7 standards during gen 6, we saw gen 8 standards emerging during gen 7, and we were gaming on gen 9 standards during gen 8. Like, the consoles and the PCs would start at relative parity but then in the second half of the generations the PC would leapfrog the consoles.

This is what I think a huge problem with gaming is, and why a lot of us PC gamers are complaining. When we see devs not optimize their games, or we see them push RT it's like DUDE NO ONE WANTS TO FRICKING GAME AT 30 FPS, WTF IS THIS. 30 FPS gaming hasn't been acceptable since the first half of gen 8. So like 2016ish. 

And yeah, back in the past, it made more sense to trade frame rate for visuals, like gen 5, gen 6, but by gen 7 it started getting a bit old, at least on the PC gaming side of things. It was still acceptable for console ports and more dated PC builds, but yeah, I'd say around 2015-2017 is when 30 FPS REALLY went out of style for good. When I upgraded to my i7 7700k and 1060, it was like "yeah no, no one wants to play at 30 FPS, 60 is the new standard). So yeah. I feel like devs are just kinda out of touch at times.

Even worse, hardware is becoming INSANELY expensive. Like, we're stuck at parity with consoles now. And if anything an equivalent PC is becoming more expensive than a console. This is why I look at $800-1000 consoles next gen with dread. How much am I gonna have to spend to get that baseline of performance? And if they're just gonna try to push 30 FPS or make you get 60 with FSR or even worse frame gen or something, that's gonna be AWFUL. Like an actual REGRESSION. 

I also dont think higher levels of visuals make as huge of a difference as they did. You could argue a FPS regression from the 2D era of genesis/SNES to the PS1/N64 era was well worth it at the time given how revolutionary that was, but ray tracing is just...lighting. And it's more saving devs time on developing their own lighting systems, rather than producing a well worth it visual benefit to customers. 

So yeah. That's the issue of our time, and why we're complaining. We feel like we're now struggling just to stay at the targets we've grown accustomed to, and again, 30 FPS hasn't been common or acceptable in over 10 years now. We live in an era where 1080p/60 FPS feels like it should be the minimum unless you're on an underpowered device like a switch 2 or Xbox series S. We dont WANNA game on less than that. And with the cost of hardware skyrocketing, yeah we ESPECIALLY dont wanna see stuff push boundaries. it wasnt a big deal back in the day if a game like Doom 3, or FEAR, or Crysis pushed boundaries. Games typically ran on 4 year old hardware acceptably (30 FPS low back then), and then when you'd upgrade, your new rig would be 4-8x stronger than your old one. Nowadays, it still costs $300 just to get a PS5 equivalent GPU. 6 years after launch. We should be gaming on 5090 tier hardware by now at that price, but we're not. The whole market is just broken.

And yeah, that's why I decided to do this thought experiment. How did we get from like 240p/20 FPS N64 games to what we consider acceptable today? Gradually, with the bar raising every generation. And many of us dont want to regress to lower frame rates and resolutions just to play games with maxed out visuals. We just don't. It's not worth it. I wish devs would understand this sometimes when we see 30 FPS or sub 1080p resolution targets. That's unacceptable in 2026, go back and fix your fricking games. Because we can no longer rely on hardware enhancements just to power through.  

Was ray tracing a scam?

 So Hardware unboxed came out with a video asking "was ray tracing a scam?" It's an interesting video I largely agree with but I wanna give my own thoughts. My opinion shouldn't be a surprise if you search my blog for previous articles on GPUs and ray tracing, but I do wanna reiterate some thoughts here.

I don't think it was out and out, full on a "scam." However, I would trace the end of the old GPU market as going back to RT becoming a thing. 

I remember when it came out I kinda did think it was scammy in a way. It felt very forced. Like, it was sold as this holy grail that was gonna change everything, and I was just thinking "who actually wants this?" I never heard of  ray tracing before this. The tech was always like something that was oversold, like "it was the future." Kinda like how AI is now "the future." And much like AI, I feel like it was pushed WAAAAY before its time. Like, as steve points out in the above video, the performance wasn't there, and many gamers still dont use it today, me being one of them. And I'll be blunt as to why. The performance hit was too much. 

It's not the 2000s any more. Back in the day, it was acceptable to play games on an old CRT monitor at 1024x768, 800x600, or 640x480, and run the game at 30 FPS. Hell, if you go back to the 90s, you had N64 games with framerates dropping down in the teens and running at like 320x240. And it sucked. And no one wants to play games like that any more. I've watched gaming evolve over time, and as gen 8 became prevalent, things kinda caught up to PC where now we were going up to 1080p/60 FPS. And that's where I'm comfortable playing games. And some wanna do even more. I like to keep my FPS consistently above 60 to keep it stable, often running minimum FPS around 70-80 with averages around 90-100 these days if i can make it work. Of course, with issues...stemming from the introduction of RTX cards, that's becoming difficult these days. 

RT requires TONS of horse power. And unimaginable amount of horsepower. And it's not a tool that's been better for the end consumer. There was an LTT video a while back asking people to pick between the RT and non RT lighted versions of a game and most couldnt tell the difference. What RT DID do was make things easier for developers where rather than implement their own lighting, they could just, BOOM, DONE. They hit the RT button and the RT simulates REAL light instead. It's kinda like me being able to BOOM, hit a button and simulate election outcomes in a way that I used to have to do manually, which would save hours of time. 

But that automation has also led to laziness among devs. It's led to higher system requirements, less focus on optimization. I know Asmongold had a video a while back that I think I discussed on here that mentioned how developers wanna spend as little time optimizing as possible. So that just leads to bloated messes of games. 

And then DLSS and other upscaling acts as a crutch. It's no mistake those technologies were sold along side ray tracing. To make ray tracing usable, they had to reduce the image quality resolution wise to reduce the load on the GPU, functionally regressing us back to the late 2000s in acceptable resolutions, which...look like dog crap on modern monitors. And to compensate, AI upscaling. Which did help extend the life of the old 1060 to some degree. I mean, its better to run FSR than it is to run at a lower res natively. But CLEARLY, neither are preferable. And devs have since focused on pushing graphics at an insane rate, and then expecting upscaling tech to compensate for their lack of optimization. Oh, a game only runs at 720p/30 FPS on a fricking 6650 XT or 3060? Just upscale it bro, what do you want me to do, actually make it playable for you LIKE WE ALWAYS USED TO BEFORE THESE TECHNOLOGIES CAME OUT?! Uh...yeah? yeah. We want games to run well on the hardware available. Again, not against progress, but against progress at all costs.

Like AI, Ray tracing seemed to come way too early, and is pushed way too hard. Its demands are just too high for the hardware available. Even then, ever since ray tracing came out, that's when things started going wrong for the graphics card market. We were told, oh, we cant have sub $300 60 cards any more, RT is too expensive! We gotta put all this extra stuff on the cards and blah blah blah. And that's why the low end GPU market functionally died. Because with the introduction of this crap, it no longer became possible to produce low budget GPUs that were capable of running games. Not only did they not have the horse power, but they also lacked the extra RT/AI components to make that stuff work. The LOWEST END RTX card was $350 at launch. And even now, a 2070 type performance only went from around $500 to around $250 before rampocalypse, and $300 with rampocalypse. And that can BARELY run RT games even now. 

I mean, we could've made GPUs just have more stream processors. It used to be that GPUs advanced in such a way where you would double performance in 3 years at the same price point. But if you look at where the market is in 2026, we're literally only at 2x 2016 performance per dollar. And most of the 2020s has been a massive stagnation. It's like all of these investments are going into RT and all this nonsense instead of just giving us more stream processors and cuda cores. So now we're adding ridiculous demands to games with ray tracing, and then compensating for it with all of these technologies, while the cost of GPUs just keeps going up. People act like this is just the way things are now, that we cant grow at the rate we used to, but MAYBE IF WE JUST PUT MORE CUDA CORES ON A CARD INSTEAD OF THIS EXTRA BS, MAYBE WE'D SEE MORE PROGRESS! 

And you know what? Maybe that progress would scale down too. I think one of the reasons the lower end market died is because they STILL cant even achieve a 2060 baseline of performance with RT. And again, that's just a terrible experience for ray tracing. 

This stuff only really helps the affluent. Those with large budgets willing to dump tons of money into GPUs. But if youre a normal gamer trying to game on like a 3060 tier card (about average these days), it's completely useless. Who the hell uses ray tracing at our price range? If anything, just like steve showed, a lot of gamers are more interested in LOWERING quality settings to run games at higher frame rates. And also, to simplify the graphics to make things more visible, like in the fortnite part of the vid. And I can attest to this. Shadows tend to KILL frame rates, and they tend to make it harder to see enemies. When I optimize games to run on my PC, I turn DOF nonsense off, film grain, all that crap, and then i go for shadows if i need higher frames. And it's just useful to play with lower graphics on competitive games.

So most of us want the industry to go in the direction of simplified visuals with higher frame rates, and these billionaires with a god complex who control the industry are trying to force us to go the other way. And again, there is a market for that. Since then gaming has become increasingly an upper class thing, and more and more out of reach of the masses. It's led to higher costs, poor performance, poor visuals, and people like me feeling like things were just better 10 years ago. 

If I could hit a button that would eliminate ray tracing from the timeline, and instead go in the direction of improving raster, I bet we would have better, cheaper GPUs with cleaner visuals in games. Not necessarily gonna say higher FPS because i think some developers are always gonna take whatever level of hardware is available and then turn around and say "30 fps is good enough", but I think that it would lessen it.

Much like with AI, I feel like these billionaires just tried to replace a lot of old ways of doing things with new workarounds that just arent as good in some ways. Like they are better in some ways, but in other ways, they're just not. And I feel like the gaming industry has just gone in the wrong direction in recent years because of all of this stuff. 

I wont say RT is a full on scam, but I think its impact on the market was always overstated. This is what happens when you leave the entire industry in the hands of a handful of these tech billionaires with a god complex trying to sell their weird visions for what life should be. And then because they hold disproportionate control over the entire industry, they just push it in that direction. And it just isn't all it was cracked up to be. 

Like with AI, maybe tech will get there....in a few decades. But not now, not with current tech. They pushed this way too early, thinking gamers would just accept playing games at some low resolution at 30 FPS again when in reality, no, we like the higher frame rates and higher resolutions more. It's like rather than just give us more raw processing power, they keep trying to sell us technologies instead that are one step forward and 2 steps back. DLSS, frame generation, ray tracing. And then when we tell these guys what we want they look at us like we're luddites. You can think that about me here, but I really do like to see myself as pro technology. But we have to actually think about whether the technology makes sense. 

Like, to go back to election models, yeah, I did GREATLY improve my election forecast abilities by switching to google sheets. And yet....I abandoned ever increasing complexity to my models, and trying to build a version of my simulator that would spit out hundreds, if not thousands of simulations at once. 

Why? Because it didn't make sense. It didn't actually make things better. More complex models have more that can go wrong with them, and I very quickly could tell what went wrong when I started using them. And Im still critical of these big names like 538 who create models so complex that they end up predicting nothing because they're so mired in variables that you can never tell what's going on because things can change. Likewise, I didn't go with the mass simulation model because the thing fricking broke whenever I had to change the data. I have my own technical debt and spaghetti code in my models because quite frankly, I'm not that good with excel. If I take that model and then ramp it up 1000x, the thing bogs down my entire computer when I use it. And if i change the variables or the data, even for routine changes, the whole thing just...breaks down and starts spitting out errors. 

If I were one of those tech bros, I'd basically be like THIS IS THE FUTURE AND I WILL FORCE IT TO WORK ANY WAY BECAUSE IM A SUPER SPECIAL VISIONARY OUT OF TOUCH WITH REALITY. But being the more reasonable human centered capitalist who tends to operate closer to bill gates "lazy person" approach to things, beyond some point I'm like "this is more work than it's worth, this is close enough."

Ya know? Technology is a TOOL. It's supposed to be useful. If it actually CREATES work and makes things harder and creates massive externalities, or arguably saves only a tiny bit of work at the expense of those externalities, maybe the tool isn't worth using. This doesn't even mean scrap it. I mean, i STILL mess around and experiment with my election models trying to find ways to make them better. I just find that when I do my efforts don't go anywhere, and I just revert to the older, simpler model. Simple works. Complex breaks down and has problems. 

The same can be said with computer graphics. Graphics are a good thing. Making games better is a good thing. BUT, if it comes at the expense of higher costs or the need for weird workarounds like DLSS or frame generation JUST TO BE BORDERLINE VIABLE, it's like...NO, I DON'T WANT THIS! And that's why ray tracing is in the state that it's in. it was released the second it was just barely viable, it barely functions, and the industry hasnt evolved it enough to make it worth using for most people. In the long long term, yeah, maybe it's the future. But we're talking, what, 20-30 years from now? By then we'll be measuring processors in picometers instead of nanometers (if we dont just shift to a different standard altogether) and we'll have tens to hundreds of times more processing power in theory. There's no need to force this crap before it's ready. Which is what these guys are doing. Again. 

Is COD even worth buying these days?

 So....not gonna lie. I know BO7 was mid, but i bought it anyway, figuring I'd be playing it a lot. I havent, in fact, been playing it a lot. I played a lot of BF6, but barely any BO7. And any time I try BO7 i jump on for a few games...and then dont touch the game for another month or two. It's just so mid. And today, i think it clicked with me why it's just so blah for me.

The fact is, it's the maps. The game has THE SAME FRICKING MAPS as virtually every other COD game I've played. I mean, it's more nuketown, more grind, more express, more meltdown. It's the same maps that you can play in the free mobile game, that were new back 15-20 years ago, and that have been remade several times since 2019. 

COD is hopelessly dependent on remakes. It's hopelessly dependent on remaking old maps, again, and again. And then they dominate the play list when you do play. You dont get to play many of the maps that actually were new with this game, no. I mean, sure, they do come up if you play enough, but i swear there are maps in that game I've only played like 1-2 times and then never again. The classics? They just come up again and again and again.  And it makes it feel boring and monotonous.

Here's the thing. These games are expensive. Your yearly COD is $70. It's $50 during the christmas sale. It's $35 when they're starting to sell next year's game. And when you spent all year playing BO6 and playing the same maps over and over again, and then half of the BO7 experience is just...the same maps as BO6...it's like...why even buy BO7? It used to be you pay for new content. That was the purpose in buying a new game. If youre playing the same maps in the new game as you do in the old game, it defeats the point in buying the new game. I can literally play these same maps for free on my tablet if I want. I can start up any older COD from the past 7 years and play them. Why do I need to buy BO7 just to play them? 

I'm not saying remakes are bad. They're not. I enjoyed remastering old games and their levels with MW2019. And BO Cold War. And I especially enjoyed MWIII 2023 basically being a MW2 remake. It's fine ONCE IN A WHILE. Like, oh, these were fun maps 10-15 years ago? let's bring them back, for ONE game. 

But when it's like...let's do this every year, after a while it's like, why am I throwing my money at this franchise? If I can play the exact same content on an older COD, or on the mobile game which is free and has ALL of the classic maps...why bother spending $50 on this? 

I wouldnt mind it as much if the old maps didnt come up as often, but they're a solid 50% of what i play. And to be fair, BO7's actual content isnt really that...good. Like their unique maps arent bad, but most of them arent great or memorable. I enjoy a couple of them I guess. But yeah, after playing so much BF6, this game just feels generic and mid AF. And not in a good, satisfying way which is why i normally buy COD. it does so in a particularly unsatisfying way. Which is why i play a couple matches, get bored, and then I never touch the game again for a whole month or more. The game just feels bad to play. Even by COD standards. I think it's a black ops thing. Treyarch games have always felt like jank to me. IW/sledgehammer games tend to feel better, at least in the modern era. Like the engine feels more modern, the gun play is more satisfying. Again, it's hard to explain but treyarch CODs feel more....floaty? Like the guns dont have impact. And oh my god the fricking movement fricking sucks. It feels like elliott carver's parody of kung fu from tomorrow never dies. Just so much BS sliding around all over the place. i get it, it might appeal to some zoomer twitch streamer, but to normies it just fricking sucks. 

Honestly, the problem to some degree is the yearly model. You pump out a new COD every year, you're gonna retire the actually good ones prematurely, churn out garbage, rerelease the same content year after year with minor variations in game mechanics and getting, and eventually quality declines, it gets old, and you get tired of playing. And that's where I am and why I feel like the entire internet revolted so bad against the game. Because eventually, after years of mediocre games of declining quality and repetitive content, even the fan base eventually reaches a breaking point. Especially when BF comes along and actually innovates and upstages it.

I honestly think BF is a better business model long term. You get actual innovation, actual graphical and game play improvements, and while yeah, they make mistakes as well, and for a while COD was able to take advantage of that and offer a better product (See MW2019 vs BF5, for example), but then BF finally returned to form while COD just ended up going full Ghosts-Infinite Warfare era again. Idk how these guys lost the plot so bad they decided "okay, you know those terrible CODs of the mid 2010s that we dont talk about any more? Let's do that but worse!" But here we are. 

Anyway, I think the market sent clear signals on this one. For all the talk of BF6 dying, COD aint really in great shape either these days. Because you release a mid product, and no one wants to play. In recent years, i think the only thing keeping me playing COD is so little actual competition to it actually exists. Most of the industry is obsessed with extraction shooters and battle royales and esports and the good old casual FPS has kinda died where COD just cornered that market, especially with BF dropping off and taking longer between their own releases. But yeah right now competition exists and it's eating them alive. Back to BF6 I guess. Way more fun anyway.  

Why I'm harping on dems so hard over the VRA thing

 So...I don't want people to get the wrong idea about me. I'm not harping on the whole VRA being gutted because I'm a racist ###hole. Rather, I just resent the democrats using race as a cudgel to preserve their existing electoral strategy, which works against my own interests. I want the democratic party to be a strong, class based movement toward making material improvements to peoples' lives. The democrats, however, don't want this. They are controlled by wealthy interests who want the democratic party to remain as neutered and useless as possible. And their goal is to ensure that no class based movement can come from it. 

That is why the democrats are as they are. After the Reagan revolution, it was taken over by a bunch of ideological centrists who wanted to sell the farm on economic issues. So now we got a system where the republicans gut everything, the democrats half agree with them and compromise everything away. Come election time they encourage their base to temper their expectations and not push for stuff. And they basically build their coalition in such a way it makes a class based movement impossible. Again, it's wealthy suburbanites and racial minorities. They appeal obnoxiously to social issues, and they avoid the economic stuff. This is INTENTIONAL. And its why I've been fighting the democratic party so hard since the 2016 election cycle. because I see through it. I've ALWAYS seen through it.

Initially, the strategy was to try to derail the change. That's why I was okay with Clinton losing in 2016. Because I figured, hey, if we basically punish the dems for pursuing this strategy, maybe we can get a working class party for a change. but no, they just forced more centrists. And since then we've been slow walking ourselves into fascism, where now even I have to begrudgingly support the democratic party to stop authoritarian takeovers of our government from the right. So sadly, my hand is forced too. I don't like it, frankly, I hate it, but I'll still call things as I see them and advocate for progressives in primaries, and we ARE in primary season right now.  But yeah, I just wanna let you guys no, I havent gone soft on these people, I just feel more restrained by our current situation and have to play their game for the time being. But that doesnt mean we shouldnt continue trying to oust these guys from the inside via primaries. There is a progressive wave coming, and democrats are unhappy with their leadership, and we need to take advantage of that to push as many progressive candidates as possible.

But back to the topic at hand. I'll go further, on the race baiting thing. Democrats KNOW it's annoying. They KNOW it alienates white people. And they don't care. They want them to vote for Trump. They don't want them part of their coalition. Because, again, if they were, they might join with the minorities in a multiracial working class movement and advocate for real change. if you go back to the inception of this country, and even the colonial days, resentment politics has always kept people in line. Normally, it's a one way thing. The whites are satisfied with their place in the society as long as they get to kick around the minorities. As long as they're not the bottom rung of the social hierarchy, they won't push for better changes. They'll instead direct their attention toward POC. And ever since then, blacks and whites in our society have been mortal enemies. It's a tower of babel like strategy of keeping people confused and fighing amongst themselves over superficial differences rather than uniting for real change. 

Even during the New Deal, when the system was forced to offer real concessions, they still employed that strategy. Blacks were intentionally kept out of it and exempt from the policy changes that benefitted everyone else. Which is something the centrist dems of today won't stfu about. DID YOU KNOW THAT THE NEW DEAL COALITION WAS RACIST?! Yes. Because I learned history and am aware of the same meltdown that the south had in the 1960s and 1970s that you are. And again, I don't support those politics. I don't want whites to focus on race. My goal is to get them to stop fixating on it too. But that means stop leaning into it so heavily and obnoxiously. As I see it, Lee Atwater's strategy of moving from "N word N word N word" to "forced bussing" and ultimately welfare queens created a new opportunity for us. Eventually conservative ideology got so divorced from the racial elements, that I honestly believed that younger generations were significantly less racist than their parents. I know I sure was/am. I thought that was the norm. That for us, the dog whistle was no longer really heard, and younger conservatives bought conservatism on its own merits, rather than racial resentment. And when those people start to realize that conservatism doesnt actually do F all for them, we get them to join the democrats, leading to a political revolution, with significant change. And that's why I was so gung ho on Bernie and his "class first" approach. you lean heavily into racial stuff, it just acts like nails on a chalkboard that makes a lot of us...wanna go back to the republicans. I wont because im too smart for that, but your average voter? Someone like me but without my education? Yeah, they're gonna vote for Trump! 

But again, what if the dems WANT us to vote for Trump? What if they dont WANT us to join the democrats, because then this whole system of keeping the classes divided stops functioning? As I see it, we could have buried the hatchet of race in this country once and for all had we taken a different direction. Okay, maybe not ONCE AND FOR ALL, but you know, it wouldve continued to be less prevalent. But that would be bad, because then we'd focus on REAL issues. So instead, that "original sin of 2016" I keep complaining about, that whole racialized dynamic where the left leaned into insufferable idpol and the right leaned into white resentment politics, ended up prevailing instead. 

It literally happened because a bunch of wealthy people in both parties WANTED us to fight over this. This is the problem with identitarian movements. Eventually, they run their course, the issues get solved, but rather than go away, they gotta create new things to fight about. Feminism has to start making new grievances against men. Black politics has to do the same. And the elites always want us fighting some sort of enemy. That's something I've been reflecting on a lot too lately. The Trump administration got us into this Iran war because the country was turning on him. The epstein scandal was making him look REALLY bad, his movement was imploding, so he's like "LOOK, WAR, YOU HATE BROWN PEOPLE WHO LIVE OVERSEAS, RIGHT? LET'S BOMB BROWN PEOPLE OVERSEAS." Again, these elites always need us to be fighting some enemy. If not some poor group overseas that has nothing to do with our troubles, like Iran, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, then each other. So the democrats hype up the identity politics to a 10. And the republicans do the same. And despite mass anti elite sentiment on both sides, we're too busy fighting each other over BS like "wokeness" to focus on the real material issues impacting our lives. And thus, the motivation of the masses to do something about them remains suppressed. It's a tale as old as time. 

 Anyway, I admit, I got a chip over my shoulder as a 2016 era "bernie bro" over this obviously. Because I AM a class first guy. I WANT a color blind version of politics. And sure, maybe I'm not for whatever special treatment the weirdo idpol dems want with whatever weird issues they wanna hyper fixate on. BUT, I also am gonna be that guy telling the white middle class dude in the cookie meme, that no, the foreigner is NOT taking your cookie, the wealthy guy is. I'm gonna be working at disarming whatever racial resentment, the white working class has. And as I always say, if they really hate minorities so much they'll continue to vote republican at the expense of their own interests, well, there's the door. I dont genuinely support throwing racial minorities or anyone else under the bus. I just have schadenfreude toward a party that literally rejected people like me as voters because they wanted to use those same voters as a cudgel against me. Or who would use half measures to carve out weird racial exceptions to gerrymandering while not actively working toward ending the practice nationwide, as well as encouraging further changes to the system to improve representation. 

Because again, stopping gerrymandering doesnt even go far enough. We need to reform how the house works, either by uncapping the number of representatives, or moving toward proportional representation. We need to eliminate the electoral college and encourage ranked choice voting. That would break the duopoly. And yeah, ultimately, we SHOULD break the duopoly. I oppose trump because i oppose the descent into a one party system like Russia where Trump acts like a dictator like Putin, but I also ain't too happy with a two party system controlled by big monied interests either. I want there to be many parties and many choices. Democrats typically don't. They WANT you to be dependent on them with nowhere else to go, even though they suck. They enjoy being the only game in town. And quite frankly, if we werent at the gates of literal fascism, I'd say, yeah, let them suffer the consequences of driving away their voters. But under the current situation, it's just too dangerous to risk it, so we gotta play their game for now. Even if it sucks and makes my stomach churn.

Anyway, I just wanted to explain the real conflict driven explanations for why the democrats are doing what they're doing. They're not really our friends. They support big business and special interests, and they dont want things to change. And they use all the race stuff explicitly to drive a wedge in a potential working class coalition in order to ensure things remain the same.  

Addressing the centrist argument that progressives don't care about the VRA being gutted

 So...I saw this on a centrist political sub. I wont post in this sub since I'd get banned and people of my political persuasion aren't welcome here, but I did want to address this given my own lukewarm reaction to section 2 of the VRA being overturned. His core point is this:

Unpopular point: A lot of leftists dont care if liberal black democrats may lose their seats in the south because they come from blue cities in blue states

Well, actually, I come from a purple state, and a SMALL blue city surrounded by the island of red known as Pennsyltucky. I'm a rust belt voter, ex conservative, and now progressive. And quite frankly, I will admit, I simply have different priorities than your typical 6th party system centrist democrat who is obsessed with race. That crap is like nails on a chalkboard to me. And you're darned right. I don't care much.

I mean, in a way I do, on a practical level. In this environment, seats are seats, and I'm gratutiously for gerrymandering as much as possible strategically to maximize our elections, and the VRA being struck down leads to net seats for republicans. In that sense, i do care.

But on the sheer PRINCIPLE of the thing, like on the higher minded principle of the thing, I don't care, no. And here's why. Because we allow gerrymandering for every other reason, but then we have this one protection purely for racial purposes. My city has been gerrymandered to hell for most of my life. My first election cycle I could vote in, I was taking poli sci 101 in college. I had to do a paper on my congressional representative, which first exposed me to the wonderful world of gerrymandering. My city was literally split into like 3 different districts. And I ended up doing the paper on the wrong one because the map was hard to read and we didnt have the internet tools to clearly delineate the boundaries. So I was like 2 blocks in some other guy's district and didn't know until election day. 

Then in the 2010s, I was in one of those "goofy" (if you catch my reference) type districts here in PA where my city was gerrymandered to hell again and I was thrown in with a bunch of rural voters from the next county over. It was obviously gerrymandered and clearly intended to suppress my vote. But because I wasn't a black person in the south, well, apparently that was a okay. Anyway, PA DID eventually overturn the map in the supreme court, but this introduced me to even MORE problems.

While I was thrown into a bluer district, well, that district didn't represent the small city vibe that defines my politics. The fact is, no one cares about 100k or so blue voters in districts with 750k voters. So this time I was in one of the poorest cities in the US and thrown in with rich philly suburbanites who are exactly the kind of wealthy people who would complain about their taxes being raised if we implemented a UBI. And my representative is a complete and utter craplib who doesnt represent my politics at all. 

However, when Tom Wolf asked voters for input on possible congressional maps, I found that it was literally impossible to give my own city proper representation. Why? Because the districts are too big. And we need further change, like not just banning gerrymandering, but uncapping the house of representatives to make districts more responsive to small city needs. Right now, under the current set of rules, the system ignores me. Oh, you live in a poor city with a bad economy with no jobs? Too bad. The dems only care about BIG city voters and suburbanites. And the rural areas are all Trumpy as hell. Ultimately, in presidential elections, my area is key. If 2024 ended up being as close as 2000 was where a handful of votes swung the entire election, my area would be ground zero. And both Trump and Harris campaigned in my area the day before the election. It was THAT essential to both campaigns. It was THE area that probably would've decided 2024 if the margins were 2000-style close. 

But in congress? No one gives AF what I think. And then I'm supposed to care about ermahgerd they allow gerrymandering for racial reasons now. They allow gerrymandering in general, and the house of representatives isnt very representative. Either uncap the house and ban gerrymandering, or implement some form of proportional representation if you want my honest opinion. That solves the problem for EVERYONE. Most people don't care about an explicitly racial solution that only impacts a different part of the country. If anything, it just feels like special treatment to the rest of us. Sorry to engage in resentment politics myself, but yeah. 

Anyway, to address the text of the guy's post, because this is juicy and I'm rearing to throw down with this guy.

Is anyone surprised by the fact that leftists do not eem to be concerned or upset by the Supreme Court undermining black political gains following the Louisiana v. Callais case that makes it harder to bring lawsuits claiming districts were targeting black voters in the south?

Why am I not surprised? Because Bernie sanders helped institute this current class is more important than race movement. A lot of leftists we see online are NOT from the south. They are from the upper north east or the west coast.

 Yeah I know I often reject the whole "politics is local" idea to some extent, but to some degree it is. And my politics are shaped by my area. I'm NOT from the south, and given the current political map, idk why we give so much attention to rural blacks from the south anyway. Sure, they net us a few congressional seats (a whopping 12 out of 435 apparently...), but honestly, the south is that one area of the country I'm fine with democrats not pursuing. Because it's just a cesspit of regressivism. And idk why we spend so much time focusing on what black people in the south think and put them on a pedestal so much. The only reason they're even democrats is because the whites down there HATE them just for existing. They're actually some of the most conservative democrats in the country and many of their views are indistinguishable from republicans. The dems hyper emphasize them in the primaries for some reason despite their contribution to the democratic party as a whole being relatively minimal. And we all KNOW why. It's because the establishment loves to use these guys to push the party to the right, while crying foul and racism if we dare point out what they're doing like we do.

But yeah. As I see it, those blue areas in the northeast and west coast, those are WHERE MOST DEMOCRATS LIVE. They're the real base of the party. But centrists like to ignore that because they ultimately wanna push the party to the center. Which is why I'm personally so nonchalant over this whole thing. Do you honestly think I care if, for example, Jim Clyburn loses their seat after he basically single handedly played kingmaker and foisted Biden on us in 2020 when Bernie was looking to run away with it? Nah. if anything, if those relatively conservative representatives disappeared, and that strategy was no longer viable, maybe they'd listen to people like me more.

because, again. I'm in Pennsylvania. I AM the median voter, demographically speaking. Sure, I'm a progressive, but my own progressivism comes from my rust belt background, and rust belt problems. As you can tell, I often have serious differences from blue state and large city dems, which lead to some policy differences. But it seems like the democratic party doesn't care.  

Why am I not surprised? Because Bernie sanders helped institute this current class is more important than race movement.

 And to emphasize this part again. Uh, YEAH, BECAUSE BERNIE REPRESENTS MY POLITICS, YOUR RACE CENTRIC VISION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY DOESN'T! 

Seriously, what's wrong with focusing on class, other than the fact that it pisses off the donors? What's wrong with having a multiracial working class movement geared toward fixing problems for everyone, rather than super special solutions only for black voters that the rest of us don't get? Want to end gerrymandering? End it for all of us. Want economic justice? Get it for all of us. That's what I'm about. I don't care what skin color people are. And if anything, the democratic party has this image of only caring about black people while not caring about white ones. If there's any holdover attitudes I have from my conservatism, it's that yeah, they kinda got the dems' number there. Which is why they've bled white working class voters over the past few decades and especially in my state since 2016. And then these guys have the gall to be like "well that's a dog whistle." No, what's a dog whistle is you guys not knowing how to shut up about race every 5 seconds and making everything a racial issue. I WAS a republican. I KNOW how they think, how the median voter thinks. They see this hyper racialized crap and it makes them wanna vote republican. If anything is the answer for the future of the democratic party, it's moving away from race and BUILDING a genuine working class movement, across racial lines. 

Again, it's YOU GUYS, you centrists, who dont want that. You use the race issue to push progressives around, bully them, guilt trip them, take advantage of their empathy, while working class whites on the fence between two candidates see the dems as doing nothing for them, so they vote Trump in response. Quite frankly, I'd go so far to see the failure of YOU GUYS' vision of the democratic party is what got us trump in the first place. and I MEAN that wholeheartedly. Bernie would've broken us out of that pattern. You reinforced it. And that's why we've been losing ever since, because your average voter looks at the democrats and genuinely don't feel like they care about us or wanna make our lives better. It's at best a bunch of band aid fixes. 

Even more so, this is intentional. Chuck Schumer, who is currently the face and de facto leader of the dems right now, once said in 2016: 

"For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin."

 He's talking people like me here. He's literally talking about trading ME for a bunch of upper class suburbanites who are functionally republicans in all but name, and combining them with centrist southern democrats who functionally vote democrat not because they have genuine progressive convictions, but because they fear the whites in their states. 

And honestly, that's why I got such a chip over my shoulder on this topic. Because as I see it, I'm a progressive. Im rearing to go. I wanna actually beat the republicans. But what's the point in beating the republicans if the democrats we get are just moderate republicans anyway? And that's when people like me start checking out of politics and stop caring about you, your party, or your success. It's why a lot of people even have that "burn it all down" mentality some trumpers like, say, asmongold have. Because we're literally not invested in the system. I literally feel disenfranchised myself. And it's centrists like you who did it to me.

Name a single popular leftist streamer from Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, or Florida...

…I’ll wait...

 Yeah because most of those states...are red states. And some are turning more purple...but at the expense of my area also turning more purple...when 10-20 years ago I'd say it was a bit bluer. And we didn't need those states back then during the obama years. Look at the 2008 map. Outside of florida, not a single one of those states went blue. They were functionally irrelevant. Because, guess what? THEY'RE CONSERVATIVE.

But even then, I'll bite. Not quite "leftist" but what about the atheist community of austin which hosts the atheist experience and who was almost singlehandedly advancing the secular agenda? And quite frankly, I know a lot of southern leftists through debate groups. And some are further left than I am. Some of them are literally trans. Some are literally like full on socialist or communist. Those guys tend to be progressive AF despite living in a conservative craphole. Sure, they're a statistical minority, but they exist. They just dont have twitch or youtube streams with millions of viewers. 

 Precisely. The place where MOST black people live, in the South, is NOT represented in leftist spaces online where discourse about this stuff happens.

 Because most of them arent progressive. Most of them are conservatives who just vote democrat because the white southern republicans hate them just for existing. They're refugees to the democratic party. They're not ideological progressives. And those of us who are don't think that they should be the standard bearers for the whole fricking party. It makes zero sense given how little strategic importance those voters have in the grand scheme of things. The centrists just focus on that stuff because they have so little of everything else. Again, it's part of THEIR strategy to keep the democrats relatively right wing.

 The “blue city-red state” democrat perspective of most black democrats is completely overlooked in this regard. Leftist truly have this blind spot and wonder why black democrats never trusted them with their votes or took their issues seriously.

 Oh, just like you overlook me and therefore I dont trust you guys either? See, I can play this game too. *points to my introduction*

 Now? We’re about to lose a lot of districts held by black democrats in the south and leftists think it’s because of some insufficient prioritization of class.

 As someone who didn't vote blue in 2016 because I found "omg but the court!" to be an insufficient rationale, boo fricking hoo. So now those voters are in the same camp as the rest of us. Can we get some REAL change that fixes the issue for EVERYONE now? Gerrymandering should be banned nationwide. And districts should either be a lot smaller, allowing for more granularity, or, alternatively, representatives should be decided proportionally based on the total number of votes in each state. If you want REAL representation, you need to do that. But until dems care about my plight (or at least stop actively throwing ME under the bus as a PA voter), why should I care about this sob story about southern black voters? As I say, you can't force people to care. 

 Do you know what blue state democrats are doing ironically? Chasing rabbit holes around Israel/Palestine, platforming Hasan piker and other contrarians, and fighting elected democrats in already-blue seats over marginal issues making it easier for republicans to win general elections.

 Uh, let's see, caring about a genocide, and even I admit they often care too much, although given the foothold AIPAC has over our politics and how it's literally led to the war in Iran, I don't blame them at this point. Campaigning with a popular streamer while YOU GUYS are just running a hate campaign against the guy because guess what, YOU HATE US, and holding our representatives accountable in advocating for policy that improves our lives.

Meanwhile, what are YOU GUYS doing? The same old centrist hugbox of "we can't have nice things, but you better vote for us or else, or youre sexist/racist/privileged", while attacking progressives in bad faith for actually advocating for solutions that actually FIX THE FRICKING PROBLEMS! 

Really. If you guys could just go away, that would be great. We run against you because we want you out of politics. We want the geriatric political class full of worthless centrists to retire. And from the bottom of my heart, screw Jim Clyburn. I'm kinda looking forward to HIM losing his seat after what he did to tilt the scales toward Biden in 2020. Yeah, I got schadenfreude on that one.

 The red-state democrat is completely under attack from all sides right now.

 The legitimate red state democrat is tactically irrelevant. You wanna focus on blue and purple states if you wanna win elections. You wanna know what we call the majority of people in red states? Conservatives. And that includes many of those "red state democrats." 

But yeah. Idk. I just wanted to respond to this one. These centrists love to make themselves out to be the victims and act like progressives are responsible for everything wrong with the democrats, when it's them. 

I fully admit my own biases. I'm a rust belt democrat. And the democrats have largely abandoned us. But hey, we're supposed to care about those demographics they DO care about. I kinda have the whole schadenfreude mentality toward these guys. Sorry if that makes me a bad person, but I do.

Anyway, I wanna preface this in saying that I don't really have any ill will toward any racial group in particular, I just hate this weird reverence for red state democrats while the democratic party has functionally abandoned people like me a voters. And you know what? The impact of THAT is far greater than this ruling. We had the electoral college locked down well into the 2030 reapportionment at the very least until they F-ed things up. Because they turned the blue wall into a breeding ground for fascism, with their shameless trade of working class voters (LIKE ME!) for suburbanites. Theyre responsible for everything wrong with our politics, and they're why the democrats are so weak. But hey, we're supposed to drop everything and care because some conservative democrats might get gerrymandered out of existence? Cry me a river. 

But yeah, I just wanted to throw down with this guy, because MAN i hate these smarmy centrists. They eat, sleep, and breathe hatred for the progressive movement. And after pissing us off, they then complain about us being...understandably pissed at them. And yeah, that's kinda why I have schadenfreude for the whole thing. No offense to any black southern democrat in particular. I'm more mad at the entire democratic party for heavily prioritizing those voters when they provide so little strategic value to the party but then dilute it ideologically. But the ideological dilution is the point. Because centrists be centrists and they HATE the left and actual working class voters who wanna make their lives better. When they use black voters as a cudgel, I'm not exactly gonna be upset when that cudgel is suddenly gerrymandered out of existence. And for any centrist who points out that makes it harder for us to pass our agenda...yall dont wanna pass our agenda anyway, so why do we care? Again, we're not invested in this iteration of the democrats to care. Because it is hostile to our very existence.

Which is why when this ruling dropped, my first reaction was "okay, well hopefully this causes the dems to abandon their current strategy and start appealing to actual swing state voters who are electorally relevant again." Maybe instead of looking at us with disdain as they minmax demographics with my own demographic being on the "min" side of things, they realize, hey they kinda need us and actually reach out to appeal to us. Seriously, in the current environment, beating republicans shouldnt be that hard. They're literally evil inc. But the democrats are widely hated by a wide majority of voters even now because the dems are just...a different kind of evil. They dont try to be better. if anything, that's their whole point. They suck. We all know they suck, but we better vote for them anyway. Oh, and then they actually attack the people trying to actually make things better.  Yeah, I mean, it's hard NOT to hate them at this point. So if the dems lose one of their tools that allows their current coalition to be viable...well....hey, it's free real estate. Hopefully progressives can take over the party and lead it to victory.  

Explaining the minimum wage, social security, and UBI to republicans

 So, I just came across some "republicans against Trump" meme where they were still doing resentment politics and they were like "WHY SHOULD SOME TEENAGER MAKING $20 AN HOUR EARN $3200 A MONTH, THE MINIMUM SOCIAL SECURITY PAYMENT SHOULD BE $3200 A MONTH!" or something like that. Ya know, resentment politics. The cudgel the right often uses to undermine any progressive idea ever because "it's not fair" to some other group who "deserves it more." I hate these politics with a passion. But given this was a republicans against Trump meme, I can't tell if they were arguing against the minimum wage or for that to actually be the minimum social security payment. Maybe they're just trying to get us to argue among both. Anyway, I'm gonna address these arguments here.

First of all, the minimum wage. The minimum wage applies to all workers, and I know that people like to think of minimum wage workers as like pimply faced teenagers just looking for fun spending money and not having any responsibilities, but that's the problem. Many people make minimum wage who are older. If I worked an actual job, I'd probably make close to minimum wage. It was all that I could get out of college. And the economy hasnt really improved much since, at least from personal lived in experience. Anyway, the typical minimum wage worker is older. Like 20s-30s or something. They're trying to feed a family, and rent is often like $1500-2000 a month these days so half these guys' paychecks are going just for a roof over their head. 

Second of all, I doubt many teenagers work full time. If they're in school, I'm guessing they're working closer to 10-20 hours a week, so their actual pay is closer to $800-1600 a month, not $3200. Maybe during the summer, but even then, say they work 3 months at $3200 a month, that's $10800. You can't really pay for college with that, although it can certainly help. And you know what, if any teenager puts in that amount of work, and thats the minimum wage, they should get that amount of pay.

Third of all, would I actively advocate for $20 an hour? Progressives have a habit of pushing the envelope. They like to out do each other. $20? More like $25. $25? What about $30. And here's the thing. While the minimum wage is a good thing, at some point you're just gonna drive up the price of everything and cause a wage price spiral. I do think there is a maximum sustainable minimum wage. I dont know exactly where that is, but my comfort zone, the last I studied the subject a few years ago (I think 2021-2023ish?) was like $17-18 an hour. So let's say $20 on the high end now. I mean, $20 is the new $15 (Bernie 2016) more or less. And $16 is the new $12 (Clinton 2016). And $13 is the new $10 (Obama second term). I would probably aim between $15-20 honestly, but $20 is acceptable, albeit at the maximum end of that range. I'm not opposed to it, but idk if I'd actively advocate for it being THAT high. I'd like to cautiously raise it first before being like "let's push the envelope a bit more." 

But yeah, the minimum wage is supposed to be high enough to support a family on. It's not intended just for some pimply faced teenager making some fun money. That might be how the right views it, but it's supposed to be a wage for adults working. Teens just happen to benefit from it too. 

Now onto social security. There is no such thing as a "minimum payment" for social security. Your check is determined by past contributions to the system. if you didnt work, you get $0. If you worked intermittently part time, you might get a few hundred. The average payment is around $2000. And keep in mind, the system, as currently structured, is probably gonna run out of money in the next decade or two. BECAUSE it's so contribution based, and BECAUSE it pays out more than it takes in, it's kinda running a deficit and when the surplus money runs out, benefits will be cut. This is why progressives wanna raise the tax cap on social security. Now, the average social security payment is around $2k a month. $3200 would be a 60% increase. Can we sustain that? Not without massive tax increases. And think about it, raising taxes on "working age" Americans so seniors can live better? Talk about a recipe for resentment politics. And keep in mind, $3200 is the MINIMUM amount in this meme. Like a guaranteed income. I'm the guaranteed income guy and not even I advocate for stuff that high. My guaranteed income would be around $1333 a month per individual. Although if you have a spouse, you'd get $2666 a month between you. Factor in roughly 80% of your current social security payment (so say $1600 instead of $2000) and your senior would be getting around $2933 a month. Not quite $3200, but close. That's an average, not a minimum.

The fact is, we can't reasonable sustain a $3200 a month UBI. Not per individual. Now, if you get $1333 per adult, and then throw a couple of kids into the mix at around $450 a month, well, you can get around $3566 for a family of four. That's close to the proposed $20 minimum wage. For a family. And that's a decent amount I think. I wouldnt wanna push it. That's a floor. And your teenager under 18 would get...$450 a month. Is that that "fair". Does that resolve this weird resentment based contradiction of the system for you people? Like why hate teenagers in the first place? You put in the work, you get paid. That's the point. It's the incentive structure of capitalism. Yeah, we can talk minimums. ANd honestly, I love that some republicans are talking about MINIMUM incomes for people. Keep going with that logic, just like I did when I left conservatism. Maybe one day you'll end up being a UBI stan like me. And you'll advocate for a guaranteed minimum income for ALL Americans, regardless of work effort, while seniors still get their social security to some degree (and generally get a net pay raise), and people can earn $20 in the market place regardless of age. Maybe some teenager can make $800 in fun money working 10 hours a week, while a 30 year old with a family can make $3200 full time. Even then, full time minimum wage jobs barely exist any more, so it's more like, they'd work 25 hours a week at one job making $2000 a month, and then working 15 at another earning $1500 a month, and then they dont get healthcare. Yeah. I wanna give them healthcare too. Which is why i support a public option. 

Again. I know this was at best some weird misguided conservative logic, and at worst, a malicious statement intended to keep the working class fighting amongst themselves and to argue against positive changes like a higher minimum wage, but yeah. It's almost like I have answers to these things. Detailed answers. And I can put numbers to my ideas and justify my policy decisions. If you like my ideas. Maybe you should run for president on them. Or maybe I should. Honestly, I don't think I'd be able to hack campaigning but yeah. That's my own answer to these questions, straight from my own internal ideology that has already MATHed (to use a Yang term) all of these things out. 

EDIT: I also wanted to address the whole "but I work so hard, why should someone else get something for free" thing. Because you get it too. Under a UBI, everyone is subject to the same rules and gets the same UBI. What differs is peoples' incomes from work. Someone who works 0 hours a week will ONLY get a UBI. Someone who works 40 would get that UBI + whatever wages they get. Yeah, they'd pay more in taxes on those wages. I estimate 20 percentage points. So your minimum wage guy making $3200 a month will pay back $640 in extra taxes....while getting $1333 back. And that's assuming they're single and live alone. Your typical household is gonna be probably 2 adults or 2 adults + 1 child so you'd get a lot more back. Quite frankly, 71% of income earners and around 78-84% of families depending on household makeup last I looked would benefit from my proposal. So if you resent that person not working, odds are youre allowing your misplaced anger to fight against your own best interests.

And if you are in that top 16-29% or whatever who pays more taxes...well...you're relatively well off. And while I get resenting me for wanting to tax you to give it to someone who "deserves it" less in your meritocratic mind...the truth is, you're still gonna be well off afterwards. Elon musk would still be a billionaire under my plan. And your $500k income earning family will pay an extra $100k in taxes, and probably still get back the same $30k or so depending on household size like everyone else. Is anyone gonna shed a tear a $500k income earner now gets something like $416k or $430k in income instead? And yes, I know there are other taxes, but still, point is, you're still rich. I don't really care if you're mad. Youre still living far better than the rest of us anyway. The wealthy are still wealthy, and the rest of us are better off. And to do a little resentment politics of my own: if you can barely live in $400k instead of $500k, how tf do you expect someone to live on a $40k or so minimum wage (what around $20 an hour is), or on a $16k a year UBI? Like, really, you're making 12x that wage, or like 30x that minimum income, and you're complaining about higher taxes? This is why I take the FDR: "and I welcome their hatred" mindset toward these people.  Your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer. You wanna hate me, hate me, but the fact is my life would make the vast majority of peoples' lives better, and if you're one of the wealthy people harmed by this, I could literally care less. 

Debating chatGPT about my house model

 So....I decided to ask chatGPT a few questions in light of section 2 of the VRA getting struck down, like how to win the house. The results were kinda obvious, but have a strong showing of democrats turn out to win the election. I asked them what their odds are of us winning the house are, and they seemed pretty skeptical of it. if anything, they seemed more inclined to believe that the senate would flip first, which was insane to me. Because, as we know, in 2024, the house BARELY went republican. It went 215-220 Republican. And I expect an 8 point shift in polling or so based on what I see so far. Meanwhile, the senate requires flipping rather hostile territory. We're talking states where the environments were R+13 in 2024, where even if 8 point shifts happen, we're theoretically talking R+5. We're starting to see polls showing some of those states CAN crack and shift in favor of dems, but I'm still skeptical, and despite my own model having the dems ahead, I really suspect the data might just be wrong. It's just too big of a shift and the data is weak and possibly contradictory with other priors of mine. 

But the house? That's a shoe in. 

So...I asked chatGPT why they think the house is harder, and gave my case for a 235-200 outcome based on current data. They said that not all districts shift uniformly. An 8 point shift might mean like 3-5 points in actual swing districts while 12 points in safe districts. They have a point. And admittedly, my model doesnt take that into consideration.

However, after listening to what they had to say, and their suggestions of grading different districts differently, and focusing on the swingiest ones, I went back to the cook PVI that I drew my data from. And....here's the thing.

They got 192 safe D districts,  11 likely D, 14 lean D, and then there's 16 tossups. Assuming a dem heavy environment, i doubt anything lean D will flip. So that's 217 districts out of the gate, one short of a majority. The the tossups, all the data I have in my models suggests they'd flip. Even if I left out the 2 lean Rs, which is how I get 235 seats, I'd get 233. Of course, chatGPT thinks not all of the tossups will go D, and thinks only 70-90% will. Okay, so let's assume 80%, that's still 12, which gives us 231. I point that out, they say, but keep in mind the lean Rs still might flip, so now I'm back up to 232-233. 

At which point, I have to ask...is it worth adding all of this complexity to my model? Like, that's the problem I noticed of complex models in 2020 and 2024. They account for more variables, but they're not a ton more accurate than my simplistic ones. Like, when you have like 5 extra variables where you're like, but these WILL go blue, but then these wont, but then these other things will, and you get a result that's like....2-4 seats off of my own projection, does that matter much? 

It's a lot like the AK47 vs M16 philosophies of warfare. The M16 is a complicated machine. It's more precise and accurate, but it has more moving parts and can break down more often. When introduced in vietnam soldiers didnt even have cleaning kits and it broke down regularly despite how good of a firearm it is.

Meanwhile, the AK47 was a bit less accurate, but it was "good enough". It was built with the philosophy of keeping things simple, and not breaking down. You can argue that an "M16" type model will get a slightly more accurate result, but does it matter when my own model is like an AK47, rugged and "good enough?" I kind of like the simplicity of my current models. Adding more complexity just means more moving parts and more things that can go wrong. And for what, a slight difference from my original model in the first place? As I said in 2024. A model that is, for example, perpetually at 50-50 4 months out from an election because it's accounting for so many things that havent happened yet is the equivalent of not having a model at all. because you're not really predicting anything. You're just throwing your hands up and saying "I dont know, anything can happen." Sure, anything CAN happen, but polling data as I used was able to get better results than all of Allen  Lichtman's keys and all of 538's fancy models that left us perpetually in the dark at 50%. So...idk. 

I'm probably not gonna stick with my current iteration of my house model all the way to election day. The landscape is changing too much and hopefully by October or so, there will be actual polling giving me a better picture of what's going on. But, im probably not gonna overcomplicate things either.

Tbqh, giving how chatGPT started out at republicans winning the house only to end at a slightly less favorable prediction than my original one shows me it cant be trusted anyway. It's kinda like that meme I'm seeing lately where it's like "yeah, this is a good idea", and then later "oh yeah, sorry, i was wrong, would you like to see why data on how?" Like, it started out being like "republicans will probably win", then shifted to "democrats will win but the results will be narrow" to  "democrats will win, but I'm predicting like 4 less seats than you are" is kind of a huge goalpost mover. Goes to show how accurate AI is at this sorta thing.

Regardless, i do admit it has points about the relative inelasticity of some districts and my model does have a weak point there. I do admittedly oversimplify things. but when an oversimplified model still gets us 90% of the way there, that kinda tells me it's "good enough", ya know? Kinda like an AK47 is "good enough" compared to an M16.