Responding to Sarah Huckabee Sanders' new anti welfare ad

 So...Sarah Huckabee Sanders is attempting to channel resentment politics in her new ad against welfare. Basically, she portrays a guy stay home, playing video games, and being even lazier than I could ever be. Ya know, using grabber tools to pick up chips, which is highly inefficient. That's actually more work than picking them up with your hands. i know it LOOKS lazier, but it actually isn't. But I digress. The point of the ad is clear, you work hard. This guy doesn't. You're paying for welfare so this guy can not work, that's not fair to you, and the answer is to add work requirements to force this guy to work. And then we're all stuck working! Yay....

Ugh...I know this ad is very effective among parts of the population, but the answer is, should it be? Should this be how we think about the subject? Obviously not. So...as the gamer who doesn't work and does play video games (and write anti work political philosophy) all day, let's have a grounded discussion on this.

On work requirements

First of all, work requirements already exist, they've always existed. There arent many NEETs who just live off of welfare. You could argue that the medicaid expansion gave them some healthcare access (the horror, nonproductive people getting the healthcare that they need), but for the most part, these welfare programs have had requirements for decades. The fact is, most NEETs just live with their parents or maybe in rare cases, a spouse. The state aint paying for their stuff, and the state is already draconian enough in trying to force people to work. So these guys are just drumming up resentment over a phenomenon that doesn't exist, and is poorly understood. 

If anything, these work requirements often make it harder for those who need help and who do work to get the help they need. Because the system errs on punishing those who don't work, they'd rather have situations where they punish those who do, but fail to meet requirements for arbitrary reasons. The fact is, these programs just hurt the poor more than anything. ANd I guess if your whole mentality in life is around ensuring that that one person you dont like is miserable that you'd rather punish several in collateral damage to get that way, all the power to you, but your morality is pretty crappy in my view, not that such people care what I think in the first place (I don't care what they think either, they're lost causes).

On "paying for welfare" so NEETs can play video games

Even if you did somehow pay for a NEET to play video games all day, let's think about this broadly. I'm a basic income supporter. I've looked at basic income from a mathematical perspective, and here's the reality. Basic income as I structured it would benefit 70% of workers directly. 70% of people who earn a wage, would get back more in basic income than they'd pay out. This is because if we had a $16,000 basic income, with a 20% tax rate, you'd need to earn $80,000 to pay $16,000 in additional taxes. Anyone under that is basically getting free money too. So your typical middle class income earner of $50,000 a year (roughly the median individual income) would get $6,000 (pay $10,000, get $16,000 back) under my plan. That scales even better for households. If you have a second adult like a spouse, they get UBI too so we'd be talking needing to earn $160,000 in basic income to pay back $32,000. And because I'd give every child $5,500, that's an additional $27,500 to that threshold per child. So your typical household of 2 adults, 1 kid, would basically need to earn $187,500 to pay back the $37,500 in basic income that they'd recieve. For reference, that's 80% of households in the US.

The same presumably applies with universal healthcare too. The net payers of such programs are often the top 20% of income earners, the bottom 80% generally benefit from them. How can this be? Income inequality, my dude, income inequality. We have this "K shaped economy" thats been forming over the past 40 years and currently most of the income and wealth pools among the top 20% while everyone else is struggling to get by. This is presumably why you feel like you work so hard and you struggle to get by. Because you do. And it's not right. But rather than blame some dude sitting on his couch literally not doing anything, you should probably be blaming the system that makes you miserable in the first place.

On who the real enemy is

 What this ad is intended to do is similar to that "look out, that immigrant wants to take your cookie" analogy. The system wants the overall "working class" (which in my own belief system includes the not working) to be at each others' throats. Immigrants are on welfare stealing your tax dollars. NEETs are on welfare stealing your tax dollars. There's always an enemy. And it's always trying to go to you saying, look, you work hard, so why don't they work hard, is that fair to you? And your natural response is, of course, GRRRR WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO WORK SO HARD IF THEY DON'T HAVE TO WORK SO HARD. So you basically want to make the person not as miserable as you....as miserable as you....to make it fair to you.

But that just makes us ALL miserable. The real, more productive question to ask is "why are we all working like this to begin with?" I mean, that's the question I asked, and the rabbit hole I went down, and at the end of the day, it's to make rich people rich. The economy has always been a scam to ensure that the wealthy people remain wealthy. It attempts to use the logic of "hard work" and meritocracy to give itself legitimacy, claiming that those who earn lots of money work hard, and that lazy people should get nothing. And then it always uses the resentment politics within the welfare system, as well as artificial divides like race politics, fear of immigrants, etc, in order to drum up resentment from the working class. This stops people from figuring out that the source of their misery is the system itself, and instead forces them to take it out on poor disadvantaged people who didn't do anything.

I mean, here's my viewpoint. You hate work. I mean, if you buy into resentment politics, Im guessing you dont like working. You don't think it's "fair" if someone doesn't work as hard as you. It threatens the legitimacy of the system in your mind. But because you buy into those values, your solution is "force this person to work to justify my suffering." But here's the thing. Your suffering shouldnt be justified. No one should have to go through what you go through. And that's MY point. I want a system where work is voluntary and we don't have to work. I want YOU to have the ability to sit on the couch and play video games too if you want to. And if you don't, fine, just leave me out of your twisted ideals for society if you actually LIKE your job. Because ironically, I get that a lot when I talk about eliminating work. "But I like working, there's dignity in work!". Cool. Then work. But dont try to force me to do it too. And if the system requires me to be coerced and miserable to justify your own acceptance of the system, then you should probably rethink your acceptance of the system. 

The fact is, in my view, we shouldnt have to work. We could have chosen to pursue a different path as a society, instead of going down the path of neverending growth and obsession with employing every person possible to ensure that we max out GDP, we could have chosen to work less all along. We could choose a lot of possible paths to do this. We could have eliminated poverty and made work voluntary with a basic income. We could reduce the work week, take longer vacations, lowered the retirement age, etc. Instead, we have a society that enforces unnecessary and artificial scarcity on people to force them to take jobs they dont want, and that they're criminally underpaid for, so some rich guy can make profits at the end of the day.

And that's really what it's about. The reason we went down this path was because businesses feared that if people didn't work, that they wouldnt be able to make money. So instead we created this system that imposes misery on everyone in order to keep the profits up and the rich people happy. And then they have the gall to say some dude who plays video games all day is the problem. They're not. The system is. 

Conclusion

 With all of that said, I'd advise anyone who seriously buys into this ad to reconsider their life. Odds are, you're not in that top 20% making all of the money. if you are, well...yeah, I wanna tax you so the rest of us can be free from having to work. You might not like that but tough, the majority should be on my side, fi they thought rationally and acted in their best interests about it.

But if you're not in that top 20%....well....actually, no, you're not paying for someone to sit on the couch. If you got a UBI, you'd be getting more than you'd be paying it. If you had universal healthcare, you'd probably be SAVING money on healthcare. With that said, reconsider your political priorities here. The fact is, you're closer to the homeless guy on the street or that NEET on the couch in terms of your class interests than you are to the wealthy whose system you're defending here. I advise you to think about what's best for you, and to actually support MORE welfarism, not less.

Or you can just take off your clothes or go back to the pile south park style because that's basically what you're doing if you buy into this stuff. Just a giant hugbox of misery and people voting against their interests.  

The Christina Pike situation disgusts me

 So....they tried to put this 50 year old woman to death in Tennessee for a murder they committed when they were 18. It was a controversial case, I remember reading some articles before it happened, some wanted to call it off and appeal it, given she went through some sexual assault trauma that might have affected our mental state, but our illustrious conservative supreme court was like "nah, go ahead." So they went ahead with it. 

Well...it ended....badly. Very badly. Lethal injection has been debated a lot in recent years. In theory it's humane. You stick a needle in their arm, they go to sleep and...die. But then other countries who manufactured the drugs used in it were like "we don't want our stuff being used to kill people", so the US has been forced to shift to less reliable drugs to kill people. And sometimes, it doesn't work. And this was one of those times. They couldnt' find a vein, then the drug didn't work. Apparently she was whimpering in pain and noted her arm felt like it was gonna explode, which was a sign that they botched the whole thing. And then after an hour of basically torturing this woman, they  took her to the hospital, and now apparently she's unconscious and on a ventilator. 

And that's it. They took her to the hospital...after trying to kill her. And she's unconscious, and on a respirator, if they took the respirator out, she would die, but they're apparently trying to take care of her..for what, so they can kill her again? Death penalty is weird. I get it, the doctors have an oath to do no harm and to care for people, but the whole point of this was to kill her. And it failed...kinda, although if they let nature take its course, it would be a success. A messy success but a success nonetheless. But yeah, now she's in the hospital taking care of her...so they can presumably kill her again at a later date. 

Honestly, we should just let her live. Even if I were pro death penalty, I'd be tempted to be like, nah, you survive the attempt and can walk away, you deserve to get your sentence commuted. But let's face it, I'm NOT pro death penalty. This never should have happened. The death penalty is outdated and barbaric. Maybe it made sense in an era in which not killing people meant that they would continue to be a menace to society, but prisons are rather secure these days, and the death penalty is, if anything, less convenient. Because we dont support cruel and unusual punishment, so if we ARE doing to do it, we need to find the least painful ways possible. This was supposed to be that way, but apparently it doesnt work half the time. And then considering the legal procedures to make it just, it ends up costing more in legal appeals to kill someone than to keep them alive. So it just doesn't make sense. 

I've actually always been against the death penalty, it's been an issue I've been most consistent on in my life. As a christian, I didnt think it was up to us to take a life, and that it was up to God. As a secularist, I still largely view it as inhumane, supporting life in prison instead for those who should never be part of society again. Ironically, as a secularist, I'm more sympathetic toward it than I was as a christian. As a christian I was dogmatically against it on principle, and refused to even consider it. But I do kind of get the desire for revenge that people have, and I even have the base urges where in SOME circumstances, I honestly think that what someone did is F-ed up enough where I can see why people would WANT it. But...at the same time, my higher principles still say no, we should let them live. And honestly, given our legal framework and the issues with it, yeah, I'm largely opposed to it.  And in a case like this, I'm definitely against this. First of all, it seems like yeah, she had issues going on that should have lessened the sentence, and second of all, we're doing this THIRTY YEARS later. like, she's almost 3x the age of what she was when the crime was committed. And again keep in mind what I said earlier. I kinda get the fiery passion for revenge, but this isn't it. This is this cold and clinical thing where this woman spent 60% of her life waiting to die for a crime she committed when she was young. it's like, okay, the fire and passion is kinda out of it by this point. I mean, it doesn't make a ton of sense to me. And in terms of her being a future threat to society, she isn't, she just comes off as some lady. Not saying she should ever be allowed in public again, but again, life in prison seems...fine here. No need to drag it out or make it worse than it is. 

Honestly, if we ARE going to have the death penalty, the people involved should have committed really egregious stomach churning crimes. Not just like a simple murder, but like, ya know, the worst of the worst. Think war criminals, people who participated in the holocaust and were true believers in it, that sorta thing. They should be a threat to society. And we should have as close to 100% certainty that they committed the crime as possible. Im not talking "reasonable doubt" here, like ALL doubt. Innocence project ended up finding a lot of people on death row didn't even belong there, and we've certainly executed innocent people before. 

Even then, I wouldn't be for it, because I still hold those higher principles against it. Again, life in prison is fine to me. I try to keep passion out of it and think rationally and principled.

As for HOW to do it...that's another problem. What IS the best method. lethal injection SHOULD be simple, but it isn't and it fails A LOT with situations like this. Gas can torture people too. The green mile shows what happens when the electric chair goes wrong. Hanging can either be instant or it can fail and be messed up. Same with the guillotine. Firing squad can be messy too. The fact is, there isn't really a simple, fool proof way to kill someone without the possibility of it being botched and torturing them instead. And maybe we just shouldn't have the death penalty.

Again, my ultimate opinion is the death penalty in and of itself violates cruel and unusual punishment. Killing someone is, by definition, cruel and unusual unless they are suffering and desire it. I dont think there's a good way to do it. I dont generally agree with the process of it. I mean, we sentence someone to death and then like 30 years later we finally kill them when the appeals process runs out? By then the whole fiery revenge instinct is just...dead in my view. And that in itself is cruel. The waiting is cruel. The fighting for life legally is cruel. Just give them life in prison without a chance of parole and move on already. This whole process is F-ed up. Most countries already banned the practice. We should too. But conservative be conservatives, and conservatives have a messed up moral compass so they're like LET'S KEEP THIS. Again, I just can't be for this in practice. And honestly, this woman's sentence should be commuted to life in prison if she ever actually does wake up again (still wild we're keeping her alive on a ventilator when the whole point of the thing that put her there was to kill her). And yeah, F the death penalty. Abolish it.  

Election Update 10/2/26

 Okay, so it's that time of week again, and we got some pretty big news. Isn't necessarily good news, but it's news.

Senate

 

So, as we start to enter the final stretch going into October, things are tightening up, and it seems like democrats are losing margin in a lot of these swing states. Maine is the most significant one for the senate, with Troy jackson now down to a 0.1% lead. What's driving that? Well, for his case, again, I think the problem is that the public isn't really trusting the democrats to make things better, this is primarily an anti Trump vote, and Susan Collins is the one republican senator who can say she's not Trump. She still voted with him 95% of the time, but that other 5% gives her cover to say she's a "moderate" republican. And given Jackson doesn't seem to be anywhere near as charismatic as Platner was, and doesnt seem to be drawing in as much support, he's floundering a bit. The average actually did go into Collins territory briefly this week, but for the official update, Jackson is still ahead by the slightest of margins. 

Osborn, well, yeah, I flipped Nebraska, but that's because RCP is finally posting Nebraska data, meaning I'm changing my source over to them, and they have Ricketts ahead by 0.5% on average. Still far more competitive than Nebraska has any right being, still, it is a flip. States like Minnesota, Alaska, and Texas are all narrowing as well. I know last week I was dooming over the public not wanting progressives in particular, but observing this further, I think that democrats are just floundering a bit going into the final stretch. They're still ahead, but the races seem to be narrowing. Right now El Sayed is in a rather strong position, but we should honestly expect Michigan to be like D+8 in this environment. Minnesota being narrow is just wtf. I really have to wonder what's going on here. Some of it is spending, but IMO democrat spending priorities seem pretty....decent, they're just being outspent since rich people prefer republicans obviously. 

Either way, before we get too pessimistic, let's think about where we started. Back in early 2025, I considered flipping the senate impossible. We're STILL favored to win there, despite these set backs. Quite frankly, it reminds me of my gambling luck in AC last week. I started with $5. yes, just $5, I'm not a compulsive gambler, I kinda understand you're likely to just throw the money away, but somehow, by dumb luck, I hit $60. Now, imagine being forced to gamble more, and you're dropping to like $45. That's where we are. WE'RE STILL WINNING, THIS MAP IS STILL OUTSIDE OF THE REALM OF WHAT I EXPECTED. But yeah, we are kinda losing at the margins, and given we HAVE TO keep spinning for the next month, and we cant just cash in and walk away with the winnings, yeah, its possible this is where "the house" gets back some of its advantage. We'll see where things end up on election day. Things still look good for us...just...not as good as they did.  

House

 

The house still looks as robust as ever, but to be fair there isn't a ton of elasticity with my official forecast.

Also, I AM getting polling data now for some individual districts, although not enough to build a model. Still, i would like to analyze how my model compares to the polling data. I only got 4 districts, but here's how the models compare:

NY-17

Polling- D+2

Model: D+4.6

 VA-01

Polling- D+4

Model: R+1.8

 VA-05

 Polling: R+6

Model: Safe R; not counted (R+4)

 WA-03

 Polling: R+1

Model:  D+14

So yeah, overall, that last one really pushes things toward my model being D biased, but the othere are close, only off by about 2-3 points from the polling. VA-05 wasnt counted since I only count states considered not safe by Cook PVI and last time I consulted them, VA-05 was still safe, it no longer is. If I applied it to my model, it would be R+4, given it went R+15 in 2024. So its is somewhat close.

Why is WA03 so off? It could be just some weird poll coming out of the pacific northwest that isnt accurate (see governor forecast), or it could be the specific candidate matchups, or district, idk. All I know is it went D+3 in 2024 so it should be like safe D this time, but maybe not all districts are. You can have weird moderate republicans running in blue areas who can distance themselves from trump crazy. Idk. 

But yeah. All in all, should I use this model going into the general? Well unless I get A LOT more polling data, I'm gonna have to. House districts are fundamentally underpolled and the polling in them is often horrendously inaccurate, so who the heck knows? Either way, I'm gonna be focusing more on getting the number of seats right than the specific outcomes of each seat.

EDIT: Added new districts up for grabs, model remains unchanged, other than reverting to a D+2 bias due to one of the added districts being a solid D district gerrymandering into a red district in texas. Still 235-200. 

Governors

Speaking of weird polling in the pacific northwest, wtf is with oregon? Looking at 2020 it was D+3.4, with a third party candidate taking 8.6% of the vote, so maybe it IS that close, but i normally consider that a blue state. Nebraska as the republican only up by 5, which is crazy. VT flips red, although not too crazy given that guy is a moderate and popular there. Similar phenomenon as NH apparently. New England seems to love democrats to some degree but also will vote for moderate republicans. And of course, now Georgia is flipping red. So not a lot of good news on the governor front. Not all of this is due to shifts, some of it is due to new data giving me more insight on races i wasn't aware of, but yeah, it's a bit less rosy for democrats.

Conclusion

With all of that said, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but stats are stats. And this blue wave might be...busting. idk. We'll see how things continue over the course of this month, but I'm not particularly confident in dem wins like I was. Of course, I always said to beware that this could happen, even a few points could mean the difference between a blue wave and a blue trickle, but yeah, as we go into october, things are....trickling a bit more than waving. I mean, they're still waving compared to the baseline but...republicans are still holding their own given the circumstances. This isn't a done deal for democrats at all, and we cant be complacent. Keep in mind, republicans overperform by around 3 points and we dont win the senate. If we account for my OTHER house model, we might struggle to flip the house. And keep in mind this is the best we can muster when we got an absolute moron for commander in chief who is governing on a level of stupidity few people thought possible. And a lot of them still are okay with it. I swear, this country might be cooked. The republicans seem to be winning the war on information and voters are too ignorant to know better. It's baffling how badly the dems have messed up since 2016. Even with all that's going on, a lot of people aren't sold on them enough to even vote against the republican. Scary. Makes you wonder what the future of our country is. 

But yeah, that's the update for the week. Same time next week give or take? 

Ranting about the "K shaped economy"

 So...even though I'm back from AC for the year, I'm still following news down there, and I've noticed that Ocean and Borgata are undergoing renovations. Now, do they NEED renovations? No. These places are popping. Those two and Hard Rock casino are the three most profitable and high end casinos in AC by far. So why are they renovating? To keep up with the Joneses. These casinos have an interesting clientele. Like, they're all a bunch of rich fricks with impossibly high standards, and even though the casinos are currently in good condition, they still feel the need to keep up with the Joneses and renovate to keep things looking fresh, because the second they become "dated" their wealthy customer base will drop them like a hot potato. 

And idk, from my perspective, it tends to piss me off. I look at those places and find them generally unaffordable. I mean, come in, $200+ for a hotel room on a week night? Really? And on weekends its like $600. These guys spend more on one weekend out than I spend a whole year on gaming. It's insane. It's obscene. And obviously, unnecessary renovations are gonna drive up the cost.

You wanna know what this also impacts? COLLEGES. College is insanely expensive. Then when I was leaving they announced that they were renovating the science building. Now, did the science building NEED renovations? No. It didn't. But again, gotta keep up with the Joneses to avoid looking dated (tbf the science building when I was there was a bit dated, but perfectly functional). So they spend millions and millions renovating, and then who pays? The customer. We get stuck with the bill. We pay more for tuition. We're in college debt paying for these peoples' stupid renovations. Same with hotels. They renovate unnecessarily, and then the cost goes up. 

With my college, it eventually bit them in the butt. After I left they started acquiring more land and properties to grow, trying to compete with the other college across town, and then COVID hit....and the gravy train stopped. People started realizing college wasn't paying off. They stopped going like they used to, and now, the college is in debt and on the brink of closure. I always wonder how tf do these places do something so stupid? Well, this is how. They spend tons of money, expecting to make it up later, except they don't. And then they're screwed. 

But yeah, back to casinos. There are other casinos in AC that appeal more to my tastes. As I said, I like resorts. Relatively affordable by AC standards (still kinda high but at least affordably so), cheap food, close to everything, it's one of the value kings of the AC boardwalk. And that's what I'm all about: value. 

But this clientele isnt about value. It's about "the best", to the point that they have impossible to satisfy tastes, they dump tons of money and then they nitpick every little thing. Like "oh the curtains arent right." I mean, really? Youre going on vacation and youre complaining about your hotel room's curtains? Really? Unless theyre really crappy curtains, i dont see the problem. 

II swear, some people have too much money. We got this K shaped economy thing going on. Or as andrew yang called it a decade ago, "the war on normal people." Basically, income inequality is leading to two self reinforcing feedback loops in America. You got "the bubble" where everything is fine and the values are the same as they always have been, and then you got the rest of america, where things are going to crap. I'm from the side of america where everything is going to crap. And it's not just jobs. It's income inequality and distribution. This K shaped economy means we get less and less, and that other demographic gets more and more. And for them, they really are in a bubble, everything is fine, they believe in all of those old world values so to speak like hard work, meritocracy, but for the rest of us, we gotta adapt, because this economy has been failing us in a big way. Even if we are employed, the work isnt paying what it used to, and everything is more expensive. In the 2010s, it was jobs, in the 2020s, its affordability. Same core problems, just different ends of the phillips curve. 

Companies dont appeal to the middle class any more. The middle class is no longer the middle of the income distribution. The new "middle class" is the "upper middle class", ie, the upper end of the distribution. It's that top 10% of the country that makes up 50% of the spending. And I know people always say the top 0.1% or whatever are the problem, and dont get me wrong, they are, but that petit bourgeoisie class in that top 10-20% of the country is a problem too. They're fundamentally conservative on economics. They make all the money and dont want their taxes to go up to pay for everyone else. They're big spenders. They're the ones staying at Ocean and Borgata and complaining about the curtains being more than a year old. 

They're the ones buying GPUs with gaming, and $70 releases. It's gaming too. We used to have affordable GPUs for all price ranges down to sub $100. Nowadays youre spending $260 for a 5 year old card that barely cuts it for AAA games. $500 is what it now costs for a 9060 XT 16 GB and don't get me started on Nvidia prices. I saw today the 5070 is now the most popular card on steam. I mean, wtf? That is like a $900 card right now, how tf are people affording this crap? Why do I always see people praising the fricking 9070 XT, a $800 high end card? Why does a 5090 now cost as much as a car? Again, it's all rich people. Businesses have decided they can make the most money appealing to a shrinking customer base of the most wealthy people, while the rest of us can just get screwed and stop being poor. We're getting priced out of our hobbies. The next gen game consoles are probably gonna cost $700 minimum, likely $1k. Ram is $500 for 32 GB. 8 GB is the bare minimum for VRAM but good luck finding a decent card that isn't one of those twitchy intel cards for under $500 these days. Crap just isn't working for most people. And it's because the top 10-20% have seemingly limitless amounts of money while the rest of us can work to the bone and go into debt trying to barely keep up. It's insane. The middle class dream in this country is dead. 

Same with vacations, to go back to casinos and the like. For most of my life, you could spend like $50-60 and get a decent hotel room. Suddenly crap's exploded where now you need $100+ just to NOT sleep with roaches and bedbugs. And then those affluent people will dunk on your $150 hotel room anyway since "oh god why would you ever stay there?" while spending $300+ staying in some luxury place. Again, I think a huge problem with the economy is some people just have WAAAAAY too much money. And our economy is distorting itself around them, at the expense of the rest of us. 

Even worse, there's a saying going around lately that seems to deeply resonate with my emerging understanding of the world in the past few years. Our society is a resort for rich people, and the rest of us are just staff. 

For the past century, we had Fordism being the defining trait of our economy and its consumerism. Employees should be able to afford the products that they spend all day building. That reciprocity is breaking down with this K shaped economy. In reality, our society is just serving an ever shrinking demographic of increasingly rich people, while the rest of us are struggling to maintain our accustomed living standards, or even beginning to decline in standards. 

You see this no more clearly than in a place LIKE atlantic city. Basically the "big casino" of the east coast (Widerquist's original analogy seemed to be based on vegas). You got a wealthy clientele coming in, places struggling to stay open, some making bank, appealing to rich people (the big three casinos make the overwhelming majority of casino profit and appeal primarily to the wealthiest consumers). Theyre renovating like crazy. To the locals, these renovations are probably sold to them as "job creation" projects where they're told the wealth will "trickle down." It never does, the "small casinos" (individual businesses/casinos) all pursue their own profits, which means paying people as little as possible while extracting as much work as possible, they deny responsibility for the larger condition of the city (a ghetto next to an ocean), and things never improve. The habits of this big casino become self reinforcing. Wealth concentrates at the top. The bottom and middle decline. The companies try to extract as much as possible from people, and when they have no more to give, they appeal to a smaller, wealthier clientele. THe rest of society just ends up existing to serve them, working the jobs to keep the system going, while reaping none of the rewards. Historically, we'd argue "hard work" is rewarded. THe more I look at the modern economy, the more I know that that's bullcrap. And it's one of the reasons I myself have abandoned the work ethic. 

And dont get me wrong, my anti work indepentarian philosophy tends to reject the idea of people being forced to work, even if the rules are, on paper, "fair." I dont just want reciprocity in a system i didnt agree to, I want freedom from said system. I dont wanna have to labor at all. But at least the reciprocity made it seem fair on paper. Now, we're left with an economy where most people are working themselves to the bone and have little to show for it. Even if they have jobs, they dont pay well enough and then charge rates for goods and services few can afford. It really is a war on normal people. And that's why people have been pissed the past decade or two. Because this decline is becoming increasingly apparent. It was apparent after 2008 when people were forced to take on crappy service jobs that didnt make ends meet. And now it's apparent as the businesses just stop appealing to the middle class at all, instead appealing increasingly to the wealthy with seemingly limitless amounts of money while the rest of us struggle to maintain our previous living standards and get by. 

This system needs to change. I've already talked about solutions, and yes, UBI is a solution here. But yeah, I just wanted to rant about stuff. 

Agreeing with Andrew Yang on just about everything

 So....I havent been following the Jubilee debates like I used to. Too time consuming to watch them and then write about them, especially when most people involved are complete idiots, but this time Andrew yang did surrounded with 20 AI tech enthusiasts. And you might think, wait, isnt Yang an AI tech enthusiast? I mean, the luddite types ACT like he is, but nah, yang, like me, takes a middle ground position, which...compared to these guys is the pessimistic position. The enthusiasts are...well...delusionally nutso on the subject. And Yang tries to talk some sense into them. So let's get to it.

Claim #1: AI will not democratize opportunity - it will accelerate inequality on a scale we have never seen before

For me, this is a no crap proposition. Because our economy is based on trickle down. We literally expect rich people to create jobs for everyone else, and that's how the wealth trickles down. And because businesses try to maximize profits by extracting as much work from people as possible while giving as little as possible back, the system inevitably trends toward inequality.

Of course, Yang is talking with entrepreneurs here. And they're all going on about how AI is GREAT for them, because they can do all of this stuff and don't have to hire people. But if they don't have to hire people...well, guess what, the job creators arent making the jobs. And if the job creators arent making the jobs, thats a problem with an economy that literally centers around job creation.

Of course, entrepreneurs have this attitude of wanting to make their own job, and there was discussion about how AI will help people become entrepreneurs, but not everyone has the ability or the drive to be an entrepreneur. Not all visions work, many fail, and Yang is right about unemployment and underemployment being severely understated in existing data. Our economy looks mostly healthy on paper, but in practice, it's pretty rotten.

Even more so, for all the talk of the luddite fallacy and how AI will create more jobs long term, that doesnt mean it wont be massively disruptive to the work force today. We literally live in a society that relies on people working to meet their needs. if they cant easily acquire jobs that give them money, guess what, they're gonna suffer. 

Not even getting into how more jobs isnt even a desirable goal. Like a big difference I have with Yang is I actively want to destroy this cultish obsession we have with jobs and employment. I think we gotta get over this idea that jobs are good and give people dignity. I just see them as servitude. But I digress, Im going on a tangent now.

Claim #2: AI is going to eliminate millions of jobs faster than new ones can be created

Also true, even if we did accept the idea like Yang seems to that jobs are desirable, AI is gonna massively disrupt the market. We like to rely on job retraining for people to get new jobs. Doesnt work. And something we dont like to talk about with the luddite fallacy, even if new jobs are created, a lot of areas where the old jobs existed are devastated. Take a look at the mississippi delta where the loss of plantation jobs causes that area to be one of the poorest in the country. Or west virginia, where the loss of coal jobs causes massive disruption. Or the rust belt, where automation and the shift away from the industrial economy is wreaking havoc. I mean, thats always how it works, the capitalist optimists just whitewash the consequences, and in reality, things always end up sucking for people. And I aint saying those jobs were good. Keep in mind, my stance is jobs suck and are bad. The plantation jobs were done by slaves before capitalism. Capitalism just changed the arrangements to wage slavery than literal slavery. West virginia's coal jobs were nasty and ruined peoples' health. But again, because the economy requires us to seek out jobs to, you know, survive, people fear losing them. We engineered a society where people fear not having a job more than having one in order to coerce people into taking them, and now people dont wanna lose them. It's why luddites exist, and why people fear AI. They know that AI is gonna disrupt the economy in a way that's not gonna benefit them. And to go back to the first claim, yeah, those structures WILL in fact accelerate inequalities. It's not gonna benefit a majority of people.

Claim #3: Universal Basic Income will become necessary as AI reduces the need for human labor

Okay, so this is where I deviate from Yang a bit. It's not good to frame UBI as a solution to an inevitable disruption to the economy. Because of that luddite fallacy. And because of that ironclad belief in jobs and work. These guys will keep the system going for as long as possible on its current trajectory, and like always, we'll just be expected to suck it up and deal with it. We live in an inhuman system that is socially darwinistic. People are expected to sink or swim, and if they sink, they die, and for all the talk of breaking points and people getting pissed off and not accepting it, the past 200 years shows an incredible willingness to accept it, an incredible willingness of the wealthy to use forced to reinforce their status quo (it's one of the reasons so many tech bros are even more into trump's authoritarianism than trump is, the state is ultimately an apparatus to protect their private property rights and they will literally repress the crap out of the population to protect their rights push comes to shove). Back to the people, the reason Yang takes what i consider the moderate position is most people seem to be lashing out at the idea of AI destroying their jobs than at the system forcing them to get them in the first place. And as we saw in this video, some people are just so skeptical of UBI that when framed as an inevitability, people will go on about how "they dont know about that" and still find ways to try to make this jobist framework work. Like they'll only accept UBI as a last resort, when it should be aspired to. We should WANT a world where AI takes the jobs so we dont have to work any more. This crisis is artificial and created by our social systems forcing most people to get jobs. And whenever waves of disruption happen, the people at the bottom are ALWAYS just told to suck it up and adapt. This is why, for me, human centered capitalism isn't just about reacting to automation, it's about changing our culture and our aspirations. We SHOULD have an economy that adapts to us rather than forces us to adapt to it. We SHOULD simply view work as a means to an end, not an end in itself. We SHOULD seek to balance economic growth and gains in productivity with broader metrics of human well being. These are ASPIRATIONS. And a world where we dont all have to work all the time should be an aspiration too. UBI should be SOUGHT AFTER BECAUSE it can transform society away from an economy based on economic servitude toward one where the economy actually serves us instead. It IS how we democratize the economy, giving everyone a basic standard of living, and giving people freedom to seek out the life they want. Like, UBI shouldnt just be a reaction TO automation, it should be the solution to capitalism's underlying problems that make automation such a problem in the first place.

Claim #4: The market will optimize for productivity and profit, not human dignity

And once again, Yang is right. Like, a lot of people view yang as a tech bro entrepreneur type, but he actually does have a more pessimistic view of the economy more reminiscient of mine. Corporations are for profit entities. Again, the purpose is to extract as much labor from people while giving as little back. And that's what the market is gonna orient itself around through this AI revolution. Most gains WILL go to the top. And we need ideas like UBI to actually offset this. Anyway i dont got much to say given I already ranted most of this out above, so moving on.

Debater claim: Being an AI optimist is necessary to get through this next period of immense technological transformation

Yang didnt really fully disagree with this, and neither will I. I actually think we should be SOMEWHAT pro AI. But keep in mind my own perspective. I want AI to solve that everpresent question of "okay if work sucks and we shouldnt do it any more, how do we address the necessary human labor we need done for society to function?" The long term answer IS automation. We SHOULDNT embrace luddite mentalities like more conventional liberals and leftists are doing. We SHOULD kind of ride the wave, embracing societal change, and letting things happen, merely pushing back against the current model of capitalism instead. But it seems like more people are interested in opposing AI (and by extension, UBI), and attempting to preserve the jobs system, because they have this misplaced idea that jobs provide dignity.

And there was discussion on this topic too. And how we need to find new ways to give people dignity outside of conventional employment. But even Yang is just too "in the cave" for me on this subject. like as one of those labor force dropouts, my own solution is a wholesale rejection of the work ethic, work culture, and the idea that we get dignity from our work. That is just a bunch of nonsense sold to us by religious fanatics who are against the idea of enjoying life, and rich people who use their ideas to brainwash people into WANTING to spend their time working. And now we got this entirely socially constructed problem where our society is changing, and our social conventions are just stuck in the past. Hell, that's the entire problem. Our system coerces people into submission, links "dignity" to said submission, and when the system no longer works, they suffer psychologically. However, rather than suggest the ideas are bad and we should change where we get our self esteem from, we keep insisting on more work and keeping the system going. Even Yang doesn't fully understand this it seems. He still believes in a lot of the work = dignity stuff and comes up with weird ideas like alternative currencies and stuff to keep people working in their own way. In reality, I think we should reject work, want to work less over time, and change our entire value system and disposition toward work in such a way that we throw out that old outdated work ethic and look at things more pragmatically. Again, for me and my vision of HCC: work is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Work doesnt provide dignity. We created this idea to keep people dependent on work. It's a system of psychological control. It's like giving babies crack cocaine, making them addicts, and then complaining when withdrawal happens and suggesting the solution is more crack. I mean, we're a very mentally sick society as I see it, and we need to change our attitudes on things.

In a way, this does mean Im more optimistic on AI than many people are. I DO embrace it. BUT...I still tend to have that more yangesque middle ground in which our current social conventions are dated, and incompatible with this emerging new way of doing things. It's not AI that's the problem, it's "inhuman capitalism", to contrast it with "human centered capitalism." The idea that humans exist to serve the economy and should adapt to the system or suffer/die. The idea that work isnt just transactional and necessary, but that it does give people dignity and purpose and that we should actively structure our lives around it. The idea that the purpose of life is to continue to grow the economy, reducing us all to economic inputs to produce profits that due to the ownership structure, most of us never see in the first place.

And I've said it myself, AI isnt the problem, it's the economic models surrounding it. It's the fact that tech bros are ramming it down our throats, taking their "optimism" for it to what i consider crazy levels. It's the fact that we're basically pursuing the idea with blatant disregard for how it impacts people or the environment. It's the fact that the economy is structured to benefit a minority while the majority suffers. And my own claim is that not even yang goes far enough in realizing how serious of a problem this is, and that we gotta be even MORE zealous about UBI, human centered, capitalism, and post work/anti work philosophy than even he is. We need to challenge these conventions. And that's where I get the same middle ground view Yang does to some degree, where I'm pessimistic about the future but also not entirely against AI. Because our economic model sucks, the power structures around it are entrenched, and it seems like most people are stuck in trying to preserve a crappy status quo that always sucked and I always longed to change in the first place.

I never grew up wanting to do XYZ. I always looked toward working with a sense of existential dread. I never grew out of this as I got older, and as the economy left me behind, and I researched how things really work, and I realized things dont have to be this way, I've decided to advocate for change, rather than push that same crappy status quo that I hate anyway. AI really can be our savior in terms of liberating us from a lifetime of economic servitude that many of us dont want, but have been brainwashed to accept for one reason or another. BUT...we have to break that brainwashing. And that's the big challenge of our time. Not AI itself. The fact that AI poses a problem points to deeper problems with our whole way of doing things IMO. 

And yeah, that's my stance on this.

Conclusion

I know I dunk on Yang a lot, call it "leftist infighting" or whatever, but at times like this, I realize the dude is still right on just about everything. I might have minor disagreements with him as expressed above, but seriously, like 90% of the time, i'm like "I agree with Yang." And how often do I agree with ANYONE 90% of the time? Not often. So yeah. He was spitting with this. And if anything his differences made his points more accessible to the entrepreneur audience when i personally...dont jive with entrepreneurship or that whole cultural thing. Im not a job creator. Im a disgruntled job seeker who hates the current system. But other than that, it's amazing how I can agree with him on so much where i still align with him on more than just about every more mainstream politician going. I really hope he runs for president again in 2028. 

Election Update 9/25/26

 So, I almost forgot about this. I just spent yet another week in atlantic city, came back today, and I'm tired as fudge. I almost forgot about this update, but I do wanna get it out tonight, so let's do this.

Senate

 

A lot has happened this week, a lot of polls came in, but all in all, not a lot has changed. New Hampshire has recovered a bit. Minnesota is closer than it should be IMO. Talarico keeps gaining steam in texas. El Sayed is doing okay. Susan Collins is kinda holding on in Maine. Troy Jackson is ahead, but by a relatively unhealthy 1 point margin. Iowa is now tilting democratic. Nebraska has been updated to also be tilt D. 

So...what can I deduce from this? Well, between this and the governor races, where republicans seem to be doing a bit better in the same states, here's my honest interpretation. This blue wave is more a negative reaction to Trump, rather than a rejection of the GOP at large. Federal races seem to have a strong democratic bias, but governor races have less so. It seems like there are split ticket voters who still lean republican, but are sending a strong message against Trump and his horrible management of the country. It's why Susan collins is still viable. It explains the apparent ticket splitting between state wide and federal races. Federally, the public is sending a strong rejection to Trump, but they're not really against conservatism at large. This is an important distinction, and something we on the left need to read correctly. 

The races where republicans are doing worst are in races with very strong trumpy candidates on the federal level. But at the same time I aint seeing a huge appetite for progressivism. El Sayed isnt doing as good as I hoped. Flannagan in Minnesota is underperforming. So is Troy Jackson. We saw in primary data that in most races, progressives generally underperformed moderates by 1-2 points. Not a huge difference, but enough to be noticed. And I think this explains some of the trends we're seeing. 

As an ex republican, I kinda get the vibe. When I left conservatism, I realized it wasnt just the current crop of conservatives that were bad, it was the entire ideology. But a lot of people can very well say that "well, it's not that all conservatism that's bad, it's just Trumpism." So they'll reject current guy, and then touch the hot stove again and again. It would be nice if people could wake up and realize that the entire ideology is bad, because it is, but sadly, a lot of Americans are brainwashed by "the cave" and are just like "well i dont like this puppet show, but I like puppet shows and you're bad if you don't." You try to tell them the whole puppet show thing is bad and they get angry and reject you. 

It's frustrating. It's like watching these guys touch a hot stove over and over again. You just wanna shake them and say THE PROBLEM IS TOUCHING THE STOVE. And they'll be like "no, it's just that particular burner" and keep getting burned again and again. But that's where people are at. For whatever reason, they dont like liberalism. Is it in part a messaging problem? Yes, despite the more positive polling of the moderate wing, I dont think moderates really offer a convincing message to voters. Most conservatives would rather vote for conservatives, and most liberals would rather vote for someone further left. A pragmatic moderate might look good on paper, but due to the worldview issue, they just dont appeal to anyone.

At the same time, that worldview issue is what makes americans so conservative. Underneath politics are deeper philosophical differences stemming from religion. The more hardcore Christian people are, the more conservative they are. Meanwhile atheists and agnostics are the most liberal. My worldview trends toward the latter. But your median American citizen is some flavor of Christian. A "moderate" Christian, like a casual catholic or mainline protestant, but a Christian nevertheless. And that serves to keep them in the cave and keep them moderate. And even as conservative screws them again and again, they'll keep going back to it because "well it's just that iteration of it, sure, neoconservatism tea partyism trumpism is bad but this time it will be different. It never actually is, because it's that ideology and that worldview that's the problem. But these voters never make the connection, they remain conservative as it fails them again and again. This is why I kinda think Americans are secret socialists, but also not really. Like the argument for "secret socialism" is that they clearly realize something is broken and are clamoring for change...but any time the change slaps them in the face, they're like "no not like that" and go on about how the solutions offered go against "their values." Well...did you ever consider your values suck? But I digress. I just wanted to explain where I see this election going. 

House

 

Sticking with the normal house model. When I take that other one I floated at face value, I get extreme volatility with just a few points difference. That's why it has such a low probability of dems winning. While the GCV currently aligns with this model roughly, a few points difference could drive the race to either be republican favored, or for democrats to win like 270 house seats. I dont see either of these outcomes as realistic. Looking at other models, they seem to align more with this specific model than the other. Fifty plus one kinda viewed the 270 dem house seats prediction as possible, but about as likely as republicans winning the house. I'm more convinced that we're likely going to see something between say, 220 to 250 seats for democrats, with 235 being a good middle ground. I could even say 220-240 with 230 being a middle ground. I dont see there being a ton of volatility here. 

 

 Governors

 

 While democrats dominate the senate, they're often having problems making the same inroads in the house. Especially down south. This gives us a more Obama era esque map, where the rust belt governors are seemingly outperforming the senate candidates in places like Minnesota and Michigan, but down south, Texas is still red, and Georgia is tilting red at the moment. We also see stuff like red New Hampshire. Again, I think conservatism is still alive in America, the problem is Trumpism. People aren't necessarily looking for a progressive to fix things here, they're more reacting to Trump right now. Doesnt matter that conservatism is a crap ideology with little to no redeeming features, a lot of people will trending toward it for ideological reasons, only to get burned on the hot stove again and again. 

Conclusion

 

 I guess that's where I'll leave it. Again, kinda half asleep while writing this, maybe a bit ranty, but yeah. It's where I've been thinking about it. In some ways, this map is VERY VERY good for democrats. But...it also seems to come with some nuance and lessons within. Maybe people arent looking for progressives and democratic socialists to fix everything atm (even though they probably should), they seem to reacting more to Trump in particular. It's how I best make sense of this data, since some democrats clearly seem to be doing better than others, even bucking state trends. Maine, Michigan, and Minnesota arent as blue as they should be. And then there's the governorships. Maybe I'm oversimplifying. I dont think progressives are not viable, and I'll remain stubborn that if we wanna fix America's problems, we NEED progressives to do that with bold agendas. Band aid fixes won't do it. And conservatism causes the problems in the first place. But that doesn't mean that most Americans are on the same page as us, even in this relatively populist era. They got too many ideological brainworms where they'd rather touch the hot stove again. And let's face it, often progressives make stupid and unproductive ventures into idpol and weird foreign policy spats when they should be focusing on economics. So even progressives often get lost as they focus on the wrong issues. That's frustrating too. But I digress.

And yeah, for the rest of this election cycle, you should expect weekly updates at minimum. Fridays/weekends at the very least, and maybe more often closer to the date itself.  

Discussing the White House Press scandal

 So, in typical Trumpian fashion, Trump basically banned the White House Press Corp and ended the practice of having the press cover events. This was a clear attempt to punish people for being critical of him, since we know, Trump is a super special snowflake who can't handle any criticism. 

Surprisingly, the courts are ruling against him. I say surprisingly because I was under the impression the president doesnt have to give access to media outlets. And let's face it, access to important figures is an important part of Noam Chomsky's propaganda model. Access normally comes with quid pro quo. Media outlets critical of political figures dont have to give them interviews and the like. I thought press access worked like that, with Trump being able to just say "no access" if he felt like it, but apparently the courts (and media outlets) are treating this as a violation of free speech. It seems to be because it's discriminary. it's a lot like labor violations. If you fire someone for trying to unionize, thats illegal. If you fire someone for any other reason, that's legal. So if you wanna fire someone for trying to unionize, you come up with some other excuse to make it happen. Trump's biggest sin might be the fact that he made the understanding that always existed too blunt. He's such a snowflake everyone knows he did it due to criticism, and its falling through.

Anyway, I feel mixed on this. On the one hand, i do believe all views should have access to the president, but they obviously dont. Credentialed journalists are credentialed in ways that have biases. No one adds Jacobin to the white house press pool, its always establishment media that has a corporate bias. And, if anything, this is why Ive kinda not cared about this. Like oh boo hoo, you lost access. If youre outside of the "acceptable" spectrum of debate, you never had access. Doesnt matter how valid your views are or aren't. You arent allowed. Youre discriminated against. That's ALWAYS been a thing. ANd if the president wants to make the existing understanding more blunt, so be it. 

On the other hand, I dont think that politicians should HAVE TO give media their time. I believe that free speech should guarantee everyone has the freedom to express their views, but no one is owed a politician's time. If a politician wants to dodge an interview with an unfavorable outlet, or ignore questions from them, they should be able to. Let how that looks come off as it is. I dont think presidents should HAVE TO answer questions from hostile media outlets. Even if trump is immature AF about it, I think the implication of the opposing view puts an unrealistic obligation. Should someone with my views have to answer questions from a fundamentalist christian or anarcho capitalist outlet? Should trump have to answer questions from, say, Jacobin? Id say no either way. Let the people decide how that comes off. I got news for you, only the president's die hard supporters sympathize with him, and most people on the left know trump is a snowflake. So who cares? 

Just...my view. I see where the argument is being made though, you dont WANT quid pro quo in arrangements like this. Im just pointing out the reality of how the relationships between media and politicians has always worked. And how its always been screwy. ANd yeah Im just like "oh gee, you LOST access? Imagine that!" (I never had it). But hey if the courts wanna rule this way, maybe some anti establishment outlet should sue to gain access or something. Ya know, kinda like how satanists take advantage of rulings in favor of Christians. If they do it why not everyone else? If those are the rules, what are the unintended consequences? And I know, the media will come up with some argument in favor of credentialism, but credentiialism is itself a de facto filter that shapes the views of those who have acess. Pro establishment views get represented, anti establishment ones aren't. And it's BS. 

The fact is, this is why i dont care too much about this one. Im glad to see trump get pushed back against, but yeah, i dont really believe american media access to politicians lives up to the legal standards being put forward here.