I understand what you're both trying to say and I think you're talking past each other.
A new person entering the market doesn't have the option to rely on a backlog of games and if a component in your rig failed tomorrow it would be exhorbitantly expensive to replace it even if it were a budget rig.
The more budget you go, the harder it is to replace existing components because lots of things are incorporated and solder together as a cost cutting measure.
So say you're a new gamer hoping to buy a rig. New or used you're screwed right now even if all you want to play are AA or indie games and you never touch a AAA game. Buying used is going to be expensive because theres now a high demand for used hardware because new hardware is exhorbitantly expensive.
So even if what you say is true and we can all just get by with budget hardware, that hardware is still going to be prohibitively expensive and the reason is Generative AI and capitalism.