Cool story, but your point was that gaming is unaffordable these days and then you bring in surreal demands in terms of FPS targets that less than 1% of the audience cares about. The vast majority of games cannot even keep half that framerate on the fastest CPU. You're comparing ultra high end demands to mid-range price points and then say 'its not fair everything costs so much' and/or 'Why can't Intel make a faster CPU'.
So yeah, its quite hilarious to see you didn't get that memo right here. So great, you can now notice your mouse pointer lagging on the desktop at 144hz. I don't. Who's experience is really better now?
Diminishing returns is a thing, look it up. 24 fps or 60 or 144 or 240, its quite a stretch. There will always be a next best thing, that doesn't mean its something you'd need.
You know I'm on a 120hz panel too. I'm sure that a higher refresh rate will still be smoother, but the investment versus the payoff simply isn't worth it, and consistency suffers. Its better to have a slightly lower but fixed FPS/refresh than 'as high as possible' while only hitting it rarely. Why? So I can use my strobing backlight, which helps motion clarity far more than even 480hz would. I don't spend my days counting pixels or pushing my nose into my panel so I can spot the smoothness of my 240hz mouse pointer. I play games