Seems kind of silly to ignore that javascript enables much more robust user interfaces. It can and is used poorly or maliciously, but it's used for far more than cosmetic or financial reasons.

What is "much more robust" even supposed to mean? It sounds like meaningless marketingspeak. The countless number of sites that break the back button, scrolling, general navigation, showering my eyes with distracting animations, or show some stupid popup when I select text make me lean towards the UI being much better without JS, and indeed I keep it off by default.

I once had a site beg me to enable JS "for a better user experience", one which didn't need it to work. I did, and promptly turned it off again when I realised what the "better" actually meant (see above). Not going to fall for that one again...

When I want to read an article in a newspaper, I don't need a "robust" user interface, I need the text and (sometimes) the pictures. Links to other relevant content are a bonus. This could be done with the very first web browser.

Yet for some reason (hint: money) newspaper websites load megabytes worth of scripts to display kilobytes of text.