The only correct amount of ram is the amount that covers your work load. Full stop.

Incorrect, as you immediately point out in the second half of the sentence.

Yes windows could use less ideally.

The correct amount of RAM is the amount that covers your workload and the baseline overhead of supporting components, in this case, an OS.

As a general rule, windows uses significantly more RAM for baseline.

But we can’t keep pretending that 8 gigs of ram is remotely fucking acceptable for ever.

Agreed, but we can push back on them pretending that it has nothing to do with their (subjectively shitty) choices.