The Causey Consulting Podcast

Disposable Narratives & Throw Away News

May 18, 2023
The Causey Consulting Podcast
Disposable Narratives & Throw Away News
Show Notes Transcript
Key topics:

✔️ The news that small businesses are pulling back on hiring the most since June 2020 should be a major headline. Everyone needs to know this information.
✔️ Who is still buying based on Jim Cramer's advice?!
✔️Financial manipulation is a very real threat. Not everything is about obvious shows of force.

https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/04/11/disposable-narratives/

https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/05/01/more-disposable-narratives/

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/09/jim-cramer-betting-on-home-depot-could-be-a-win-right-now.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/16/cramer-home-depots-miss-shouldnt-surprise-anyone-it-could-be-much-worse.html

https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/small-biz-owners-hit-brakes-on-hiring-5292737/


Links where I can be found: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/01/30/updates-housekeeping/

Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/

Unknown:

Welcome to the Causey Consulting Podcast. You can find us online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com. And now, here's your host, Sara Causey. Hello, Hello, and thanks for tuning in. In today's episode, I want to talk about disposable narratives. And why I think it is very important for you to look out for yourself and your family and to stay informed, to try as best as you can to find reliable information. And to look around at what's happening in real time in your area. Use your own eyes and ears to suss things out. Because I think if you're relying on the mainstream media to help you, you're doomed. standard boilerplate standard disclaimer here, I don't give you advice, I don't tell you what to do. I'm not a professional financial planner, or advisor. If you have money issues or financial issues that you want to talk out and hash out with somebody, please consult a professional, that person is not me, I have no way of knowing what your individual situation is like, and I can't render any kind of advice about it. I will tell you to call me on a tour and to look out for yourself and to let the buyer beware because there are plenty of sharks and weirdos and con artists in this world. On that note, I've written before on my blog about these disposable narratives, and how it seems to be that a story is pushed and pushed and pushed. Basically, it's just crammed down our throats, until it's no longer of use to the politicians to the corporate overlords to whomever and then it just gets watered up like a piece of paper and thrown in the garbage. To me this begs the question, if the stories were correct, and true, they had some validity. How could you watch them up and throw them in the trash at a moment's notice? And then switch over to something else? Something else that might be completely contradictory to whatever you were pushing before. It makes no sense. Yet we're expected to swallow it, hook line and sinker. And it just boggles my mind. On April 11 of this year, I published the blog post disposable narratives. And there's a picture that I took of a headline. There's one job for every two applicants right now and other happenings in the world of work that we get from the treasure trove. That is LinkedIn. And I right notice how disposable these media narratives are. When the message no longer conveys the right story to the peons. It goes in the trash fast remember this. And then I take a screenshot of what we saw from July of last year, which was open jobs made surprise jump in July, where we were told there were still two open jobs for every one unemployed person. And it was up one point not from 1.9 in the month of June. And I right. You should remember it. We heard it parroted constantly on every outlet you can think of except mine to legit open jobs for everyone unemployed person labor shortage account. Now that these narratives are no longer needed, they are tossed aside. Yet what happens to the people who believed this nonsense? Unfortunately, the mainstream media and their corpo puppet masters don't care about that. In fact, I often wonder if they sit back and have a laugh about people who listen to their silly nonsense, and take it seriously. And then I dropped a quote from one of the podcast episodes that I recorded on November 3 of last year titled A job market suckers rally. Just tell people what they want to hear. And in that episode, I said prediction alert if talent had actually won this talent war in the long term, wouldn't the economy look quite a bit different? Would we see leaked memos about how the balance of power needs to go back to Corbeau? America? Would the Fed want to see unemployment going up to use the phrase du jour Come on man. This feels like the call before a sudden rabbit punch knocks you out. Unfortunately, that's what's going on in my opinion. I also write bear with me here because I know I will get some pushback. But what if the whole to legit open jobs for every one unemployed person was a bullshit narrative from the beginning. What if it was fake as F from the start? I was reporting last year that I thought it was an insane story. And it did not match with what I was seeing in the job market every day yet only just now, are we seeing mainstream media articles in the vein of Whoa, gang. Maybe that labor market is so hot right now, after all. Yeah, I also made a prediction. In that blog post, you're reading the early warning signs now, because corpo America wants their power back. They also want you to RTO without griping. They're preparing to dispense with the previous narratives, because those stories no longer suit their purpose. Keeping you quiet and pacified, is no longer necessary. The goal is now to put a shoe firmly on the back of your neck. I have told you, I don't even know how many times between my blogs and this podcast that if corporate America and mayors of the cities and their cronies on Capitol Hill, if all of these power brokers say you're going back, you're going back. Hello, this is not without precedent. Think back to the beginning of a situation where we were told to go home and flatten the curve for two weeks. Look at how long that two week period of time lasted. And then everybody did it. Everybody did it. When you are faced with do this or go to jail. The National Guard is going to be posted at strategic places on the road to turn your ass back. Unless you're going to a hospital. What how? How are you going to rebel against that? And so it is with the economy, there are ways to manipulate you financially. They don't have to bring the National Guard out and declare martial law for everything. They just make it so that you'll starve if you don't go along with the agenda. I just wish that more people would wake up to that reality. On May 1, I published another blog post called more disposable narratives. And I go through a list of some of the disposable narratives that we've heard. These include 3.5%, which is now by the way a 3.4% unemployment rate allegedly, to legitimate open jobs for every one unemployed person. No one wants to work anymore. labor shortage. Oh, oh, all men are lazy and living in someone's basement refusing to work. The great resignation will go on forever. Corporate America has really accepted remote work and the balance of power has permanently shifted. We will have a nationwide strike against RTO. Everyone will sit at home refusing to return we won't have mass layoffs. Okay, we see mass layoffs but only in big tech slash Silicon Valley. Yeah, okay. And I write have a headache yet. We get a sea of disposable narratives that are easily chucked in the bin as soon as they are no longer useful to the mainstream media and its corporate handlers, whether they are true, is irrelevant. We see two headlines that I've highlighted side by side one was published on April 28, and one was published on April 29. So within a 24 hour period, we get these two headlines. gig economy is much larger than thought a key development for these workers that was published on Yahoo Finance on April 28. Over on MSN, we find the gig economy boom is over. Has workers go back to traditional jobs Bank of America says that was published on April 29. What? So the gig economy is experiencing a boom, it's much larger than we thought this is a key development. Or no, the gig economy boom is over. And workers are going back to traditional jobs. Hmm. Yeah, maybe you can make sense of all of this. I certainly struggle with it. And from that MSDN article we learned people may not be as interested in gig opportunities as they were a year ago per Bank of America Institute report. Per economist Anna Zhu. I hope I'm saying that right. I don't know. The reversal is partly because of weaker consumer demand for some services. But this could also be due to attractive wage growth and traditional jobs. And I asked where is the attractive wage growth from traditional jobs. I'd also like to know where the people are who've decided against gigging when you can get on any freelancing website and see 10 or 20 times the number of proposals that you saw in 2021. Perhaps a few folks who tried it out out after a layoff or who decided to rebel against RTO tried it, realize it's not an automatic boon of riches and left, that is completely possible, but to act as if hordes of people are leaving the gig economy on mass? No, I'm not saying that. And I'll tell you, I'm still not seeing that. You can look at a request for proposals that back in 2021, everybody would have said, no, what a joke, the pay rates low the working conditions suck. It might have had no proposals at all, it might have had less than five. And now, that same kind of dog crap work, we'll have more than 50 within like a 48 hour period. But yet you expect me to believe that all of these people have left the gig economy in favor of traditional jobs, because they want that attractive wage growth. Right. Right. Yeah. And as I say, the last line of this more disposable narratives blog post is if we were making up a satirical novel or movie, we couldn't do a better job of orchestrating nonsense. And yet, the nonsense just goes on. And it goes on and it goes on. Speaking of which, if you go to Google right now, as I'm recording this, I'm sure it will change. But right now, as of Wednesday, when I'm sitting here recording this episode to go out tomorrow. If you Google Jim Cramer by Home Depot. Two headlines from CNBC pop up. One is dated from May the ninth and the other is dated from May 16. The one dated May 9, and I'll drop a link to all of this so you can see it for yourself. You don't have to just take my word for it, please. The one day that may the night says Jim Cramer betting on Home Depot could be a win right now. Okay. Then, from CNBC, the same outlet. The headline dated from May 16. Jim Cramer. Home Depot's Miss shouldn't surprise anyone. Oh, my God. I mean, first of all, who is still taking stock tips from this guy? I mean, I would think after all that stuff with Bear Stearns, it would just be like, Oh, my God, I would listen to the neighbor's dog before I would listen to this guy. What does he have to offer us in terms of concrete, good stock market advice, I that apartment is also just wow, who still does that. But this is what I mean, disposable narratives. Push a message doesn't matter if it's true. Doesn't matter if it's right, or it's fair. Just push it, push it, do what the corporate overlords tell you to do. I think that people still have this naive and idealistic picture in their mind of journalists. As scientists, for that matter. I don't think scientists behave much like scientists anymore, either. But that's a whole separate point that I'm not going to get into because I'm already shadow banned on certain platforms. And I certainly don't want to make that worse. But there's this idealistic picture that people have journalists like scientists, I want to examine this story. I'm going to come in tabula rasa, a blank slate, I'm not going to imbue any opinions, I'm not going to set an agenda, I am going to wait and see where the evidence takes me. I'm gonna gather things from all different perspectives, and then allow myself to write based on the preponderance of evidence. I think you have plenty of people who still believe that not everyone, because I think some people have woken up to the reality that the mainstream media is just a complete effing head trip. But there are some holdouts that really have this scrappy, old fashioned notion of a journalist, as a scientist, I'm not going to bring any bias in, I'm just going to report on the facts and let the audience decide for themselves. Or if I'm writing an op ed or an investigative journalism piece, I'm going to go where the preponderance of evidence leads me. I want to try to get the real scoop here. No, there are plenty of journalists that they make up their mind ahead of time what the story is going to be. Or they're told by an editor, who in turn is probably told by a corporate Overlord, what the narrative is going to be and then it's all about making the story fit the conclusion that they wanted it to have in the first place. Lest you think I'm just talking out of my backside and I don't even know of when I speak. I do. I've been quoted in the media before. I know what those requests for quotes look like. And they very often I'm with a, hey, here's who I am. And here's what I want. I want people with this kind of background, this type of credential, and I want them to talk about this specific topic. I want to find out why blah, blah, blah. And then they tell you what they intend to write about and what angle what spin they want to put on it. And that's that. You can try to be a maverick, you can try to say, well, I know that this journalist really wants to push hard for remote work is going to last forever. I feel like I owe it to the truth. I owe it to the pursuit of truth, I owe it to the people who are going to get steamrolled by what's coming the economy to tell the truth as I see it, which is no remote work is not going to last for everyone forever. Corporations are not going to roll up the sidewalks on their corporate real estate and turn it into housing for the homeless or shelters for dogs. It's not gonna happen. You can try to be the Maverick and the rebel who sends a quote in anyway, but they're not going to use it. They're going to look at it like Can't you read pal? Don't you get this article is about remote work is going to last forever. And that's what we want to tell everybody. I see plenty of that. going on within the HR, staffing and recruiting world. That's what you're supposed to say. Things have become so candidate centric, and we have so much Kancil culture going on, that people are scared to make any kind of statement, that might upset the applecart but also be a reflection of truth. So they're not actually putting out information that's helpful. They're not telling people an uncomfortable truth that might save their career that might save their finances that might help them get through a great recession to point out. No, instead, they just want to, I'm making an obscene gesture here. They just want to goof off. And until people fluffy lies, oh, if somebody demands RTO it's gonna really hurt their recruitment. Oh, it's going to hurt their retention. Oh, it's going to hurt their employee engagement. By golly, no, it won't know it won't know, at the front end, maybe there might be some stirrings of an office rebellion. But once people go and look at the job boards, they start calling recruiters and finding out Yeah, so about that 3.4% unemployment rate, that's a big effing line. And you're not going to find something quickly. You might want to stay put, it's easier to find a job when you have a job. Once they get a big bite of a reality sandwich to quote Martin crane. They're gonna backpedal and say you know what, maybe it's better Friday from for me to stay. Maybe it's better than I cool my jets a little bit. I'll Greg to my spouse and brag to my best friend about how much I hate it here. But I'm not just going to parachute off the cliff and hope I can find another job quickly in the middle of an economic downturn in the middle of hiring freezes in the middle of layoffs in the middle of budget cuts. As I've warned you before, we're only seeing the stories that make the nightly news. We're only hearing about large companies with some brand recognition. You're not hearing about the mom and pop shops that are laying people off. We're not hearing about those small to maybe medium sized businesses all over this country that are struggling. The closest we've gotten to that is an article that showed up on LinkedIn yesterday, by way of the Wall Street Journal. Small Biz owners hit brakes on hiring. The number of small businesses set on hiring in the next 12 months as its lowest point since June 2020. Soon after COVID onset a Wall Street Journal survey shows that says the central bank's 10 interest rate increases in 13 months start to slow the economy and inflation Well, I'm gonna button and say has inflation slowed yet? I'm not seeing it and make employers less willing to meet higher pay demands from prospective workers. Another survey by business coaching firm Vistage worldwide, showed the proportion of entrepreneurs who expect to expand their workforce is steadily declining since March to 45% this month and quote, that needs to be a headline that's freaking everywhere. Yet, here's something interesting. In the midst of this posting, you still see people on LinkedIn arguing. There's one person who writes I have heard the opposite from local small business owners, and it's like, Oh bless your heart. You know, are you are you writing that to keep the algorithm happy? Are you doing that to posture? Is it true? Oh, God. Oh, yeah. Yeah, okay. Sure. Good. The lowest point, small businesses set on hiring in the next 12 months is at the lowest point since June 2020. Soon after COVID onset. Yeah, so allow me to re remind you probably for the 5,000th time about the article on the intercept Bank of America's leaked memo, we want the balance of power to come back to corporate America, we hope conditions get worse for American workers. Okay, and then in this article, we find and make employers less willing to meet higher pay demands for prospective workers. The great resignation for white collar work is over O V, E, R, and it has been for quite some time. Now. If you are still listening to some shitbird, who's out here telling you just job hop across the market, play it for a joke, you'll you're gonna get a big fat pay bump, every time that you leave, to legit open jobs for everyone unemployed person 3.4% unemployment rate, the balance of power has not gone back to corporate America, if they take too much of a hardline stance, it's really going to hurt them. God help you, God help you seriously, because you very well may find yourself out on the street with no job and no prospects. And at that point, you may discover that being unemployed right now is kind of a scary thing. People are not just immediately rebounding. This is not the FOMO and the Yolo. And the intensity that we saw in 2021. It's not, it is not. And I just I hope and I pray that you stay aware of that, that you steer clear of these disposable bullshit narratives. The onus is on you, to look out for yourself and your family, to know about the health of the company that you work for, to have some idea if you're in an industry that's growing, that's maintaining or that's dying off. I don't give you advice, I don't tell you what to do, I would merely encourage you to stay informed, to stay aware. And to be very, very careful of bullshit artists. People who are all the time pushing toxic optimism, toxic positivity, they don't want anybody to prepare. They don't want anybody to go in fact check things for themselves. They just want people to go oh, well, this, this person said in a mainstream media outlet that the job market is still great. So I guess I should believe them because that's what I want to believe. Be careful with that. Please, please be careful with that. I just remember how tough things were during the great recession, the people crying, the number of phone calls and walk ins we got at the place where I was working for people begging literally begging for a job. I don't want that to be you. I would much rather that you wind up being prepared than scared. Stay safe, stay sane, and I will see you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a quick second to subscribe to this podcast and share it with your friends. We'll see you next time.