"Comments have been turned off." 😂

Yeah, I bet they have cuz lil boi got rolled. Did he do this on his own or was he prompted to do this? For me, it's tone deaf and I have to wonder what the thought process was. I'm sure he had no negative intent, but good grief.

Had I been allowed to comment, I would have reminded everyone of the time when Phil Gramm told the US that we were in "a mental recession" and not a real recession back in 2008. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Links:

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7200937587908227073/

https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2024/06/05/thats-cause-no-one-can-afford-to-buy/

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202403/11/WS65ee5cfba31082fc043bbcd3.html

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/us-gdp-growth-head-fake-number-larry-kudlow-says-grain-salt

https://budget.house.gov/press-release/families-crushed-as-bidens-total-inflation-breaks-17

https://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KcTY8W6MXo

https://thejobmarketjournal.com/f/ha-ha-the-numbers-were-lies

https://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts

https://thejobmarketjournal.com/f/i-dont-even-care-to-live-at-this-point

https://thejobmarketjournal.com/f/like-the-house-crony-capitalism-wins

https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2022/04/04/when-the-pendulum-swings/

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1125110/12513883

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1125110/12975283

https://consaracytheories.com/f/your-dollar-has-lost-99%25-of-its-value

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

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

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

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 got a good one for you who's thinking about that song by Carrie Underwood and Miranda Lambert where they're like, got a real good feeling something bad's about to happen. Mm, hmm. I saw a post on LinkedIn, and it wasn't anything that I sought out. It actually popped up in my notifications, like, Hey, you should check this out. And I thought, Okay, well, what kind of drivel is this? Because no offense to anybody, but that's typically what pops up on these suggestions for LinkedIn. I really need to do an episode. I've talked about this before, why freelancing websites suck. I need to do an addendum or an updated episode about that same topic, because I saw the other day where work, sorry, I try to keep the daytime broadcast PG to PG 13, but that's what I privately call that platform work is making changes so that freelancers cannot have feedback removed unless it violates Terms of Service. It used to be that under extenuating circumstances, one time out of so many contracts, if you were top rated or top rated plus and somebody absolutely shanked you in the back for no reason, you could have their feedback removed. And as I've said on the air before, I think it was in that episode I recorded about what to do with a backstabby client, the day is coming where somebody is going to wind up subpoenaing private feedback. Because when you publicly tell somebody five stars, you did great, and then you privately tell the platform one star, this person was the worst a hole I ever dealt with my in my life, and it tanks their overall feedback and their overall job success score. One of these days, somebody's gonna really fight back against that if it hasn't already happened. So it's like they're trying to make their freelancers feel as awful as humanly possible, and it seems to really attract the lowest common denominator and some real scuzzballs In terms of clientele. If you're using the platform to find freelancers, you might do okay. And I really want to emphasize the word might. I have met some freelancers on there who did small assignments for me, and they did a fantastic job, and I would hire them again with no hesitation. By the same token, I've met people on there who did small tasks for me that were absolutely horrible, people who used chatgpt When I expressly told them not to do that. It needed to be original work and so on. I just think that platform is really going downhill. It was already not great, in my opinion. The way that it's set up, it seems to be so skewed towards the clients and the freelancers are treated like chattel, and it's only going to get worse. I feel the same way about LinkedIn. That's why I'm going off on this little brief segue. I feel the same way about LinkedIn. Just when you think the feed can't get any worse, somebody will be like, hold my beer and watch this. So this post popped up on my notifications. I'm not going to call out the name of the person who wrote it, although it's all public information, it's all on social media, I certainly could, but I'm not going to do that, because I want to be clear, my criticism is of the post. My criticism is of what I would consider to be the tone and the tone deafness of the post. It's not meant to be an ad hominem attack on the person who wrote it. I don't know the person. Have never met the person, presumably will never meet the person. So I want to be really emphatically clear that I'm giving you my opinions which could be wrong. I'm giving you my analysis which could be wrong, and I'm not attacking the person, the human being who did this. I don't know why he did this. I'm not sure why he thought it was a good idea. I don't know if he did it himself, or if he was put up to doing it by someone else, if he was coached to do it, if he thought it was a good promotion, I don't know. And we could speculate all day, but we just don't know. So there's no point in going down that rabbit hole. Here's the post, and I'll drop a link so that you can check this out for yourself and make up your own mind what you believe by most quantitative metrics, the economy is doing great right now, but if you are like most Americans, it feels. Quite the opposite. Why? And what can you do about it? Here are my thoughts and my takeaways at the bottom. First, let's take a look at some numbers. And this is also, by the way, loaded with emojis. First, let's take a look at some numbers, Gross Domestic Product, GDP up, 3.4% in q4 2023, and 1.6% in 2024, up is good. But instead of good, he's got up his thumbs up. So maybe he means up is up or up is good, I don't know. Inflation measured by Consumer Price Index, CPI, down from 40 year high of 9.1% in June, 2022, to 3.4% in April, 2024, down point 1% from march down is good. Thumbs up. I'm presuming that's what he means, S, p5, 100 index all time highs in 2024, higher is thumbs up. Unemployment rate down from 14.8% in April 2020, sorry, I was gonna try to get through all this without too much editorializing, but unemployment rate down from 14.8% in April 2020, to 3.9% in April 2024, lower is thumbs up. So why do just about all of us feel so crummy about the economy? It's probably a combination of two factors, a even though the rate of inflation has come down and kinda continues to do so, prices are still 3.4% higher today than they were this time last year, and this time last year, they were 4.9% higher than the year before that, which were 8.3% higher from the year before that. That's a 15% average increase in prices in about two years. In other words, just about everything costs a whole lot more today than it did two or three years ago. And we haven't forgotten and it's hitting our pocketbooks. Total household debt, including credit card spending and credit card payment delinquency, is also on the rise. B interest rates are high. The loans people can afford are smaller today than they were a couple years ago. Materials to build a home cost more as well, and credit card rates are higher too. Most of this, however, is outside of our control. So what can we do about it? A reduce spending on wants and focus more on needs? Oh, just a minute. Okay, I'm gonna, no, don't do it right here, Sarah, don't do it, although it's hard to cut back on things that we're accustomed to having. Ask yourself, Do I really need? EG, multiple streaming subscriptions? Question mark, probably not. Maybe I cycle through one every few months and save myself about $50 a month. Ideas like this and more can be found in a free money slash budgeting coaching program that I'm gonna redact the company name, although it's public, I could say it out loud if I really wanted to, and this, listen, y'all, if this was some kind of marketing campaign, they say in Hollywood that even bad publicity is good publicity, maybe that'd be the case. I don't know, but I'd never call these people. I would never call I just that's just that's just me. Personally, I would not call this person and ask for a damn thing. Now that's just me, because I personally find this to be insulting and tone deaf. Budgeting coaching program that blank company offers called blank, Google it and yes, it's really free. B this okay, gorgeous is hard. B, this kind of environment is hard on spenders, so be a saver instead and take advantage of the high interest rates. Money market accounts are yielding over 5% right now. High yield savings accounts are also doing great. Takeaway in sum, my favorite phrase from when I was an academic. A, quantitatively, the economy is actually doing great, but B, qualitatively, how it feels isn't work with a money coach. Increase your cash flow by reducing spending and start taking advantage of higher interest rates by being a saver, not a spender, then he links to some company URL for what he calls important disclosures. I legit have heartburn. Part of it is from the way that I interpret this post, and part of it is because I want to say so many things so freaking bad.

On June the fifth, I published a post about the quote no buy challenge, because LinkedIn, yet again, what a treasure trove is this platform. They had dropped an article about how the no buy Challenge is a hit. I. Yeah. And I was like, Yeah, okay, it's a hit because people don't have discretionary income. We need to quit labeling this like it's some fun, trendy little game, when the reality is people are broke. It shouldn't be a hot trend to not eat. But remember, we were told eat lentils instead of meat. Try skipping meals. Have cereal for dinner, etc. Your overlords do not give two poops about you. They don't care if you starve. They don't give a rat's butt. It's not trendy to just stop eating, nor is it trendy to live on the street or in a parking lot? I dropped a link to an article about exactly that, where more and more people are becoming homeless, and those homeless people, if they have a vehicle, are turning to life in parking lots. We're also told that clothing is not a necessity item. And I'm like, at what point did clothing not become a necessity item. Is everybody gonna live in a giant nudist colony now, there are times when it's difficult for me to even process the BS here. Now, little dude, little homie here, decided to turn the comments off. I assume he was probably getting absolutely roasted in the comments from the ones that are still up. It looks like that's precisely what happened, and he decided that he didn't want to deal with that anymore. If you can't take the heat, then stay out the kitchen. Don't post something like this that is going to strike a lot of people as completely freaking tone deaf, if you're not prepared for some backlash against it. I mean, that would be my most, my most apparent thought on that. But if I had found this before he turned the comments off, I would have reminded everyone of the time. And I've posted about this. I've blogged about it. I've talked about on the air before. In 2008 Phil Graham informed us that the United States was in a, quote, mental recession, not a real recession. We were just acting like babies, and we had some kind of mental funk, but the economy was fine, and look at how terrible. Look at how absolutely rancid things became in oh eight and oh nine. That was a very difficult time, a very, very difficult time. I don't look back on that time fondly. Along about 2010 2011 you could see light at the end of the tunnel, and it didn't feel like it was the light of an oncoming train, but it really took some time. I mean, that's it's one of those things where it's like no growth, years, years of your life, where you feel like I'm not going to get ahead. I'm just going to have to be like the meme or the poster of the kitten with its claws and the curtain saying just hanging in there. I'm going to have to just get by. I'm going to have to focus on my survival during this period of time, because the Getting Ahead is not going to happen. It's not feasible. I've always said on this podcast that I wanted to operate with a lot of raw honesty and authenticity and be transparent and pull the curtain back, I feel the same way about 2024, 2020. Was tough because of the pandemic, yes, and because of unemployment during the pandemic, and the stay at home orders and all of that. But I will tell you for me, personally, as well as anecdotally, what I've seen people around me, my friends, my family members, having conversations about the same topic with them. 2024 has been harder than 2020 work has been harder to come by. The opportunities that are out there are typically not great. I'll just be honest and say it typically not great. I've been fortunate in that I have had some really good clients that had really good projects and wanted to come back for repeat business. Having those relationships and nurturing those relationships has been huge for me so many times this year, I felt like the story in the Bible about Elisha and the widow woman, and where he tells her, take every jar that you have and the Lord will provide the oil for you. That's what it's been like. There hasn't been getting ahead, there hasn't been having extra it's just been the jar is always just full enough for us to get by and to survive. But I don't know of anybody that's walking in high cotton and they feel like they're feasting on the fat of the land, like this is John Williams talks about on his. YouTube channel, we're getting into this scenario of the have nots and the have yachts. So it's really not even the haves and the have nots anymore, because the middle class is steadily getting decimated. So it's really becoming people who are poor and then this very small sliver of the population that's filthy rich. This is another reason why I look at a post like this and I'm like, little dude, I think about that scene in malice, where I feel like, I quote from malice a lot. It's a good movie. It's like, weirdly under underrated. I think Nicole Kidman tells her, like, soon to be ex husband, you're playing in a league that you are just not ready for. That's how I feel when I read a post like this. It's like, little homie, you're playing in a league you are just not ready for you're not built for this. You're not ready for this. You don't need to be doing this. You don't need to post something like this. And if somebody goaded you into doing it for marketing purposes, I would really go back to that person and be like, Why did you do this to me? My name is attached to this. People are looking at my photograph and throwing daggers at me because I have done this. Now. That's just my opinion, and it could be wrong. Now I want to go back through this. I tried not to get too editorial the first time through. But, ooh, yeah. I mean, I have so much heartburn. I'm like, this is just, well, it's like, Phil Gramm, you're, y'all Stupid idiot. Peons are in a mental recession. You're not really in a real recession. Meanwhile, in my opinion, we're in a flipping silent depression. Stuff is bad out there. In my post tornado episode, I was talking about this, you see these signs of recession, of economic depression, of don't give a damn anymore. The people that went up on the roof and put a comforter instead of even a waterproof tarp, they just said, the hell with it. And they put a comforter up there. I mean, who does that? Fences falling in? People leaving inoperable cars to rot, people leaving their kids toys all out in the yard for the elements to destroy them. It's it's just not looking pretty out there. More and more homeless people. That's another thing. In my little, small area of the Midwest, I've lived here for over 40 years, and thinking back 80s and 90s, I honestly do not remember, and I'm talking about in small town, like little, little, teeny, small town, Midwest. I'm not talking about a major urban area. I'm talking about small town. Everybody kind of knows everybody that kind of place in the Midwest. I don't ever remember 80s and 90s. I don't ever remember seeing a homeless person downtown. The closest thing I can remember. When I was in high school, there was a man who was a drunkard, and one time, and he was, I hate to use a Mayberry comparison here, but I will, he was kind of like an Otis Campbell. He was a drunkard, and a lot of people knew him almost like as the town drunk. So he would be out on foot a lot because he could no longer drive. Frankly, it wasn't safe for him to be behind the wheel of a car because of his drinking problem, but we would encounter him outside the gas station. Sometimes we would walk down there to get like, chips and candy bars and teenage junk food, and he'd be outside the gas station, but that was the closest thing around these here parts in the 80s and 90s that I ever really remember. But now it's like you see people at all hours of the day and night wandering the streets because I have nowhere to go. But you expect me to believe quantitative, weird economy is doing great. I don't flip and believe you. All right. Let's try to go back through all right, so All right. So is his argument here is, by most quantitative metrics, the economy is doing great right now.

We could just stop right there. They cook the books. They lie about the numbers. I don't really give a hot damn about these so called quantitative metrics, because if you lie about the numbers, if you're putting in bogus BS data on the front end, it doesn't even matter what numbers you get out, the whole thing's tainted. I GDP supposedly up, I don't believe that inflation supposedly down. I don't believe that now as far as S, P and stock market manipulation goes, that's probably true, but we know, I mean, think back to. Two, the crash of 29 we know or, Oh God, the one that was, was it Black Monday that was in 87 we know that markets can be manipulated. We know this. We know that the stock market can be used as a little private casino for the fat cat. So I really don't give a crap about that either. Don't care, but the s, p and the stock market. But the thing of it is, I can't just sit here and say I don't care. I don't believe it. I have to back my information up with something. I know some of you might get your feathers ruffled by this, but I think sometimes it's useful to read about us, politics and US affairs from the lens of other countries. It does help if you can speak a foreign language. I mean, I have read about things going on in Russia. I've also read about things going on in the US, in the Pravda, I know people will say, Oh, God, Sarah, that's an old, old old propaganda and old Soviet propaganda newspaper. And I get that, I just think it's really interesting to be able to see what's happening from a different lens, a different perspective. If you think that we don't have propaganda here, I would cordially invite you to read more about Mockingbird. So there was an article that appeared in China Daily about this very topic, the GDP. I'll read a little bit of this for you now. Of course, I'll drop a link so you can check it out for yourself. This is written in English. I don't speak Chinese, so fortunately, it is written in English. For example, it is simply absurdly untrue and genuinely fake news that the US is outperforming all of its major trading partners, or that China has a stagnant economy, anyone who bothers to consult the facts and elementary requirement for a journalist, good for them, can easily find out that such claims are entirely false, as will be shown in detail below. Factually, the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, the US official statistics agency for economic growth reported that the US GDP in 2023 rose by 2.5% by comparison, China's GDP increased 5.2% but a series of US media outlets, starting with the Wall Street Journal, instead, proclaimed that The US economy grew 3.1% over the last year. This fake news regarding US growth was created by statistical cherry picking, in this case, comparing only the last quarter of 2023 with the last quarter of 2022 which was an increase of 3.1% but not by taking GDP growth in the year as a whole last year, but US growth in the earlier part of 2023 was far weaker than in the fourth quarter. Year on year, growth in the first quarter was only 1.7% and in the second quarter only 2.4% taking into account this weak growth in the first quarter of the year and the stronger growth in the second US growth for the whole year was only 2.5% not 3.1% as it is perfectly easy to look up the actual annual figure, which is precisely published by us statistical authorities, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this was a deliberate distortion in the US media to falsely present a higher US growth rate in 2023 than the reality. End quote, I gotta tell you what's going on over here in the Chicom media sounds a lot more rational than the crap we're getting. If it offends your sensibilities to look at something from foreign press, we'll go to Fox business.com, us, GDP, growth, a head fake number. Larry Kudlow says, take this with a grain of salt. I would say you would need to take it with a lot more than a grain of salt, unless that grain of salt is about the size of a boulder. As for his points about inflation, do you think that inflation peaked at 9.1% I personally do not. I'm going to get to things other than just I personally do not. But to be anecdotal, I remember being able to go in a store like Dollar General or Walmart and buy a simple, plain loaf of white bread for 99 cents. And even though it's not the healthiest option in the world, I usually keep some bread like that around to feed the birds and the chickens and the ducks. It's not something they need to have all the time, every day, but it is a nice little treat, and they like it. Even the wild birds like to come up get little pinches of bread, and it was affordable 99 cents to go get a loaf of bread like that and have something to feed to the wild birds and the squirrels and the chickens and the ducks. No big deal. But now that same loaf of bread that had been 99 cents is a buck 65 I was. A math major in school, I grant you, and I am not a trained economist, but when a 99 cent loaf of bread is now a buck 65 that's not a nine or 10% price increase. Okay, there was an article published on budget.house.gov, of course, I'll drop a link to it. You can check it out for yourself. It states that a family of four, and this was back in 2023 presumably it's gotten worse. Since then, a family of four was paying $15,133 per year more to purchase the same goods and services compared to the day that senile old man took office, total inflation since the senile old man took office, 17.1% and I don't blame it totally on any one particular administration or one party. As you know, I don't get into red versus blue, donkey versus elephant. In my opinion, we're screwed either way. Six in one half a dozen of the other. Does it really matter somebody's gonna stab you in the back? Does it matter if they using a knife with a red handle or a knife with a blue handle? No, it doesn't. So they peg it at 17.1% if we go over to shadowstats.com It tracks based on the chart I'm seeing here, it tracks about the same 17 to 18% the blue line is right around the halfway point between 15 and 20% that's not oh well, inflation has only been nine to 10% and you peons are being a bunch of whiny little babies. You need to just get over it. Something that was 90 cents is now 99 cents, and you want to have a big boohoo party about it. Things are quite a bit worse than that. On his point about the S, p5, 100, I will drop a link to a video that Lynette Zang published May 25 of this year, titled The recent stock market highs are really just lies. She does a better job of explaining it, much better than what I could do. As I said earlier, you have to remember that the cronies and the fat cats treat the stock market like it's their own personal casino, and things can get really high and really unwieldy right before it all crashes and goes to hell. So I'm not overly impressed by what's going on in the stock market or the S, p5, 100. You also have to consider how many Americans are not in any way, shape or form, invested in the stock market. So what's going on there is really of no day to day consequence to them either. Now one bugaboo for me, the unemployment rate down from 14.8% in April 2020, to 3.9% in April 2024, I'm going to straight up, that is my bailiwick. That is my area of expertise. I'm going to flat out call on all of that over on the job market journal, I published an article last year, haha, the numbers were lies, because what they're doing is they're going back. They're giving you these supposed blowout jobs reports and telling you churning and Vernon doing great, all these supposed open jobs for every one unemployed person, if you're struggling, it's your own damn fault, because the jobs are out there aplenty, and then they are going back and quietly revising the numbers to show that the job market is in the twilight.

I've been blowing the whistle about that for a while, and across a number of platforms, anywhere that I can get on the air, or type something out on a post or a blog. I do it because people deserve to know the truth, and there are a lot of people hurting. I also published an article on the job market journal, and then I did a follow up episode here on this daytime podcast about people who are feeling so down and out about their job search and their lack of options, that they are feeling suicidally depressed. That is not the sign of a robust economy and a resilient labor market where there are tons of open jobs, tons of open jobs that pay a living wage, they're just ripe for the picking. Returning again to shadowstats.com the information that they have on their unemployment charts now they show it being around 35 36% in 2021 and then being closer to 25% now I would differ on that just based on my experience and based on what I have seen in real time in the job market, and I work across the country on a variety of positions across industries, I think that it very well may have been 35% or better in 2020 when you have. People getting the stay at home orders, some of the mom and pop shops that closed never opened up again. Some of those places have totally faltered. Some of the people who got the Triple P loans thinking that that was going to be some great panacea, have figured out that that was not the case for them. I think that in 2021 and 2022 you still had enough people working, and you did have the great resignation going on, particularly in 21 by 22 I was already seeing the early warning signs, and I got on the Causey consulting website and told you when the pendulum swings, and believe me, it's going to swing and it is going to get ugly. I warned you about that. I also linked to that article from the intercept a bazillion times about the leaked Bank of America memo. We hope conditions get worse for the average worker. Well, what in the hell did you think was going to happen corporate America, like crony capitalism in general, is like the house in Las Vegas, they're going to win. They have stacked the deck in their favor, and they are going to win always. I would say for a while I was putting unemployment between 15 and 20% based on what I was seeing, that's statistically what I would have put it at. I would actually agree with Shadow stats that it's at least 25% I would say at least 25% based on what I have seen thus far in 2024 at this point, if I were laying my odds, I would say that it's probably between 25 and 30% I really believe it's gotten considerably worse. I've said before that I feel like content creators should own their own bias whenever possible, and I want to do that about myself. Anybody who tells me that the unemployment rate in April of this year was 3.9% I'm I'm tuned out. I don't believe that. I fundamentally don't believe that. I feel that there's way too much evidence to the contrary, especially when you go back and you look at the falsified numbers and how they're quietly revising them so that historically, it will be clear that we didn't have a churning and burning, robust, resilient labor market with two legit, open jobs for every one unemployed person. I also warned you I was on the leading edge, if I wasn't the very first person, by God, I was in the leading edge of warning you about fake jobs posted for optics.

Now people who heard your jobs are fake. Nobody's getting hired. It's all bull. Mm,

hmm, maybe you need to quit listening to hot air and hopium bull crap artists that lie to you. Then you would know it a lot faster. So this man's assessment, why do we feel so crummy? He's laid out what he believes about the numbers. If the GDP is up, inflation is down, the S, p5 100 is up, and the employment rate is down to 3.9% and in his mind, the high was only over 14.8% which I do not believe, and I also don't believe that it's anywhere near 3.9% right now. But okay, why do we feel crummy? So it tells us that we've had a 15% plus average increase in prices in about two years. Everything costs a whole lot more. And we haven't forgotten, total household debt, including credit card spending and credit card payment delinquency, is also on the rise. I do believe that total household debt is on the rise credit card spending. We've heard these dystopian stories about people using buy now, pay later for groceries, and someone said, I shouldn't have to go into debt to buy a carrot. Credit card payment, delinquency, I've heard that auto payment delinquencies and repossessions, all of those things are on the rise. In fact, some of those numbers are as bad, if not worse, than they were during 2008 2009 so I believe that everything costs a lot more than it did two or three years ago, and that no one has forgotten. Why would they were all squeezed and pinched. There's no room to forget it. Total household debt is up. I agree with him on that. I would say that there's been more than 15% that's has been the increase in prices. It's certainly been more than what he quotes earlier, 9.1% I think it's been even more than 15% interest rates are high. The loans people can afford are smaller today than they were a couple years ago. Materials to build a home cost more. As well, and credit card rates are higher too. Yes, I agree with that. He says that most of this is outside of our control. I would also agree with that. It's one of the reasons why I believe prepping is so important if you think that you're going to beat the system. God bless you. I recorded that episode called you're not going to beat the system after I watched Oliver Stone's JFK for the first time, and I was like, holy poop. If a sitting president is not going to be able to beat the system, a sitting president is not going to really be able to lash out against crony capitalism and get away with it. You, and me, we got no hope, no hope at all. So I agree with his statement that these things are outside of our control. Now you can amuse yourself with the idea that voting harder and choosing which knife that you want to get stabbed with, the red one or the blue one, you can LARP and play games and imagine that that's really going to be helpful for you, if you want to. I'm not going to tell you to not do those things, but I would agree with his assessment that these basic components are outside of our control. So what's his prognosis here? What's his what's his diagnosis? What's his recommendation, reduce spending on wants and focus more on needs. Do you know how many articles and news stories I saw of the same exact flavor, oh 809, they were everywhere. Quit buying coffee at the coffee shop. Clip coupons go for BOGO sales, it's just this real, what I personally would label as being common sense and condescension. Cancel the cable. Be a cord cutter. Just rely on what you can get over the air. Don't buy coffee. Don't go to fast food joints, if you do go when you can clip a coupon. I remember one time my friend Erica and I had gotten some coupons for Wendy's, but you could only use one coupon per visit. So what we did is we went inside and we had a meal, and we used our coupons, and then after we got done, we were going to use the other coupons so that the next evening for dinner, we could have the other discounted meal at home. So we used the first set of coupons dining in and then we went through the drive through, and the people saw what we were doing, and they laughed, but they were totally compassionate, because they're like, everything is so expensive and everything is so hard right now, like, we totally get it and we're not going to penalize you for what you're doing. It's common sense, the idea that you should try to save money and not waste money on frivolous But we're past the point. Here's what I would say, We're past the point. That's like millennials who say that when they get advice from Boomers to stop going to Starbucks and to stop eating avocado toast and then they can buy a house. It's bunk. And that totally is bunk. We're past the flipping point where scrimping and saving to scrape together an extra 100 bucks a month is going to do a damn thing for you. 100 bucks now is what $20 used to be. Five bucks now is what $1 used to be. So it's like skipping coffee, brewing some coffee at home and not having avocado toast is probably not going to yield enough money for you to really be able to live high on the hog and to solve all of your financial problems. You live in a crony capitalist hellscape, and it's not your freaking fault. It's not I'm not telling you that everybody's a victim and everybody needs to sit at home and get in a cry closet. I'm telling you that you live in a crony capitalist hellscape. So all this common sense kind of advice about reduced spending on wants and focus more on needs. Have a no buy challenge. Don't buy clothing. Go naked. You might get arrested. You might become a offender, but just quit buying clothes because you don't need them. Don't buy food either. Skip meals. Don't buy meat and get protein. Just eat lentils instead. Take the bus, have your pet put to sleep. Remember that? Remember that dystopia, don't give vet care for your pet because it's too expensive. Just let Sparky die instead. And you're sitting here like, oh my god, you know, the fat cats have a lot of advice for the peons. How about y'all go first. You think that the earth is overpopulated and that the average person is a cockroach that needs to be eliminated? Why don't you guys go first? Let's try that out. First. Does someone need multiple streaming subscriptions? I would agree with. This idea that they probably don't. I don't know off the top of my head who's paying 50 bucks a month for multiple streaming subscriptions, but there may be somebody out there who's doing that that could stand to cut that out. But let's, let's think about this as well. Because, like I said, I saw tons of these, what I would call pejorative and condescending type of articles during the Great Recession, like miracles would happen if you just stopped getting a $3 cup of coffee when you went out. So 50 times 12 is 600 per year. What is really going to be absolutely revolutionized in your life with that amount of money? I'm not saying it won't help you. Don't get me wrong. I'm just saying, is that enough money to absolutely revolutionize somebody's life in this inflationary economy, probably not. This kind of environment is hard on spenders, so be a saver instead. Go get a high sa go get you a high yield savings account. And for the record, I don't give you advice. I don't tell you what to do or what not to do. I'm not a financial advisor. I'm not a financial planner. I personally do think a Hisa can be a great idea. Here's the thing that you have to think about. And whenever I got this advice, it totally helped me, and it really took the scales from before my eyes. It sounds really to go get a Hisa for like, five 6% and to sit there and watch your money multiply. However, if the rate of inflation is higher than what your Hisa rate is, you're not actually making any money. Whenever I learned that it was like, like the moment in the cartoons where the light bulb goes off over the top of someone's head, and you're like, Okay, I get it. This makes sense. Another component to think about, with savings account or with high says, more specifically, is the value of the dollar.

I posted an article over on the conserracy theories blog on April 19 of this year, your dollar has lost 99% of its value because there was a conversation over on the Daniela Cambodia show on ITM trading. I continued to subscribe to them even after Lynette Zang left, because they're still having good guests, and they're still having interesting content. They interviewed this Swiss banker named Clive Thompson, and these are the things that he talks about. He says your purchasing power is being eroded, literally by the day. He also says that when you really look at the true statistics, your dollar has lost 99% of its value. So this is another thing to consider with your savings accounts and your high says you're putting fiat currency in there that has already lost so much of its value. So even if you're getting a five or 6% return on it, it's a little bit like, Okay, you have this devalued thing. It would almost be like if you took a square of toilet paper to the bank and they said, well, we'll give you five to 6% more of a toilet paper sheet. When you come back, you see what I'm saying. It's kind of like, how if you times zero by five, it still comes out to zero. So I'm skeptical. I understand that his little prescriptions here are very standard, but I'm skeptical that any of his information is going to really help someone who's poor, working poor or middle class to get ahead. The economy is rigged. I've said it before. Inflation is theft and the economy is rigged. It's rigged so that middle class people, the poor and the working poor are not going to get ahead. So let's say that you follow his advice. Okay, let me get my calculator back out. Hang on a second. All right, so we've got, we've got this person who is going to save $50 a month by cutting out multiple streaming subscriptions. So they have 600 bucks a year. Let's let's be generous and say a five and a half percent high. So let's say they put that $600 into a HYSA at five and a half percent. What are they going to get for that? 33 bucks?

33 bucks times 12. 396. so now, after this like two year period of. Saving they still haven't cracked $1,000 okay, this is why Dan Lok says, Whenever you are running into these situations where you've got more month than money, you don't have a saving problem. You have an income problem. That's what it's really going to take. Now look, I don't give you advice, I don't give you what to do. I don't give you advice. I don't tell you what to do. I sit here on an opine for your entertainment only, and that's it. So I cannot tell you what to do or what not to do with your money. You need to talk to a professional about that. In my opinion, Dan Lok is spot on. What it's going to take to survive is making as much money as you possibly can, and then taking a look at what investments you think are sensible with that money? It may be that you feel like putting that money into a high yield savings account makes the most sense. It could be Investing in Precious Metals. It could be putting the money under the mattress like granny back in the Depression. I don't know. I don't tell you what to do, but I do agree with Dan Lok, it's, it's a matter of income. It's not a matter of, well, I'm gonna scrimp and save and maybe at the end of two years, I'll have $996 and won't that be grand? It'll be worth even less when it when you think about your purchasing power being eroded literally by the day, it will actually be worth less. It will have less purchasing power. So you're not even going to have $1,000 at the end of two years using his flipping scenario, and it's not even going to be worth two years from now, it won't even be worth what 1000 bucks would be worth today anyway. That's why I see stuff like this, and I'm just like, God bless America, man, yeah, I get that. Everybody wants to be a commentator. Everybody wants to, hey, I'm gonna help the peons. And it didn't look it didn't set well with me. I didn't like it. I'm sure that the person did not mean any harm. I'm sure that the person who posted it was not trying to come across pejorative or snooty. In all actuality, I'm sure he probably thought that he was being helpful. It, just for me, really came across tone deaf and on top of that, not actually helpful. Judge for yourself, in my opinion, the smartest thing somebody can do is have a good sense of emergency preparedness, because if we do get into an SHTF situation, you'll thank yourself for the provisions that you made ahead of time that might buy you some time towards survival. It might buy you some time to make some good decisions for yourself and your family. Whereas, if you are in a scenario like the tornado that we experience where the poo poo hits the fan one night and kaboom, life is suddenly different. If you haven't prepped, you're just going to have to live on your wits and hope for the best. Stay safe, stay sane. Really think about who you're listening to and for what reason, and I will see you in the next episode.

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