The Economic Police State Is Coming For The Working Class in Little and Big Ways

What do the Supreme Court’s student loan ruling, Netflix sharing rules, Costco aggressively checking membership cards, return to office plans, and increases in homelessness all have in common? The Economic Police State operates on a system of surveillance, control, and seemingly random rules, randomly singling out people to take economic blows, that build up silently to intimidate the working class, while setting the narrative so you, the worker, enforce the wealthy capitalists’ order for them while judging your fellow worker. It starts with little things, subtle mechanisms to increase profits by charging more and paying workers less, taking small comforts away from the customer and employee experience while blaming so-called freeloaders, so you cheer on the capitalists’ attempts to recapture their profits rather than have class solidarity with those affected. But in its more serious form it knocks the most vulnerable off the economic ladder in the hopes that the masses will gaslight them.

Episode notes (always rough, may contain errors):

• We’ve already talked quite about employers enforcing more workplace rules, no work from home, being far more picky for good jobs, but there’s bad changes on the consumer side too.

• The Economic Police State sets the narrative so you, the working class, enforces the wealthy capitalists' order for them.

• They are using enforcement, surveillance, and “small” changes to push profits out of the working class both as workers and consumers, and for the corporate class to assert its power dynamic. And they are pitting workers against each other to fight their battles.

• Sets up the tone for "everything's fine, it's just you" or "you must be doing something wrong."

• They bait the "good upper middle class worker" to look down, sneer, and taunt those who are down with ease, and accuse them of stealing.

• The "I pay my bills" comments are rampant on anything related to student loans.

• Increasing prices to pad profits is just the start

• The difference between the economic police state and straight-up recession is that the former picks off the most vulnerable and gives them the most punishment.


• Side hustles and the creator economy are drying up. Fewer DoorDash deliveries available, less capital in the tech sector. This means people are forced back into the low wage slave economy.

• Shawnee, KS bans roommates
https://www.kcur.org/housing-development-section/2023-05-10/shawnee-kansas-co-living-ban-roommates-federal-lawsuit
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8e9bWVG/

Buying a home and living with roommates can get you out of the landlord system. Email me at [e-mail] to get a great real estate agent anywhere in the USA. (Licensed by the California DRE # 02101592)



• Spying on workers to get more productivity, distrusting workers and sending them back to the office. Saying remote workers are pretending to work. Making us look like we’re working is more important than productivity.

• Companies less generous in helping customers during
bad economic times. No mercy when they're trying to recoup profits.

• Bad customer service is the fault of
big companies making cuts but they use workers as a shield - More Perfect Union video explains it well: https://youtu.be/6JhobRAWDzg

• Netflix sharing issues, Costco going crazy with membership cards

•The cuts to customer service, hours from COVID have become permanent

• These things tend to be permanent

• Cuts from 2008 still in effect today

• Industry consolidation accelerates
with bad economic times

•Real estate agents turning to fraudulent investment schemes, creatives turning to copyright trolling, have to keep the facade with fraud (as Patrick Lovell says)

•People doing the bidding of capitalism is a big part of the economic police state

•Promoting an “I've got mine” attitude. The political and business leaders are booking an everyone for themselves, Royal Rumble-type attitude. Workers fighting each other.

• Making workers a part of enforcing capital's rule

• Call center subreddit is veers into pro-company and anti-consumer advocacy and work from home subreddit still has some anti-worker sentiment and especially gets upset at “low-skilled workers” and those with disabilities

• Politics Done Right podcast featured documentary series "The Big Con" with Patrick Lovell discussing how Americans were fleeced during the 2008 recession: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6hpelT4R3gevrqRZBarzBB?si=d2cmwVfJSvypXunZw2Pm_w
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7mXbxbZX7mxqpEiMkHvf8g?si=RABQCm7HTi657BJ0eH5KqA
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0klPQx

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
This is the Fixer Punk podcast,the podcast that sometimes enjoys listening to hold
music. I'm Grayson Peltier. Sotoday the Supreme Court handed down its ruling
on student debt forgiveness, and justas expected, they struck down President Biden's
student loan debt forgiveness plan, andPresident Biden is taking some actions to mitigate

(00:27):
the damage from that, with atwelvemonth on ramp period where there wouldn't be
any negative credit reporting or default ofyour student loans if you can't make the
payment, and pursuing options to canceldebt under the Higher Education Act, which
is different from the law in questionin the Supreme Court ruling. But as
big of news as this is,I am seeing a much bigger trend in

(00:50):
the overall economy coming in with reallyreally subtle indicators, things that you wouldn't
even think of as being an indicatorof any sort of bigger economic or political
trend, very like little minor,basically minor consumer disturbances that point to economic

(01:11):
turmoil and trouble ahead. Things likethe Netflix password rules where now you can't
really share your Netflix password with peoplewho don't live in your same household,
costco constantly checking your membership card,acting like a bouncer at a club.
When you're going to self checkout.You've been you've had your membership card checked
at the front. They're checking itagain when you're at the checkout, checking

(01:34):
out again, checking your receipt whenyou leave, which is normal for them,
but some people are saying that certainlocations are getting pretty darn aggressive about
checking it to make sure that you'renot using somebody else's card, even if
it's like a family member who's sickor to sable. You can't use their
card. You have to go andbuy another membership for yourself. Those types
of little consumer disturbances, cutbacks incustomer service, and then, of course

(01:57):
the work place problems that people areseeing, the aggressive push for return to
office, worsening work conditions, problemsgetting good quality jobs, like there's still
no shortage of crappy jobs, butin terms of good quality jobs, people

(02:19):
are reporting that's way way hard toget good quality jobs. All of these
little signs put together and even biggersigns, bigger signs of distress that are
but are more localized, like stockmarket looks fine, it's doing better than
we expected. Inflation in America isbetter than other G seven countries. President

(02:45):
Biden's talking about Bidenomics, which Ithink is a good positive thing. I
think he is doing many good thingseconomically, the investments through the through the
American Rescue Plan, through the bipartisan Infrastructure Law, through the Inflation Reduction
Act, all amazing positive things.But there is this undercurrent going on,

(03:07):
almost as if it's like an insurgencybuilding underneath our noses that wants to put
in what I have called the economicpolice state. And this is a very
subtle way of, without there beinga full recession, a way of economic
elites trying to regain their power andreally their profits by any means necessary.

(03:34):
And this is very similar to whathappened around the two thousand and eight recession
as well. Companies are just generallynot being as generous, and there are
changes going on in the economy rightnow that basically set the tone that everything's

(03:55):
fine. It's just you that's havinga problem, or you must be doing
something wrong if you're suffering economically rightnow, because on a macro level,
economy is fine, but there arepeople struggling and suffering anyway, but it's
because they're being picked off by littleminor things as well, and there are

(04:21):
the little indicators that we see.It's basically anything and everything that can be
done to increase corporate profits and controlshort of full on straight up crashing the
economy, and you're seeing money beingpulled out of random places. Right now.

(04:46):
The economy overall overall is fine,but there are these different places,
and it's generally that is picking offpeople who are most vulnerable. The difference
between an economic police state and justa straight up procession is that the former
picks off them vulnerable and it givesthem the most punishment. So on the
work side, you see like theyou see, of course, problems with

(05:09):
work from home jobs going away.Those are things that people with disabilities,
people who live further away from bigcities need, people who can't afford to
commute extremely long distances, people whoare priced out of housing markets. That's
going away. Side hustles and likethe creator economy are drying up. Stuff

(05:30):
like influencers that those types of positionswhich are giving people representation and voice in
media that wouldn't have access to theconventional media system. Those are drying up.
Journalism. A lot of new mediaorganizations get seeing cuts even like random

(05:53):
gig economy stuff like DoorDash like peopleare saying there are fewer DoorDash deliveries available
because people aren't spending as much moneyright now. And what this is doing
is it's basically just saying it's basicallyjust taking people who have succeeded beyond the
way the system wanted them to succeed, basically telling them get back in line,

(06:15):
get back into the low wage slaveeconomy. Okay, you're making good
money. Is like an Uber driverdoord ash driver, no, come back
to McDonald's will take you back inwith open arms. And they're pushing them
back. People who have maybe gottensuccessful in their own small business, they're
getting pushed backwards. Two. Andit's not by some massive, massive economic

(06:41):
change. It's by these little things. And the reason why it's by these
little things is Number One, theyhope the annoyances that they're creating to increase
profits that they're not going to gonoticed. They're thinking, oh, yeah,
you'll just put up with the factthat now you can't share your Netflix
pass where you're just going to paysome more money you're going to costco.

(07:02):
You have to deal with being stalkedfor your membership card in like three different
places, and you're going to startpaying out more money for that, And
they're like, okay, well,if you're a good participant in the economy,
you're just not going to notice thestuff and we're going to make a
little bit more money. But theother part of it is that they want

(07:27):
to basically make people believe it setsthe It sets a tone. It sets
a tone of that things are beingcracked down on in the economy a little
bit. Companies are just not asgenerous, even on the consumer side or
the worker side. So it kindof what it does is it sets up

(07:48):
a dynamic and us versus them dynamic, a good guys versus bad guys type
dynamic where if you're the one enforcingthe rules on your fellow worker, you're
the good guy, but if you'rethe one who is breaking said rules,
you're unsuccessful and you were the badguy. So like, if you're trying

(08:13):
to save you're trying to save yourdisabled love ones some money by shopping for
them at Costco, you're the badguy. You're working at Costco, still
better paying the most retail places,but still possibly not not like a living
wage, except if you're like ina union location, you're a good guy.

(08:37):
The other The other examples during yetmore stark, are the things that
happened in two thousand and eight recession, where you had people who are working
for banks and collection agencies. They'rebeing given gift cards for foreclosing on the
most people. Those people are desperateenough, the workforce, the mercenaries running
the collection ecosystem for the banks weredesperate enough that those gift cards weren't incentive

(09:01):
to them. But they're like,yeah, you're the good guys. Here's
a pound the back. Here's agift card for taking away the home of
your fellow worker. And again,these things are very you go from the
very very settle to the very veryvery extreme, but they're all kind of
the same thing. They all havethat common element of control and adversarialism,

(09:22):
those two elements of the elites takingcontrol, while there's adversarialism from by the
normal worker toward other fellow citizens.And the thing is that fellow citizens actually
do kind of want to do thesethings, sometimes without being prompted, without

(09:48):
being given a gift card or apound the back for it. And the
student loan debt narrative is one oflike the key examples of the economic police
state being enforced by fellow work classpeople. What they're doing is is that
media generally baits the quote unquote goodupper class middle good upper middle class worker

(10:09):
to look down, sneer and tauntthose who are down with ease and accuse
them of stealing in some way.So in these online narratives around student loan
debt forgiveness. The reason why mylatest video on the Supreme Court ruling on
student debt forgiveness has no comments isbecause one of my videos on that,

(10:30):
one of my hast views viewed videoson TikTok ever, actually got a ton
a ton of hate comments from justpeople saying, you took out the loan,
you need to pay it back.Why should I have to pay for
you? Why are you not workingharder? Why are you not working one
hundred hours a week to pay offyour student loans? I work hard,
I shouldn't have to pay for you. That's all just training the mind to

(10:52):
oppose your fellow workers instead of opposingthose at the top. And the conditioning
is clearly working so that narrative isbeing set up that I pay my bills.
You don't pay your bills. Sothere's a good versus bad narrative there
that's being set up and is allpunching down. Another interesting example of this

(11:18):
I just heard about was cities thatare banning people from living with roommates,
which they tell you, oh,yeah, go live with roommates, But
there are cities now like Shawnee,Kansas that bans more than three people from
living in a house that are notrelated to each other. So that's another
way of enforcing this. It's alsohomogeneity community stuff. Hwas have been doing

(11:41):
that crap since the beginning of whenhoas existed, but this is happening more
and more, and that is againpicking off people for economic gains, for
the gains of the landlord class,to be able to sell more or real
estate at a higher price, orto release more real estate at a higher

(12:05):
price, because maybe if you havemore more roommates, who could actually buy
a home. And that's one ofthe best ways to like to like get
yourself out of the system. Iknow interest rates are pretty high right now,
but there may be coming if westart to see some softening in the
housing market. A good opportunity tobuy and if you want to look into
that whole co living thing. Ifthey're this is this is a small minority

(12:28):
of cities and towns they're doing this. But if you have like people you
want to buy a house with,there are all kinds of risks and controversies
to that, and I probably needto do a whole episode on it.
But if you're at all interested inbuying a home to get yourself out of
the landlords system, please give mea call on my office line six five

(12:48):
seven two six seven three to six, or email the Grayson at off Speed
Solutions dot com email address. I'mactually licensed real estate agent and I refer
out to other agents across the entireUnited States who can help you with that.
If you're in a position to goand do that, I'd love to

(13:09):
be able to connect you with somebodygreat who can help you with achieving that
goal and get you in the rightplace where you're going to be able to
use your financial leverage that you havenow in the best way possible, or
to plan for the future when youmay you may have a little bit more
leverage. Shameless plug aside, butthat is what that's what we're seeing,

(13:37):
is we're seeing, we're seeing theseways of setting things up to have us
basically fight each other. And thenof course you can't have a police state
without surveillance. So you have allthe workers in the workplace. This is
definitely the thing you just have likespying on workers. You have the people

(13:58):
who have had to like put mousejigglers in for them so that they're they're
always look like they're online. Thereare these tracking apps and stuff like that.
There was a whole scandal around JPMorgan Chase with tracking apps and their
employees. And of course you knowthe employers who are saying remote workers are

(14:20):
pretending to work instead of working.Elon Musk was the one who said that,
And really it's about making you lookand feel like you're working, rather
than productivity itself. Like constantly beingsitting at your desk and constantly pretending to
work is probably anathema to productivity.So what they want to do is is

(14:41):
they want to make they want totire you out, and they want to
make it make you look, makesure that you always look like you're working,
make sure you're always conforming so whenthey come around, they can physically
come to your desk and they cancheck to see, oh, Yeah,
this person looks like a good worker, be who is in line in the
factor reline of our little system here. That's kind of a common thread here

(15:03):
is they want to be able tooversee and micromanage you and make you feel
less than And if you don't fallinto that, then you get knocked out,
You get you get thrown out ofthe royal rumble of the American economy.
So they keep narrowing people out bygetting them out on these little things

(15:26):
before they lay down the big hammerof dropping the entire market down, which
could pick off even the people thatthey like a little bit more. And
this is all. This is alla thing about having no mercy when it

(15:50):
comes to recouping profits. And they'reinstilling this into other people. And if
we're talking, if we want totalk historically, we want to talk about
two thousand and eight and also theearlier parts of the COVID pandemic. This
stuff tends to be permanent. Westarted to see after the two thousand and

(16:14):
eight economy economic recession, we startto see a lot of cuts in jobs
and a lot of a lot ofjobs going away, a lot of stuff
being taken to, like just freelancework, minimizing workforces, industry consolidation,
all of that stuff sticks, andthen in the COVID pandemic, we start

(16:36):
to see companies cut back on customerservice. So you have a lot of
workers who are who had jobs doinglike customer service and stuff like that,
low low end, low wage jobs. Companies cut back on those things.
They're like, Okay, let's replaceour customer service workers with a chatbot,
and let's just say if you callin and you get put on hold for

(17:00):
two hours, oh yeah, it'sbecause of COVID because we had to cut
back on things because of COVID.We had to cut back on hours because
of COVID. But now we're seeingthat those cuts are becoming permanent. So
they're like, okay, another waywe pick off people, the superfluous support,
we pick off consumers. So consumersthat need extra support or help from

(17:21):
our business, we're kicking them offtoo, because we're not going to give
them as good of service as theywant. We're not going to help people.
We're not going to help our customersas much. We're going to make
ourselves completely inaccessible. So if you'rea customer with a problem, you got
money taken out of your bank accountfor the wrong reason or whatever, We're
going to make it impossible to reachus. So then again we pick off
a little bit of money from you. And when you're stuck there, sitting

(17:45):
on hold for two hours, youjust give up. You hang up,
and boom, extra ten bucks hasgone from your bank account. And when
you do get to somebody, theperson you're going to get to is a
frustrated, low wage worker, probablymaking less money than yourself, maybe even
working overseas. But we are insulatingourselves from the criticism. We live in

(18:12):
a castle. We the owners ofthese companies that are screwing people over,
live in a castle that is impermeableand guarded by an army of these customer
service people. There's actually a reallygood video that shows this from more Perfect
Union, a YouTube channel of aof a pro labor media group nonprofit,

(18:34):
and I'm going to link that inthe description because it goes into a lot
more details about like customer service andsort of the economic and political sociology behind
that. Very interesting stuff, andoverall, urine and I've got mine type
attitude while also fighting for the capital'srule. Oftentimes the attitudes will get confused

(19:03):
just like on the student loan thing, you have people making seventy to one
hundred thousand dollars a year who arefighting against people who are making fifty thousand
dollars a year. You have thatdynamic going. But then even in this,
in the little things, in thelittle things in customer service, you
have people who are making very littlemoney, and you have people who are

(19:33):
making very little money working in customerservice jobs, and those people are going
against the customer and going for thecompany. They're like, every time the
customers are asking for the company todo something, then I'm not u.

(20:00):
I'm not happy that these customers areattacking me, which yeah, you're you're
not going to be happy, Butthen you're not taking the position of the
customer. You're taking the position ofthe company because that's kind of how you've
been conditioned to as a customer serviceworker. They're like, oh, yeah,
these customers are just complaining so much, which, yes, we totally
oppose people who are excessively complaining Karen'sand stuff like that. People that make
the lives of customer service workers worseare contributing to their own poor customer service.

(20:26):
That's a big position that I reallywant to drive home is that people
who are contributing to the pressure andthe oppression over low wage service workers are
causing their own problems with customer serviceand causing people to not want to enter
these jobs and not take these badjobs. Low wages are enough, but
if you're being abused by people,that makes it even worse. But you

(20:52):
have like a there's like a subredditfor call centers and you look at it
and yeah, it's very like procompany, like these lowage workers or then
are now just saying all these thingsthat are varying favor of the company.
And they're like these people that arealways complaining about the company's policies, it's
such a problem. Why don't theyjust shut up and not be upset about

(21:12):
the company policies and just follow themand the company's policies oftentimes the reason why
people are complaining about them because thesepolicies have problems, They are bad for
the consumer. Sometimes they might beblatantly illegal. And you're punching down again.

(21:33):
And on the workplace side, onthe employment side, employee versus employee,
the work from home subreddit, yougo there and you see there's some
answer. There's been a good amountof people on that subreddit that are going
pro union, a lot of thankfully, a lot of good talk of people
saying, now that my company isforcing people to return to the office,

(21:56):
I am going to support a union. And that is a great thing because
people are discovering the value of aunion. They're like, Okay, I
was told that my job would bepermanently remote work or permanently work from home.
I moved across the country, Iuprooted my life to make sure to
have the life that I really wantedto because now I can do all these

(22:17):
things because I have a permanent remotejob. And then they're like, no,
you have to return to the officeas of next month. And people
are realizing that just the word,the verbal word of an employer isn't enough.
You need selling solid, you needa collective bargaining agreement to protect you.
So the work from home subreddit,I am so so glad there's been

(22:38):
a little bit of radicalization there.So that's that's a good thing. But
what you do also see there isyou see them a lot of times,
like again punching down, you seeyou see them. You see people saying,
well, all these people are askingfor remote jobs. All these people
are asking for work from home jobjobs, yet they have no skills.

(23:02):
They they're not the people who shoulddeserve this. You have the deserving people
who deserve a work from home joband people who don't deserve it. Somebody
even said that people seeking a remotejob have to realize that they're that what
they're seeking, that seeking a remotejob is tantamount to wanting to play in

(23:25):
the NBA, which is just preposterous. They're saying it's the most competitive space
for work right now, when thereare tons and tons of jobs that are
in offices that can be done remotely, and there are tons of people who
need that accommodation in order to beable to hold down a job, people
with all kinds of health issues,disabilities, barriers to employment, no transportation,

(23:49):
skilled people that can do great work, and they're just bagging on them
and telling them that this is thehardest thing in the world, and they're
just protecting themselves. Elves, I'vegot mine. I'll just throw you out
of this royal rumble so that Ican stay in here and grab the chip

(24:11):
for myself. And then aside fromthese like court of public opinion type things,
there's some stuff that goes on withthe whole with the economic police state
coming that is that is actual legalenforcement and involves the courts. There is

(24:36):
a really good documentary podcast series calledThe Big Conu with pachelor Patrick Lavelle.
It discusses mostly the two thousand andeight recession. It's on a podcast called
Politics Done Right. I'll also linkthat that example that I gave earlier on
a people who are working doing foreclosuresin the two thousand and eight recession and

(25:00):
we're getting gift cards and getting incentivizedto foreclose on fellow workers. That was
from Patrick Lovell's documentary series or fromthis podcast Politics Done Right. I think
it may actually be like an actualvideo documentary. But I've been just been
listening to the audio documentary and they'rereleasing new episodes. I think they're up

(25:22):
to like episode three, talking aboutcorruption in the financial system, the financialization
of the American economy, how thefinancial markets are sucking so much out of
the economy that's basically killing off thereal economy itself. That derivatives or something
like, I don't know. Ithink he said that for some of these
financial firms Goldman Sachs in particular,most of their money was made just based

(25:47):
on manipulating money in the stock market. Just like I said, people get
rich from manipulating money and decisions aroundit, not from hard work and not
from the actual underlying economy. Itwas like I think it was like seventy
nine. But that's an aside.Going if you're interested in how things are
actually going in the economy and whatwe can see if there's a recession coming,

(26:07):
then go and listen to Politics DoneRight, The Big Con with Patrick
Lavelle LVLLL. You can probably findit on podcast platforms or I'll link it
in the description too, But that'swhere I got that example about the gift
cards being given to people who aredoing these foreclosures, and the judicial system

(26:30):
can be corrupted very easily, justlike we're seeing with the Supreme Court with
Clarence Thomas taking these gifts and lavishtrips from billionaires on billionaires and people connected
to who have vested interest in caseshe's deciding. Same things even happening with
local courts. You're going to seedebt collection and stuff like that get aggressive
if there's ever a foreclosure crisis again, which right now I don't know if

(26:52):
this is going to get to aforeclosure crisis, because there is enough equity
in most people's homes, it seemsthat we're not going to wind up with
a bunch of people underwater. Andthere was enforcement and legal changes that were
done to make sure people weren't gettingas many deceptive, fraudulent home loans.
So that may not be it,but you'll definitely see an upticking collection issues.

(27:14):
And judges can be bought off inthe lower courts as well, because
judges are often elected, and someof these judges will we're taking in the
foreclosure crisis. They were taking donations. This is something that Patrick Lavelle stated
in his documentary series. They weretaking campaign donations from big banks, and

(27:37):
judges who wouldn't or judge candidates whowouldn't take the donations were very maligned and
kind of blackballed in their campaigns.So the corporations will weaponize government for their
own purposes. And one quote fromthat Patrick Lavelle documentary that really stuck with

(27:59):
me was a perfect crime is acrime that involves everybody, and that's exactly
what this economic police state is.So you have like just the average workers,
you have cracking different institutions and thingslike that. You have higher prices,
which are a very explicit thing,but you have all kinds of institutions

(28:19):
that involve everybody trying to push downthe working class, pick off people out
of the working class who can beused as economic fought or to try to
pump up profits. But it involveseverybody, and that is one of the
big themes of this. So goingback to like collections, prepare for there

(28:41):
to be a lot of debt collectionstuff going on. There was a lot
of mass debt collection after the twothousand and eight recession. So one of
the things you want to do toprepare yourself is understand like your legal rights
around debt collection. There's the FairDebt Collection Practices Act. There are all
kinds of local and state laws andways that basically when you're dealing with collections,

(29:02):
oftentimes you can negotiate the money thedebt down. If you've gotten to
that point where your credit is destroyedand your in collections and all that,
you can negotiate the debt down.You can fight these cases in court.
A lot of this stuff is waytoo detailed for me to go into on
this episode, but unfortunately, whatthis documentary who's explaining was that these judges
were just not considering any legal argumentsfrom defendants who were being sued by these

(29:30):
banks, who had who had legitimatedisputes with the amount that they were being
built. All these things are justlittle scams. They are just going to
come up. You're just going tosee an increase in scams, debt collection
scams, financial scams of all kinds. Actually, you even saw like with
the two thousand and eight recession afterthe markets crashed, because people wanted to

(29:53):
people who were successful financial advisors,real estate agents. Because they want to
maintain their facade of success, theyturn to doing fraudulent things. I had
a loved one go through investment fraudduring this period. So be very careful
before you open up your wallet foranybody, whether they're claiming you owe something,
or whether they're trying to offer youthe safest investment in the world,

(30:15):
the business opportunity of a lifetime,all of those things. Those types of
frauds are going to start to reallycome out soon if the economy starts to
crash, because people who are inthese positions of power are going to start
to enforce, are going to startto try to enforce that, and they're
going to do so through social engineering, deception things to get you to give

(30:40):
your money to them. So keepa good amount of savings and keep an
eye out for scams. Keep yourselfin a situation where you don't have to
be financially manipulated by a boss,where if a boss comes and tells you
to do the wrong thing, you'refinancially secure enough. This is easier said
than none, But try to maintainyour savings to a point where if they

(31:02):
try to tell you to do somethingthat you don't believe in, or they
try to get you to do unethicalthings, then you can walk away safely
for a period of time. Sothat's how you sort of prepare yourself as
mentally prepared and know that know thatthey're going to try to trick you to
think that the people beneath you areless than because right now it's not a

(31:23):
universal experience. Because right now,the numbers look good in the economy,
and yes, President Biden has donea great job with that, and I
totally agree that the biden Omics ishelping. It is working, but there
are all these little forces that arecoming out to try to knock get back
down. The type of economic leniencywe had during the recession around COVID and

(31:47):
that pandemic aid was truly unprecedented forany recession because everything just hit all at
once, just one big fell swoop. Everybody was knocked down. So because
everybody was knocked down, there wasinterest in everybody getting help. But now,
the way that they design these recessions, the way that things are designed
to go in the economy, itis designed to make it easy for you

(32:09):
say, oh, yeah, it'sthem, it's those people, it's those
people first. But remember the firstthey came for this, First, they
came, then they came for Thatpattern is very apt in this situation too.
So we're not going to get thateconomic leniency. We're certainly not going

(32:31):
to get that big resurgence of financialaid to people that we're doing during the
pandemic. And that financial aid.That aid just put people back into a
position where things were a little bitfairer in the economy. The economy was
just a little bit more fair formany people, not for all people necessarily,
but it was more fair because youactually were giving people what they needed

(32:54):
indiscriminately and not picking on an outgroup. Because the pandemic hit us all
at least to some extent. Inequalityis still there, but there was widespread
bipartisan support for that aid. Butthat's not coming back, and we're starting
to see the indicators that the mostvulnerable are getting knocked down and the eliminations,

(33:20):
sadly are continuing. You have thereally sad statistic that even as we
try to provide more aid, becausewe're not caring for the most vulnerable in
most cases, you're seeing stuff likehomelessness go up. You have homelessness going
up by ten percent in the cityof Los Angeles, even though there is
assistance that is going on. Youhave you have these types of issues where

(33:49):
honestly, of course, there isgoing to continue to be problems because we
have not addressed the things like affordablehousing, and because we have reduced this
aid that was helping the working classto finally get back on their feet,
and boom, it's gone pulled outfrom underneath their feet. And we expect

(34:14):
that things are going to get better. No they're not. And this is
a much larger issue than the mayorof Los Angeles. It's a much larger
issue than even the President of theUnited States. It is factors in capitalism
and people with money and control thatwant to find whatever way to increase their
profits because they know that the financialmarket can profit off a failure. They

(34:38):
can make money if people fail,and if they can do it in a
way that is subtle and that getsthe majority of hard working, tax paying
Americans on their side, then allthe better for them. Just don't fall
for it, because today it couldbe somebody becoming homeless. Tomorrow it could

(34:59):
be losing your job. It couldbe you getting swindled financially, it could
be you getting some sort of fraudulentcollection letter and not having your voice heard
by a judge. So keep youreyes out and open for who is really
causing the problems, and not yourfellow workers and not those who are disadvantaged

(35:20):
in society. All right, Ithink that's going to wrap it up for
this episode, because I want tomake sure that there's dialogue here and I
want people to know the stories ofpeople who get affected by things that are
happening in the world. So youactually put at least a voice, if
not a face, to a problemthat is happening, so it's not just

(35:43):
an other I'd love it if you'dcall in and leave a message and let
me know if you're experiencing some sortof even if it's just some minoring convenience
in your life, of like thestores are being more strict on this.
There's no customer service to help me, and my credit card is constantly being
charged by this company or whatever,and nobody's helping me. I'm not able

(36:06):
to get any help for my problem, or it's up to the student loan
debt. Forgiveness was something I wasrelying on financially, and my financial life
is going to be incredibly miserable.I'm gonna have trouble paying bills. People
are saying that they're going to bemissing meals because of the student loan debt
payment pause ending and the forgiveness nothappening. Whatever it is, whatever difficulty,

(36:30):
whatever little aspect or big aspect ofthe economic police state you happen to
be facing right now, I wantto hear from you. Leave me a
voicemail message anytime day or night ateight four four four seven seven punk eight
four four four seven seven seven eightsix five. You can also email me

(36:52):
Grayson g R. E. Ys And at off Speed Solutions dot com,
or contact me through social media andplease follow the social media I keep
that up to date throughout the week. TikTok is perhaps the most up to
date with news and tips and waysto protect yourself and to help make your
life a little bit better because weare the political and social issues podcast that

(37:15):
tries to make your life better andthat continues through the week on TikTok at
Fixer Punk f i xcr p un K. That's also on Instagram and
on Twitter is at Grayson Nation greys o n n A t I O
N. Thank you so much forlistening today and I hope you'll join me
again for the next episode.