Bonus Episode: "This economy is worse than the 70s..."

I endeavored to survey older adults who were at or above working age in 1970. What do they remember about 1970s stagflation? What do they remember about inflation and wages? Which was worse: 1970s stagflation or the 1982 recession that followed?

More than 80% of respondents - unbidden - shared with me: "The current economy is worse than I remember it being in the 1970s." Frankly, that should scare the hell out of you.

Links:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/stagflation.asp

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fed-interest-rate-hikes-unemployment-increase-layoffs-inflation/

https://consaracytheories.com/f/turkish-inflation-the-praise-of-paul-volcker

https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2024/05/05/honestly-who-didnt-see-this-coming/

https://londondailypost.co.uk/stagflation-the-labour-market-and-you/

https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2024/05/06/staglfation-warning-service-economy-contracts-as-prices-rise-003168

Need more? You can visit the website at: https://consaracytheories.com/ or my own site at: https://saracausey.com/. Don't forget to check out the blog at: https://consaracytheories.com/blog. 

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

Welcome to con-sara-cy theories. Are you ready to ask questions you shouldn't and find information you're not supposed to know? Well, you're in the right place. Here is your host. Sara Causey,

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. In tonight's episode, I will be talking about 1970 stagflation, and where I think we're at now, it's not going to be sunshine, roses, lollipops and gumdrops. I wish it was, but it's just simply not going to be. I recently endeavored to take some surveys, to speak with people who were at or above working age by 1970 to ask them what they thought of 1970s era, stagflation, what it was like for them, what they remember about it, and honestly, the entire tone, the entire theme of this episode, changed based on the data that I received back. My initial intention was simply to record a sort of educational episode about tricky Dicky and the 1970s stagflation years, how he took us off the gold standard, etc. And in the future, I will publish a podcast episode about Jeffrey garten's book three days at Camp David, which chronicles that exact event of Nixon removing the US dollar from the gold standard, and how the dollar has just ever since then. But it's funny, because that was my intention here was to talk about Nixonian stagflation. But when I got the responses back, I felt like this really needed to be a bonus episode to warn people that, according to individuals who were adults, grown adults, living and working during the stagflation years of the 1970s we're being told things are even worse now, if that doesn't wake you up, if that doesn't scare the hell out of you, I don't know what's going to and I'm just sitting here shrugging my shoulders because I don't know where people's heads are at. I really don't it's so far removed from the way that I choose to live my life that if somebody is like their head is in the clouds or their head is planted firmly inside their behind, I don't know what they're doing, I don't know how they spend their time. I don't know where they consume information. I don't know how they fill their days, like I don't get it. So when somebody is just blithely unaware of what's going on in the economy, or conversely, they're still bought into red versus blue, donkey versus elephant. Well, if we can just get orange MAN back in office, we'll have those 2018 prices. Again. It's like he's a magician that's just going to wipe the slate clean, and everything's going to go back to the way that it was before the and before the inflation and before the stemmy checks. And it's like, folks, that's not going to happen. I hate to break it to you, but if you're really hanging your hopes on that, you're going to be so disappointed. We've already had fat cats coming out in the media openly saying permanent inflation, some of the inflation that's gone through the economy is never going away. You can ignore that at your own peril. You can assume that they're telling you that because they're sucking on the teat of the senile old man or the DNC or whatever, and that's your choice. I would just humbly ask you to consider that things might be so far gone it's not going to matter who gets in the White House. And as I've warned you before, I personally don't believe that the President has that much control anyway. I think the one time in somewhat recent history that we had an individual who was going to try he didn't last very long. So I don't think it's going to matter over much. What happens in November as far as Oh, sunshine, rainbows, lollipops, gumdrops, the lion will lay down with the lamb, and we'll all be living in a Christmas song, and all this inflation will go away. The people who believe that, I hope you're right, that would be fantastic. I'm just not willing to bet my life on it before we proceed further, I want to go to investopedia.com Just so we have a good working definition of stagflation. This is in their article, what is stagflation? What causes it, and why is it bad? Stagflation is an economic cycle characterized by slow growth and a high unemployment rate accompanied by. Inflation, economic policymakers find this combination particularly difficult to handle as attempting to correct one of the factors can exacerbate the other. I'm going to butt in straight away. It would be clearer to more people, I think I mean people who actually pay attention and they're not just worried about celebrity gossip and what's going on with the Kardashians and all of that I think it'd be clearer to more people if you didn't have this insane gas lighting. About low unemployment rate, 3.9% unemployment rate churning and burning, doing great, resilient, consumer, resilient labor market, etc, etc, at all. Vomit, ad nauseam. We do have a high unemployment rate, we do have inflation, we do have slow growth. I mean, I'm finding it very difficult to imagine that we're not already in stagflation. I'll continue to read once thought by economists to be impossible. Oh, economists thought it was impossible. Hmm, well, we all know that many of these mainstream economists are full of if you're still listening to them. God help you. God help you. They say that God looks out for children and fools. I hope that's the case. I really do. Once thought by economists to be impossible, stagflation has occurred repeatedly in the developed world since the 1970s oil crisis in mid 2022 many were saying that the United States had not entered a period of stagflation, but might soon experience one, at least for a short period. In June 2022, Forbes magazine argued that a period of stagflation was likely because economic policymakers would tackle unemployment first, leaving inflation to be dealt with later. I'm going to break in again and say I have dropped the link to the article on CBS News. I don't even know how many umpteen million times about Buckle Up America, the Fed plans to sharply raise unemployment. And here we are. A lot of people are suffering. I mean, I've been talking on the job market journal about people who say they're contemplating suicide because they've been on the job market so long, and there's just no hope. That does not tell me resilient, churning and burning, doing great. I have a front row seat to this every day. I have been involved in the job market every single day for more than a decade now. I've been through many a boom and bust cycles, not just in the oil and gas industry, but with the broader economy, with the tech sector, etc, the opportunities to do HR staffing and recruiting work are way, way sparser than they were. 2021 2022 when the great resignation really was going strong, a lot of that FOMO and Yolo that was present in the job market had also been present in the housing market. So it's sort of like the one fed the other. A lot of people were like, Screw it. I'm not going to stay at a job that I find even remotely distasteful the first time that my boss gives me the side eye. I'll just up and quit because jobs are plentiful and it. Well, that's not the case anymore. People who still think that are languishing on the market for months or, in some cases, years, but see, people don't want to believe that that's like, I've had people when I say there are individuals that got steamrolled by the 2008 great recession that never fully recovered, they don't want to hear that. Oh, it's been years ago. Sarah, Sarah, surely they're better by now. Okay, alright. The middle class has been shrinking steadily for the past 50 years. But you believe what you want to believe in key takeaways they've written, Stagflation is the simultaneous appearance of an economy of slow growth, high unemployment and rising prices. Sounds pretty familiar, doesn't it? Once thought by economists to be impossible, stagflation has occurred repeatedly in the developed world since the 1970s policy solutions for slow growth tend to worsen inflation and vice versa. This makes stagflation hard to fight. End quote, I also on the conserracy theories blog, wrote a post about Turkish inflation and the praise of Paul Volcker because, see, we're all supposed to believe that Paul Volcker saved America. It was icky. It was nasty medicine. He had to raise those interest rates. We had to swallow that bitter pill. But he saved the economy, and I'm sitting back here like the 1982 recession also wiped a lot of people out. That was another watershed moment, similar in some respects, to 2008 where there were people who got kicked in the ribs royally back in 82 that never fully recovered. But again, you're not supposed to say that. I'm supposed to get on the air and be all sunshine, roses, lollipops and gumdrops, and I just can't do it. People need to wake up, wake up on May 5, on my. Business Blog. I wrote a blog post titled, honestly, who didn't see this coming in this I've written, let's all have a flashback to the years of tricky Dicky. I'd rather not, but it seems like we're headed in that direction, plus Sachs, plus Salem shows, we just keep getting these engineered crises, boom, bust cycles, absurd, forever wars, QE, Qt, rotations, etc.

I also wanted to write this because there's been some push. I don't understand why, but there's been some push to reinvent Nixon as some kind of persecuted folk hero. And I don't really understand why that is, he was in with prescott bush and poppy Bush. He was in thick with the Dulles brothers. He was VP for Eisenhower. And when you go through the devil's chessboard and you read some of the comments that they made about people of color and other minorities, it's like, it's just repugnant. I mean, I don't personally understand this idea to reinvent Nixon as some great, wonderful, Pooh bah. I don't get it, even if we assume he was framed in the Watergate thing, which he very well may have been, that needs to be its own episode, or sets of episodes at some point in the future when I have more time to get into it, even if he was framed and had nothing to do with that, and it was an excuse to push his out of office rather than pop popping him. That doesn't mean that he was the greatest president in the history of the world. Makes no sense to me. So in this blog post, I quote from Yahoo Finance, with inflation still high and economic growth slowing sharply, we could be heading towards stagflation, a scenario nobody's really prepared for. UBS executive says, and I've written honestly, who didn't see this coming. I was reporting on this in June of 2022, and in that job post, I talked about lagging indicators. I warned about it again in February of 2023 when I spoke to the London Daily Post. I'm going to hop over now to the the interview that I did with them again, that was back in February of 2023 so in 2022 and 2023 I was on my business outlets warning people that stagflation was a true hazard, a true reality. If I haven't been on the leading edge of these predictions, I had to be damn near close. In my interview with the London Daily Post, they asked me we listened to your recent podcast episode about poverty in the UK. What inspired you as an American to record that? The biggest reason for me was to get the word out. I watched several UK based documentaries about the British economy and citizens having heat or eat dilemmas, and I think more people should know what's going on. The other thing is that economies don't exist in a vacuum. Larry Elliott, at The Guardian, talks about how the British economy is suffering from stagflation, and quite frankly, you could make a similar argument about the American economy. They asked me, What do you think is happening in the American labor market? I responded, I have witnessed a true slowdown in 2021 the American job market was intense, as was the American Housing Market. The mortgage rates were low, while asking prices for houses was high, way too high, in my opinion. But it fomented a maelstrom of FOMO and Yolo in the housing market. A similar thing played out in the job market. The great resignation kicked off, and people were much more willing to switch jobs, Garner multiple offers and exit a bad environment quickly. So we had this red hot intensity, full of hustle and bustle in 2021 but I could see the signs of a slowdown. At the beginning of 2022 employers started to hesitate and ask questions like, do we really need to hire for this role, or could we wait a while? It was as though the FOMO bubble popped and companies pulled back. Now, in 2023 America is seeing mass layoffs and more competition for the jobs that are posted. Well, in 2024 it's only gotten worse. I'm going to return now to my blog post. Honestly, who didn't see this coming? Our currency is not backed by anything just hot air and government Fiat. It's not tied to anything real. So they print up reams and reams of it and drive us further in debt, and Heaven only knows what they really finance. We know they have a series of forever wars and covert ops, but after watching the BBC 1992 documentary on Gladio and learning that US tax dollars went to Nazis and fascists, I mean, what the the nefarious corners where this money goes are horrific, yeah, and that's Just what we've been allowed to know so far on May 6, on moneymetals.com their blog, published a post, stagflation warning, service economy contracts as prices rise in this they write in another stagflation warning sign the US. Service sector contracted in April, even as service prices rose in. The Institute for Supply Management's non manufacturing PMI dropped to 49.4 in April, dipping from 51.4 in March. The expectation was for the index to increase to 52 a PMI reading below 50 signals a contraction in the service economy. It was the lowest non man, non manufacturing, PMI reading since December 2022 services account for more than two thirds of economic activity in the US, an index measuring new orders for service businesses, dipped to 52.2 in April, falling from a march reading of 54.4 meanwhile, production in the service sector plunged from 57.4 to 50.9 the last time the services production index fell that low was May 2020, in the early months of the pandemic. I'm going to butt in and say I didn't need somebody to tell me that. As a service based business owner, I was living it. I have been living it 2024 has been rough. It really has been. I have felt a lot like that story from the Bible about the widow and the jars of oil. You know, where the prophet Elisha tells her, take your jars of take as many empty jars as you can, and the Lord will fill them with oil so you can get by. It's it's felt that way. I have felt more pinched in 2024 then I felt pinched in 2020 I mean that to me, is proof positive that it's we're not churning and burning and doing great. I'll read just a little bit more. This dovetails with CPI data that shows service prices inflation increased to 5.27% in March. That was up from 4.95% in February. Service prices account for 57% of the CPI. There is a word for a combination of rising prices lagging economic growth and rising unemployment, stagflation after the Federal Reserve FOMC meeting last week, Fed chair, Jerome Powell, insisted there were no signs of stagflation. They quote now from Jerome Powell, I really don't understand where concerns about stagflation are coming from. I don't see the stag or the flation. You can certainly argue that the economic picture is nothing like the stagflationary years of the 1970s but the warning signs are clearly there, as evidenced by the services PMI report and other recent economic data. End quote, I guess you could argue that the economic picture is nothing like the stagflationary years of the 1970s but that's not the side of the debate I'd want to be on. And after listening to the survey respondents and what they had to say. If someone were to argue, this is not like the 1970s I think the only cogent argument would be it's worse. It took some doing at time, it felt like I was Sisyphus rolling the boulder up a hill, but I was able to collect about 50 survey responses from individuals who were at or above working age by 1970 so that I could get a sense of what they remember, what they experienced. And there were no questions. I want to be really clear. There were no questions asked about current economic situation. How do you think that the 70s compared to now, none of that, yet, 80% of the respondents, unbidden, unasked, unprovoked, wanted to make sure to interject that they believe the current economy is worse. Some of them said way worse than 1970s stagflation and I thought, kaboom, there's the episode. Instead of structuring this as an educational professorial episode for me to sit here and be like, Hey, here's what Stagflation is. Here's why I think that we're in a stagflationary period already, regardless of the gaslighting from the mainstream media, I'm like, holy Batman. Here's the episode. You have older people who lived through both times saying it's worse now that's the story. That's the episode that is scary to me. I'm going to pick some excerpts here and tell you about what people had to say anonymously. I promised that responses would all be used with anonymity, so I'm not going to use any names or any particularly identifying information. This person indicated that he was able Well, first of all, let me back up here. Here were the survey questions, what part What's your current age? What parts of the US did you live in during the 1970s what industry or industries were you in? Tell me what you remember about the US economy in the 1970s were you able to find a job andor keep a job during the stagflation years? Did you feel like your wages kept pace with inflation? Thinking back which. Situation cause more difficulty for you, 1970 stagflation, or the 1982 recession. This person says that he was able to keep a job. He was never without work. He felt like he had one job in particular that did not keep pace with inflation. When asked about which was worse? 1970 stagflation or 1982 recession. He said emphatically, the 1982 recession, he lost 40% of everything he owned. I will tell you 100% of the respondents said the 1982 recession was worse. 1970s era stagflation gives birth to a complete nightmare like we had in 82 now we're talking about my lifetime now, and I just really don't think that a lot of people appreciate what's coming. I don't think they understand what's going on right now, and I don't think the hellscape that's coming right around the horizon. I just don't think a lot of people get it. I hope that I'm wrong on that. I hope that, I hope people prove me wrong. I want to be wrong, but I'm scared. Y'all this respondent said that for him, work fluctuated. He said that he had to tighten the belt some, and he said that wages were not high. He said that he was able to find a job and or keep a job, but he did not feel that his wages kept pace with inflation. When asked about the situation causing the most difficulty, he emphatically said the 1982 recession. This person was working as a dental assistant, slash an assistant in a dental office. This person says that the 1970s the general cost of living, as she remembers it was better than it is now. She was able to find jobs and keep jobs during the 1970s and she feels like her wages generally kept pace with inflation only because she was in the dental industry. Emphatically. Same thing the recession of 1982 was worse for her and her family than the entirety of the 1970s this person said that he survived the 1970s because he was in the military. He too responds that the 1982 recession caused him the most difficulty. This individual had a wide variety of jobs throughout the 1970s he says that he was always able to work, but the work was not always long lasting. In other words, he had to go through a variety of industries because he would experience a layoff and then have to go somewhere else and find other work. He does not feel that his wages kept pace with inflation throughout the 1970s which was worse, again, emphatically, he wanted to say the 1982 recession. This respondent said that she was able to find jobs without much trouble, but she was pinched by the cost of living and the inflation in prices. She says that, generally speaking, she felt that her wages kept pace with inflation, but only just. In other words, she felt that she was living paycheck to paycheck, and it was taking every part of the paycheck in order to survive. There wasn't anything left over to save emphatically, the 1982 recession caused her more problems. 80% of the people overall wanted to make it very clear that the economy is worse now in their perception than what they experienced in the entirety of the 1970s so look, there are some commentators who say we will look back on this period of time as rough as it is, and think we had it easy in comparison to how bad things could get. I hope that's inaccurate, believe me, but I don't think that we can subsist on hope. I think it's very important to have a game plan, to have some preps in place and to war game some strategies out. I don't give you advice. I don't tell you what to do or what not to do. You have to decide for yourself and your family how you want to handle your life. For me, personally, I. Would rather be prepared than scared, and I've always been the type of person that I don't like to be back stabbed. If you've got to stab me, stab me in the chest. Let me see the dagger coming and let me know it was you. And be prepared for what I'm going to unleash in return. But don't be a coward. Don't stab somebody in the back and be little sneak, sneak, little creep, creep. So I don't like to be caught off guard by what's happening in the economy if we're in the I'd really rather know that we are. And try to figure out how best to handle that, how to pivot, how to be nimble. If a is not working anymore, let's check out B and then C and then D but not stay stuck in my day job, working in the job market, in human resources and staffing work, I see so often that people don't want to think about the job market unless they're on the job market. And people sometimes will allow their career to go on autopilot, and they think, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I'm not going to worry about layoffs until I hear rumor. I'm not going to worry that the company might close down until I hear rumors. If they slap a for sale sign on the front of the building, I guess then I'll worry. By that time, ipso facto, it's too late. You can't plan ahead and make preparations. By the time the poop already hits the fan and sprays out over everybody, it's important to get your mind right and to get some strategies put together before a nightmare scenario befalls you. Instead of saying, Well, I'm not going to care about the job market, I'm not going to care about inflation, I don't. I don't give a about stagflation. Why should I go back and learn anything about history? Why should I talk to older people who lived it? I'm just gonna go back to Tiktok and worry about who Taylor Swift is dating. You're welcome to do that. Just understand that when you make those types of choices, you're gonna be the very person that's tossed out of a company on your and then you're sitting there going, I can't believe this happened. I go on social media and beg for jobs, and I beg for sympathy, but nobody wants to hire me. And I can't understand why the onus is on you to educate yourself and to stay aware. Because if you think that politicians are going to do it, if you think that the mainstream media is going to do it, your goose is completely cooked, stay a little crazy, and I will see you in the next episode.

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