Are The Odds of a Recession Declining? Gas Prices Back on the Rise? Ep. #193

The Capitalist Investor

Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of The Capitalist Investor. Joining us today is Diamond Hands D, joined by the A Team - Tony the Tiger and Cool Hand Luke. In this episode, we'll be discussing some of the key topics that have been making headlines recently, including the odds of a recession, the impact of rising oil prices, and the state of the labor market. Let's dive in and explore these themes in more detail.

Recession Odds

One of the main topics of discussion in recent months has been the possibility of a recession in the US. Goldman Sachs recently lowered their recession odds to 15%, citing cooling inflation and a robust job market as factors that could help prevent a downturn. However, there are still differing opinions on the matter, with Bloomberg consensus placing the odds at around 60%.

When considering the likelihood of a recession, it's important to look at key indicators such as the labor market. As Tony mentioned, having a job is a significant factor in maintaining a positive state of mind and financial stability. With unemployment currently at 3.8%, it's clear that the job market is still strong. However, it's worth noting that job openings have hit a two-year low, which could be a sign of tightening in the labor market.

As we mentioned, the labor market is a key indicator of the health of the economy. While unemployment has seen a slight increase, it's important to consider the reasons behind this. The rise in labor force participation suggests that more people are getting back to work, which is a positive sign. However, it's worth questioning why these individuals were not in the workforce to begin with and what impact their return will have on the overall labor market.

Oil Prices

Another factor that could potentially impact the economy is the recent spike in oil prices. Saudi Arabia's decision to extend production cuts has contributed to the increase, with prices reaching $86 a barrel. This has led to a rise in gas prices, with the high recently being $3.81 per gallon on average being reached. The airline industry has also warned of potential spikes in fuel costs, which could have implications for travel and freight prices.

The rise in oil prices raises concerns about inflation and its impact on consumer spending. As Luke mentioned, inflation is a persistent issue that needs to be carefully managed. If inflation continues to rise, it could put a strain on consumers' wallets and lead to a decrease in spending power. This, in turn, could have a negative impact on the overall economy.

Work From Home

There has also been a shift towards hybrid work models, with many individuals working remotely for part of the week. While this may offer flexibility, it's important to consider the impact on productivity. Studies have shown that working from home can lead to a 20% decrease in productivity. This raises questions about the long-term viability of remote work and its impact on career growth.

Future Implications

The topics discussed in this episode have significant implications for the economy and individuals alike. The possibility of a recession, rising oil prices, and the state of the labor market all have the potential to impact consumer spending, inflation, and overall economic growth. It's important for individuals and businesses to stay informed and adapt to these changing conditions.

Looking ahead, it's clear that there are challenges and uncertainties on the horizon. The impact of rising oil prices, the potential for a recession, and the changing dynamics of the labor market all require careful attention and analysis. However, as Americans, we have a history of resilience and finding solutions to overcome challenges. By staying informed and proactive, we can navigate these uncertain times.

Transcript

0:02

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of The Capitalist Investor. As always, you have me and Diamond handy. We have the A-Team back together this week. Tony the Tiger in Cool Hand. Luke. How are we doing, boys? Doing good, man. Coming back from from vacation? Yeah. How is our. Vacation? I went to Ocean City, Maryland, and the world stayed in this lake. Condo complex. Had nice pool, nice private beach and stuff, but, like, one of the one of the staples is about less than maybe a quarter mile from the condo complex. Is this like this bar and at happy hour they got five out$5 orange crushes, butt dollar, oysters. Oh, and they were delicious. What was your the max you ate? You know what I was going back and forth the very first day. I only eat while I'd go there. Like I went there three or four days. As a rookie. Numbers 12. It's like 12. And then the one time I ordered 15 and everyone started looking at me like 15. What do you. I'm like, Oh, I didn't want to go to 24, I want to go 12. And I'm lying and I'm 15. And everyone's dinner turned into a ten minute beatdown, my 15. Dollars. For judging me. But I did have one of the best crab crab rolls or lobster rolls. Oh, my God. It was just like so much meat. And they put on, like, Texas toast, too. Nice, buttery. Oh, are some mayonnaise and mixed in and oh, I eat like three of those. Like. Did you listen to our podcast last week? I did. Not that I missed. What did you miss? How much I missed you. How about how lonely I was and how I need to show you my life so. Oh, my God. So check that out, man. I think I have to listen about, you know, we. Were getting deep. Yeah. Get real deep about life. Yeah. Hang on. Let me. Fact, Chris, our engineer, is Astro. Were they messing me? I started off. I'm like, I'm very much lonely guy in the world, right? I'm so lonely. So we. What are we talking about? So we talked about being, what, lonely last week and then how we talked about how, you know, you know, there's there's good things and bad things in life. So what were good and bad things we're talking about today? Derek Yeah, so excellent Segway. So we'll talk about the US recession arts might be coming down according to some so that hopefully keep it upbeat at the beginning here we'll talk about oil you know got some more well extension of some production cuts So we'll talk about what that means and then we'll go into the labor market a little bit, talk about where unemployed it is, and then kind of segway that into canceled might be working from home, might be getting canceled. You never know. Oh, well, who would have thought that? I'm pretty sure we said that a year ago. Yeah, right. But anyway. So wait, wait, wait. The last week show what you guys. I did see the one clip on on Facebook or something. It was like one of our 30 seconds shorts or whatever. And you guys were talking about something popping up all over the place. You guys were having a discussion and what did you say keeps on popping up. Do you remember the market? We give you one. No. I my Twitter. Now. Yeah. All right. Well. Call me out in this spot, you know? Yeah, I don't remember, honestly. Last week we were talking about I posted on Twitter. On Facebook or something, But but the one thing that keeps on like you guys met, you were talking about something and I'm like, if I was there, I'd been talking about all of the frickin car washes that are popping up. I don't know what the fuck. Oh, I think we're talking about like the self-storage spaces. Yeah, those are popping up. And I'm like, I never see anybody really there, but I guess you drop it off once and never go back. Yeah, that's why you won't see Derek. Derek's got it. Are they store space? Are these places. For. They must be because. They built. Soon as we talked about that they're building a giant building next to the Costco I go to and that's last week. Self-Storage got slapped right up. I'm just tired of everyone listening, the capitalist investor, and just taking our good ideas right on with it, you know? Mm. Well I know I saw these damn car washes. I don't understand how and what the fascination. Like Walter. Was. Oh, the car, car washes are great cash flow business are they. No, no, I know they are. Subscription models like they, they rock like they're 40 bucks a month. Like it's, you know what the cash flow you're getting. And you know what? How many people we need to hire to support, you know, how many cars you got per month? I mean, it's a very business, big business. You can you can model things around your cash flow, Right. It's kind of cool. I like that. So when people are getting squeezed in their pockets, are they going to trump 15 to $25 on a car wash? I was talking to a guy actually this past weekend, Labor Day weekend. He owns some Napa stores, snap Auto parts, and I think cars are actually one of the talking the scarf topic. I love this the car industry is actually we have the oldest fleet ever. Yeah. In cars I think we're now approaching 13 years old as the average car on the road. That's bananas to me it is. So when you talk about cars. I don't see many 13 year old cars as if that's the average than what's the top been someone driving around a 20 year old car? Yeah, that's what I was like. Well, I don't see any cars from I don't know. I mean, I know my my, my girlfriend's parents just got a new car and they they usually drove around 1520. Your car. He's coming ten cars. But they were all. In. The early 2000s. But yeah. So 13 year old car fleet, I think a lot of people would rather try to maintain their used car at this point, which includes car washes, which includes auto parts stores like Napa, Advance Auto Parts. O'REILLY That's why I see. O'REILLY Rock and Advance Auto Parts has had some balance sheet issues, which is why the stock could cut like down 70%. But rally, it's like an all time highs, right? What am I talking the Napa guy? He said the same thing like people are business has been rock and even though we talk about, you know downturn or some sort of spending in some parts of the economy, people aren't turning down, you know, you know, decreasing their spending on auto parts. And. Well, they have to because they don't want to buy a new car that's up 40%. So that's my. Point with car washes is I think people would rather wash your car, maintain it. But I would. Caution my own car. I'm yeah, I love it. My dad my dad would get mad at me for some of it. Because I when I take it to a car wash, then I get those like scratch, like the fine scratch like bothers me. I don't know. And Chemical Brothers, best thing if you're going to wash your own car, that is the. Best you know. The best website two. Weeks ago about me cutting grass and outsourcing it. So I can't do it. I can't do that. I would I'm not going to do that. So I'll wash my you cut you come cut your you come cut my grass. I'll wash your car. Deal. That's a deal. I'll take you up on that. You got you got about half an acre right. Something like that. That's, it's, it's, it's to take you like 40 minutes, 50 minutes. All right, All right. Well, let's get into it. Get on. Nice over there. Welcome. So. So Goldman dropped their recession, odds down from 20% down to 15%, citing, you know, basically cooling inflation, which we'll talk about. Obviously, the job market is still very robust. And in there they mentioned that they think we're done with rate hikes. Um, and I notice that the rate hike rate hike in September odds went down to like 7% or something like that. Bloomberg Consensus is still around 60%. So, you know, this is lower than than most, but they have reduced it. So we've been talking recession a lot here. You know, everyone is basically saying it's definitely going to happen. One worst when we started the year and now basically everyone's saying, you know, odds aren't that great. So, you know, what do you guys think recession odds for the back half of this year starting next year? I first want to just pose the question. I think this is the most important part that's not discussed in this environment. What is a recession like? What is a hard landing, soft landing? What is a recession like? I mean, that's you. Got your you got your technical answer. Well, okay. Outside of May, too, negative quarters, because apparently that's not the definition anymore, because we already had a recession by those terms. Right. Right. What would you guys I guess, outside of just trying to define it outright, what is the most important part to determine, hey, we are possibly in this recession that we always talk about, Like what is the most important thing you guys need to see happen? I mean, I think like back in 2008, you know, the biggest thing was, you know, having a job was a big deal, right? Having money to go and do stuff like going out to dinner was a luxury. Not not something like, hey, we're just going to go do it, you know, because I'm flush with cash, right? So, yeah, I think like the tightening of the consumer is such a big thing and actually worrying about having a job, not like, hey, I'm going to well, I got three job offers that were not a recession. So do you, Tony. It's all about the labor market. I do. I think if you're if you're employed, you have a positive state of mind. You're you're paying your bills, you're saving money, you're providing for your family. Yeah. So that it's American dream, right? They're right. You know, doing those things, having a good job. And I mean, Derek and I talked about the American dream last week, too. And we did changing definitions. Yep, Possibly. Anyway. All right. Labor market for Tony. What do you got? Yeah, you know, I you know, the I think our economy is something like 70% made up of consumer spending. So obviously the job market is going to be key. And you know like Tony said, you know, the last time we're in a real deep recession, you know, that was kind of right. And just after, you know, we've gotten out of school, it was it was hard to find a job. You know, you could just kind of feel, you know, that things weren't as good as they clearly are right now. And I think that's why, you know, you can't really have a recession with 3.5 or 3.8% unemployment like like we have right now. And I think, you know, like we've been talking about all year, the inflation and spending power. Right. So we're talk about consumer spending being a big chunk of the economy. If we don't, you know, for getting less and less for our dollars, you know, that's going to hurt the economy overall, too. So keeping an eye on that inflation number, I think it actually did tick back up in the most recent reading in July, it was 3.2% year over year inflation, which was, you know, plus point 2% from the month before or something like that. So, you know, it's something with so much money out there that inflation is going to continue to be a persistent issue and something that's. They can't mess up the inflation thing. Yeah, you know, that they messed that back up in the eighties, right. Yeah. And and it they they they and I say Jay Powell and the Fed Paul Volcker but I mean but if they mess this up this is really bad because I think once inflation starts taking off again, it's going to be hard to you know real it back in and and it's already spiking. So there's no way in hell they're they're going to cut so higher for longer is definitely here to stay and what's the difference. Okay they don't hike in September but they do in November like what they do They're still get they still probably have to hike because inflation spiked again. And I'm very curious on what what why they wouldn't. So I have inflation taken. I have it that take or have a recession take and I've been pretty outspoken about this past couple of weeks through different venues I guess of talking about it. I think so. Back in the eighties. Look back at the eighties. One of the reasons why we had inflation in the first place and rebound in inflation was the crude oil shock. Oil was, you know, the price of oil was rising because geopolitical conflicts, production estimates, things like that. We were very reliant on oil back then. In the economy, we still are very reliant on oil. But the one difference is, is that engines and efficiencies within our energy output have become a lot more efficient over the years because of how technology has changed and we're able to process oil much cleaner, much better. So we're actually less from a, you know, pound for pound kind of, you know, comparison. We are less reliant on oil now than we were back then. So oil is maybe even with gas prices rising, which we'll talk about later on, even though with that rising, that might not be the sole factor contributing to inflation or rising inflation possibly down the road. Well, I think is the new factor, which is really what you need to pay attention to the recession. Our debt levels, I think debt is the new inflationary substitute for oil back in the eighties. The fact that we can keep this economy running with debt, whether it's borrowing for mortgages, whether it's borrowing for cars, whether it's borrowing for credit cards that's going to keep the economy afloat. So I think what you need to pay attention to is revolving credit, the $1 trillion in outstanding revolving credit in the current economy with $6 trillion available. What everyone cites that that rising is a bad thing. I think when that stops rising, that's the worst possible scenario, because when that stops rising, that means I don't think that they're paying off debts. I think that means people are finally cutting back their spending. So it goes back to spending. But what I would look at is the rising debt levels to gauge spending in the economy. So if that rises to 1.5 trillion, 2 trillion, and then it kind of flat plateaus flattens from there, I think that's going to be the where we kind of bottom and say, okay, the economy is really bad is that. When they stop spending. So let's talk about that really quick because, you know, as in this conversation with Goldman Sachs, you know, guy that came out and said their term in the recession and they had that interview with Yahoo Finance. So the the back and forth between Goldman and Yahoo! In this this article, you know, some of the stuff was really surprising to me. It was like, all right, you know, Yahoo! Was like, hey, what about, you know, oil is now approaching $90 a barrel. Yeah. All right. So I think in one of the podcasts before summer time, I said gasoline, you know, gasoline will be near $4 by the end of summer. Yeah, didn't really get there. But you know who knows what could happen next week, Right? But it's getting there. It's about $3.80. And I don't think gas prices have caught up to the 30% increase of $70 a barrel when we were supposed to fill up our strategic reserves. But we didn't do that. But anyway, moving on that, when when is gasoline Because gasoline was, what, maybe 310 320. Yeah. During a 30% increases, $4. We're not we're almost getting there And when we do that's that's a that I always felt like gasoline and food is in housing those are the three things that really suck up everyone's money. Well I'll use it in the comparison to like interest rates. When the Federal Reserve increases interest rates, there's a media impact in some parts of the economy, but there's like a lag effect in long, long in large parts of the economy. Right? So oil prices are the same thing. It takes a long time for oil prices. When oil post prices rise, becoming items are made with oil. Plastics, you know, tires, whatever. Be like. That takes time to trickle throughout and that will eventually increase, you know, gas prices. It's not necessarily immediate impact all the time. Yeah, well, it is interesting, as we just heard the news yesterday, that OPEC, you know, cut supply estimates for heading into the winter. Right. So the reason you cut supply is because you either think they're not going to use as much because maybe U.S. is entering, you know, winter time. But that being said, other parts of the world are entering summertime. So I don't that's not a huge, you know, I guess comparison or because you think that, you know, people can use less because they're not going to you know, there's a recession and we're not going to buy as many goods. I mean, yeah, you had to pose that question. Well, just because we don't have a recession, I mean, think of like China. They're bigger than us. Look at Germany. Well, I mean, China is a bigger is bigger than us population wise and just duck, you know, all that stuff. And they're going through an economic downturn. Yeah, they are. They're probably in a recession. Germany's PMI came at the lowest level since 2020, I think, last week. Okay. That's a that's an important stat no one talks about. Right. So, yeah, I mean, again, the U.S. is the last one to fall because we're the strongest per se. We guess we have the strongest dollar which. Yeah. And you meant you you said something that resonated with me is that like when we stop spending and putting things on credit cards is a time to worry. Yeah, and think about this. So, like the, you know, in that that conversation between Yahoo and Goldman, Yahoo! Was like, okay, well, the student, you know, student loan payments are going to be starting up. And, you know, Goldman's is like, oh, well, you know, it's going to be a modest drag. And I'm like, I'm thinking, I'm like, who's got the most debt? And I came up with millennials. Yeah, right. And what do they like to spend their money on? Travel, eating out in electronics? That sounds like all the discretionary stuff that builds our economy. And when they get tapped out because now they're now they got $5,000 college payments are starting back up like they can't travel and they can't eat out and they can't buy phones and electronics. So, okay, maybe maybe this takes I mean, this is a big cycle. So for them to come out and say, hey, we're probably, you know, going from 20% to 15% prediction of a recession in 2024 or in the next 12 months, they say it could just take a little bit while to catch up. But I don't know. It was just it was so bananas to me that nearly every analyst was predicting a recession this year. And it didn't happen. That's crazy. Or did it? Or did we? And they just. And it's just been delayed because of that or I or. The numbers just don't support it because. GDP growth. How much of it do you know how much came from the government spending. I I've. Talked my head on to the exact numbers but I know a lot of. It. Right. So, I mean, GDP growth is expected to be almost 6% for the third quarter. Right. I pose this question, is it really growth in the economy if we're just borrowing future growth to pay for future earnings, to pay for current growth, is it really growth when inflation over the past year still at 4% or so and we're growing at six? I mean, is it really growth? I mean, or is it just that prices of goods are more expensive and that's why GDP's up? I think that's think about a house man like and mortgage applications are down almost 30% year over year. I, I kind of did a back of the envelope math is that you know the housing industry is about 15% of our GDP that things debt is a doornail. So where's the rest of the growth coming from? Because right now you can't even buy a house without spending 60% more money than you did 12 to 18 months ago. So one of the things that. Talks that industry is dead. We talk about GDP, but we don't talk about GDP growth. GROSS domestic income. And I don't want to get too nerdy here, even though I'm a nerd and GDP are gauging basically the same thing, but just different metrics. Income, GDI measures more profits in income throughout an economy. GDP measures more about output, right? Guy is not looking hot guys like pretty crappy because incomes are down. A relative basis compared to inflation. Profits margins are down. Yeah. Essentially by private companies because of inflation, because of input prices, things like that. Right. So even GDP's looking hot because we're still producing manufacturing. We're still actually we're service economy. So we're still, you know, people are still spending money on services. The fact that goes down tells two different stories. So the fact that the only difference, the only thing that can gauge the difference between GDI and GDP is the debt bridge. That's the only thing they can because people if incomes and profits are down, the only thing to make GDP better then is that that that debt is then refinanced. Refinancing the lower income lower profits. Yeah I mean so that that's the debt problem. That's why I say we're in a debt recession that won't be considered a recession until incomes or people stop spending. Yeah, I mean, I'm just, you know, one thing that I think and I just I mean, we're in our earnings we're in an earnings recession. There has been margin compression for several quarters now. And I don't know how long companies can continue to lose money, even know that sales growth is up, but they are still getting squeezed. So that's going to be just the. Earnings projections for 2024, almost 12% earnings growth. Bananas, ain't. It? I mean, yeah, I mean, that being said, earnings this year came in harder than everyone thought. But hey, if that $1 trillion revolving credit goes to 3 trillion over the next year, maybe we could hit those earnings estimates. But we just take out that to do it. I don't know. Like, that's the thing. We have to play in the ball. The ball games changed 20 years ago. People didn't have access to money as much credit. People don't spend on credit cards as much. You know, the fact that we do have access to credit, the game's changed. We have to gauge maybe they will hit 12% earnings growth next year in the economy, but will it be used their current incomes will be used for? Is it good growth? I think the question bigger question to ask is, is it good growth or bad growth in the economy? You you grow at 12%, but it cost you 20. Exactly. That's my point. Yeah. So that's that's that's kind of environment we're in. So I don't know. It's something to think about. Yep. All right. Government spending are 37% of GDP in 2022. In 2023. I wonder if. There was up to a point here. The Inflation Reduction Act or whatever, infrastructure spending just finally hit the economy so that money's not pouring into the economy to which is more government stimulus bailout. All right. Well, we're kind of hitting all these topics as we go. But, you know, we we mentioned it already. Saudi Arabia extending their million barrel a day cut through the end of the year, which is really been one of the main causes of the spike that we've seen recently. Tony mentioned it already $86 a barrel, currently$3.81 was a historical high for this time of year that we just hit. And, you know, it's the end of the summer and it's almost $4 a gallon. So I think Tony was pretty, pretty spot on with his projected prediction fire. Yeah, And just think about this. It was $5 back in June of 2022. Yeah. So a year ago was $5 went down to three. Why why wouldn't it normalize that four now? So we'll see what happens. But but you also have the airlines coming out saying they're warning of spikes in fuel costs. That sounds like higher prices to travel, higher prices to move freight. Freight. Yeah, yeah, whatever you want to call it. Whatever we're buying or, you know, whether it's commodities or durable goods or whatnot. But yeah, I mean that's, that'll be hitting us soon too. So this inflation thing, man, is what is really going to crush the consumer. I know it's down to the what, three, 4% now, but not when everything else like it. Everything stayed elevated. Yeah. And now everything needs to catch up. And I know wages didn't go up 60% year over year. Well, the higher that oil goes and the more that impacts our life from an inflationary standpoint, I think that gives more leeway for nuclear energy. Just keep on making it through clean clears of the cleanest energy you know, out there that no one talks about because it doesn't fit liberals agenda. So, yeah, you know, stocks like CCJ, which is a stock we own and the most of our portfolios, you know, chemical stocks and rock and uranium has been rocket and uranium. I think in our tactic, in our tactical sleeve, we we own uranium ore. We've have owned it for quite some time. So all the things we're talking about usually away from nuclear to become more important in our everyday life. And it just it's just very dangerous if something goes wrong. That's why we got really smart people. Keep an eye on it right? I actually saw that on Twitter over the weekend. Building of a nuclear reactor. And like the rebar that they have, the bottom four where all the concrete goes on top is insane. All right. Well, let's get into our last topic here. So unemployment finally starting to creep up a little bit. We've talked about this year, two, you know, three up from 3.5 to 3.8. You know, the number that I saw, you know, that I was paying attention to the job openings hit a two year low down to 8.8 million. So, you know, we've been talking about that number for a while. So what do you guys think? You know, we talked about, you know, obviously the employment number being one of the key drivers to if we get a recession or not. You think you think the labor market's going to tighten up at all or do you think more of the same? Oh, just breaking news. Americans are defaulting on their credit cards and auto loans at levels not seen since the financial crisis. Oh, yeah. Good news. Yes, I think a big thing with labor market or the unemployment rate, one of the biggest things that people are citing is that labor force participation, participation went up, you know, over the past couple of months, which means people are getting back to work. Right. So the question you ask, when unemployment rises, are people losing their jobs more or is it because people are there's more people actually in the workforce increase in the number? Right. So I guess the bigger question is what if people are getting back to work? And that's reason when you saw 3.5 to 3.8, where are they coming from? Why weren't they in the workforce to begin with? Yeah, and I was having this conversation with Mark yesterday and the conversation just kind of a roundabout way of the thing. I'm unemployment was we like lost like 700,000 jobs but we gained a million. Yeah. So 670,000 full time jobs gained a million part time, right. So I mean that is that people you know some of that is that people now picking up two side jobs. So we have. One since the financial or. Is our full time people now getting a part time job to keep up with the bills? Right. I don't know. But they probably both. I would say it's both too. But I mean, think about think about like what a part time employee does versus a full time talking about all those benefits and things like that. I mean, employers would probably prefer to have two part time than one full time because it might be cheaper. Right? You know. Because the insurance, the the benefits, all that stuff. So I'm gonna start singing cocktails on the weekends. The. All right. Tom Cruise. All right. Fun though actually. So canceled this week so meta starts it's return to the office policy mandating three in-person days for some workers. Whenever I heard whenever I hear the word meta on Facebook, I just get angry. I don't know what it is about that. Zuckerberg's face just makes. Yeah, it's just very, very angry. And then then we saw that I saw this topic we wanted to discuss and I'm like, who now still works from home? I don't know. I a lot of people yeah. I traffic is back. I don't know. I, I travel to work every day. I never, I never worked from home. We, we shut down for two weeks and we came back to work you know, like so it was never a stay at home thing but I mean are there are a lot of people still working from home. A lot of people are hybrid now, too. I know they work from home three days a week or an office two days or an opposite work from home three days, or work in the office three days and work from home too. There's a lot of hybrid people. Um, and I think it really just depends on the type of career that you have or, yeah, you know, but that being said, this problem with work from home, I'd say it's sometimes my, the problem with the world now sometimes the younger generations they look at the job just as a job. They don't look at their job like a career, right? They think it's okay for me to go collect a paycheck, like to make my money. Right. But they're not looking to the future. Like what kind of growth do I need to keep on growing? What kind of growth do I need to to get to where I want to, you know, make sure I'm outpacing inflation when it comes to income. So I think when working from home, like the problem with is most people are just having a job and won't grow as much. I mean, that's the problem. And I think that being forced back to the office actually is helping these people out from a career standpoint. I completely agree with you. I think that that is very well said because that's what it feels like. Because when you're out there talking with people and there's, you know, asking you, hey, you know, are you back in the office yet? It feels like there's a lot of people working remotely all the time still. And like Tony said, you know, we haven't really done that. So it's there's there's just no when we talked about productivity, there's just no way you're at 20%. 20% Bloomer did a study if you work from home or 20% less productive. Yeah. So that's what, one day a week. That's exactly right. Yeah. So you miss not one day a week of work, essentially working from home to work five. Days a week. Then why, why do, why them? Why is the mentality like doing the hybrid. Why, why is doing a hybrid work model still a thing? Because you're making them happy, I guess Because it's competitive for employees. Right? Right. But then what happens when competition for employees isn't as high as it was and then you can pick and choose and fire somebody. Yeah, right. I think it's just the environment we were in. It was I mean, it's hard to get good employees. I mean, every business owner you talk to and I've talked to is like, you know, like we can't find people that do their damn job right or they do do their damn job. They're they're they want all the perks and benefits, whatever it be. I mean, it just that's the environment we've lived in since COVID. Yeah. And so such bad precedence. I mean, look at theft. I mean, I want to bring this up to this whole thing as well. But 50 billion, 100 billion, we talked about that and for years we talked about that before. But why do you think that happened? I got asked about it yesterday. I wish I kind of had this on top of my mind. I talked about social media being one of the biggest impacts. But one of the other things is precedents that were set during COVID. Like all the streaming money, all the unemployment benefits, like people got used to a certain style of living. And then when you take that away from them, they get mad, They want more. Yeah, right. Well, that's why that's why crime goes out to work. Full time is going to be a difficulty. Why student loans paying back student loans are going to be difficult. Hurdle. I think 60 70% of people say they're not going to pay it back. They said this, I'm not paying back my loans. Well, good. Because guess what? Racking up your credit card debt when your crickets smash. Guess what? Then the next narrative will be, hey, let's forgive credit card debt. Let's say you have $10,000 in credit card debt. I like it. Let's go rank them up. Yeah. This guy's. I don't know, man. It's like I said, I think I mentioned it. The millennials spend, you know, they're going to be the ones probably burning a lot of that, you know, student debt turning back on and look at what they spend their money on. Yeah. Like kind of entertainment items. So yeah, we'll see how that works out. Hey, I also read that being a pessimist decreases your lifespan by 30%. When are we going to have a happy show? So I'm going to be optimist. I'm going to say we're all always get through this because American the American dream, like we talked about last week, one of the best parts about America is that we always come ahead and we always find solutions to big problems and I'm confident that we'll be able to do that because we have intelligent people like Derek and Tony. I want to crap. And another good thing about America football starts this week, so I probably should've told you before the show. But the Super Bowl predictions, you guys got any? If you want to think about one. Pittsburgh. Steelers. Against two, I'm going to go the Cincinnati Bengals beating the Eagles. Cincinnati can't beat the Browns. Though. Yeah that's true The Browns have a good chance on Sunday. It's true. I mean, but we haven't won a home opener in 20 years either. I'm just gonna go Kansas City versus Cincinnati. Hmm. What about Philly? I mean, they. I think Philly's got a, you know, another year under her belt. She's got two great receivers. They got they, they got a great run. They got four running backs that, you know, if one goes down, they're not squirming to find that and their defense is solid enough. So I mean anybody code for $100 and free bets that if anyone wants one gets $100 two. I've been doing that a lot recently because I don't put any money gambling anymore because I really lose every time. So I just use free bets. Who knows, man? Maybe. What is that? Sunshine? What's his name? Down in, uh, Jacksonville. Trevor Lawrence. Trevor Lawrence. He showed some promise last year that that's a that's a Darkhorse playoff team for me. Yeah. They could, because. They could be good. He could be a lot sharper than he was last year. And he started showing some promise. So mark that down, Jarrod. I do think the Steelers could be a darkhorse. I would their they don't have a good quarterback. I think he pick it can can no he. Can't he's you cannot win of course you cannot win a Super Bowl without a good quarterback and they have to maybe I'll be wrong but that's he does he's not jumping off the fantasy football league you know draft. Well I'll tell you that we'll talk about the end of the year. I guess so I think Trevor Lawrence over Pick it. Pick it any day of the week. All right. Well, thanks, everyone, for listening. Good show this week. If you have any questions, comments or concerns, hit us up at info at WP connect dot com and we'll talk to you next week.