Summary
➡ This text discusses various topics including the importance of using a VPN for data protection, Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package from Tesla, and speculation about Tesla’s future business plans. It also mentions rising jobless claims, high housing prices, and the closure of JC Penney stores. The text advises spending gift cards quickly due to the risk of businesses going bankrupt and mentions Ford’s failed program to make dealers EV certified.
➡ The speaker discusses various topics, including the importance of being cautious in business, the current state of the economy, and how it affects different industries. He also mentions a recent incident where Wells Fargo fired employees for pretending to be busy, and shares a personal anecdote about his son’s clever but misguided attempts to avoid online classes. Lastly, he talks about celebrities Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn moving out of Los Angeles due to repeated break-ins at their home.
Transcript
And there’s just so many. And here’s the wild thing about this, is that these stats, you cannot, you know, you cannot ignore this stuff because of the severity of the financial difficulties that are going on right now. Now, again, it’s not to be gloom and doom, it’s to be a realist. If you own a restaurant, you’ve got to batten down the hatches right now. You’ve got to figure out a way to get customers in there. You’ve got to figure out a way to control your labor costs, especially in a whacked-out California. You know, but in Michigan, they have the same problems that other states are having.
And I want to read this to you because 60% of the restaurants reported having fewer customers. Okay? Well, that’s devastating right there. And then 40% of the restaurant says they’re not profitable at all. They’re not making any money, and they’re losing money month after month. Well, you can’t run any business for a long period of time continuing to lose money. So the third thing, we’ve all witnessed this, is 55% of the businesses say that they have a staffing problem. You know, the one thing that COVID taught us was that, you know, people don’t want to work.
People would rather get a check and stay at home than go out and earn a living right now. That’s the facts of that. And we’re seeing that continue to play out around the country. When I travel right now, I’m always blown away by the businesses that are closed, the shopping centers, the restaurants, how the staffing is. I was at a restaurant in Las Vegas, and they said, listen, we have a mandatory wait time of everybody that walks in to have 20 minutes. You know, there’s open tables. No, the point is, if you wait 20 minutes, we’ll have adequate servers to maintain, you know, the customers.
So we had to wait, and we were talking, can we go to the bar and have a drink? Yeah, you know, but it just created, you know, this false sense of them being busy, and they were not, but they didn’t have the wait staff to handle, you know, us being there. Now, once we did get in, the service was really quick, the food was turned around fast, but it was just a ridiculous way of doing it. You’d rather have a sit at a table, you know, having this drink, and you know, for the people that drink alcohol at the group, they could have had alcoholic drinks, and what it could have built the checkup a little bit, and made us wait to get, to take the order, but they didn’t do that.
So the next thing is 6% sided inflation is the biggest challenge. The inflationary challenge that we have with restaurants is happening to everybody. I just spoke with my friend’s company, who does filings for the county, and he’s like, yeah, these fees are getting outrageous, and the parking fees, you know, I used to bring change, rolls of quarters, and use that to pay for parking, not anymore. This stuff is outrageous what they’re charging us for, and now there’s no grace period, so if I’m going to run into a bank and grab a document, and then go post something, there’s none of that.
It’s like mandatory $15, and things like that that they have to pay, and now they build the clients for stuff like that, but they have to have the money upfront to be able to do that. So again, inflation is everywhere, and you can lie, and you can tell us that it’s only, you know, a 3.3 percent. It is killing everything, the wholesale cost of everything, and this includes things like dry goods, like paper goods, and soaps, and things like that. You just, you know, when you go to a restaurant, you think about the food, but think about everything else that goes into that.
Everything that goes into the bathroom, everything that goes into maintaining the staff, and making sure the place is clean, and good, and everything like that. That all costs money, and it’s all gone up, and you know, this stat was only 25% experience sales growth. Now, the wild thing about this is that the sales growth that some people experience, at what expense? Okay, sales are up because prices are up, or sales up because the food’s so good, and everybody’s waiting in line to get in your business. We just don’t know, you know.
So, but Michigan has had the biggest amount of restaurant closings. Now, this goes to another story, which is, which was sent to me, and that was the number of retail brick-and-mortar stores that have closed. Michigan has got the biggest percentage in the country. Second biggest is California, and the most amount of restaurants that have closed are California. California is a standout because of the high labor costs, and because of this ridiculous $20 an hour, and you know, if you guys saw the last video, people are wanting $30 an hour now.
It’s like, it’s funny, business owners want to make it $75, we want to make it $50, Dan. You know, it gets to a point that we want to unionize. We want to get paid more money, we want more rights, and these people are making $23 to $25 an hour, and the owner says, I can’t do this, I’m going to close. I’d rather close this place, lose everything, than run at a deficit for months, and then file bankruptcy. So, they’d rather cut the cost now, and cut the cord, and be done with it.
So, 3,200 businesses have closed in the United States so far as at the end of May. That is wild, guys, when you think about that. Again, Michigan leads the pack, second is California, and it gets down to the labor cost, and that’s the problem that these people are having. So, you know, there’s a lot more to cover in this video, let me know what you think, but what are you seeing right now? Do you see this because people are not going out right now. They’re staying home, they’re not spending the money, they’d rather stay home than go out and have an expensive deal that they can’t afford.
Let’s talk about our sponsor, Private Internet Access, VPN. VPN is a virtual private network, and it’s so important in these times because what it does is it gives you a level of encryption from any device that you’re on to any website that you go to, whether you’re on your cell phone, your laptop, your tablet, your iPad, your home computer, work computer, whatever. You need safety, you need protection, that’s what a VPN does. It gives you protection from the bad guys, from people seeing your keystrokes, from people being able to get your data and what you’re doing.
Now, think about this, Private Internet Access is talking to the company today. They have been a sponsor for almost two years now, uni allegedly, and they have given us 83% off their regular price. It is pennies a day to get this thing. Plus, they have given us to where every account covers the entire household. So everybody in your household can be covered under one account, all your devices. So that includes all the iPads, all the cell phones, everything. But what this does is it makes it so that people will not be able to see what you’re doing on your computer.
And the other thing that we talked about was it gives people the ability to not know your search history, and it gives you that level of safety and security that you’re not being watched. Now, the other thing is that people that have a VPN, they can switch their locations. I have a cousin that travels all the time, and he loves it for sports because, hey, you’re out of the area, you’re out of the area, not anymore. He can click the VPN, they have VPNs from around the world, and you can change it with a click of one button.
So no hardware to install, very simple, but let me show you how simple this is to use. All you do is open it up, there’s no hardware, you click one button, and your VPN is on. When it turns green like that, I know I’m protected, I can surf the web, go to any website, and I’ve got complete privacy. Check this out today. That’s it, guys. Sign up for Private Internet Access today. So many of you have used this, I get thank-you letters all the time from people. It is truly the best thing that I have bought.
It has been the iAllegedly product of the year for two years in a row for very good reason. Check it out today, use the link below, save 83% off, and get yourself a VPN now before it’s too late. You don’t want your data stolen, you don’t want your personal information out there, you don’t want people to know what you’re doing from going to your bank account and even the government knowing what you’re doing. Protect yourself today. I love all the Tesla talk, I really do, and I love the speculation on what Elon’s going to do, but Elon got his $56 billion pay package approved, and what most people don’t know is he did a really bold thing in the beginning.
He made a deal with the Tesla board that if I hit these benchmarks, I think it was six major benchmarks, that he would be entitled to $56 billion. Now, is that insane money? Yes. Is a billion dollars insane money? Yes. But he did everything and exceeded everything. So he was entitled to this money basically over a year ago, and then somebody filed a lawsuit in Delaware, and that’s why he moved the corporation out of Delaware, and now the Tesla board voted on it, and they finally agreed to this. But the rumor is that Tesla, with all these layoffs and everything that they’re doing right now, doesn’t even want to be in the car business right now.
So what do you think? You think that they want to be in the car business? Because something that’s sent to me, and I love these little theories that are out there. And listen, let me show you down. Two years ago, there were no Teslas parked in these lots and nothing used for storage, and now you look there and you can see this from space. There’s 646 cars here, there’s 412 cars here, and they have these map images of Teslas parked in places that haven’t sold. Now, here’s one thing that’s crazy that most people don’t know.
When a car company sends a car to a dealership, that’s considered sold. So some dealerships, you know how they have just inventory galore and have it parked on dirt fields and things like that, those cars are sold. You and I have already bought those, even though we haven’t, and we know we haven’t. So Tesla’s experiencing that, but to the tune of 56 billion dollars. So personally, the rumor is that he wants to just run the robo-taxis and have global robo-taxis and have all the software and everything that they’ve accumulated. Because every time we drive our cars, all that data is saved and shared, and they know a 56 year old man that drives this speed and does this, they keep all that data on us time and again, time and again, time and again.
So, you know, what do you think about that? So jobless claims, I love this. Jobless claims were up this week. It was supposed to be 225,000. It was supposed to go down. Everything’s great. Well, no, it was 242,000 claims, and it was led by the great state of California. More people filed jobless claims in California. The jobless claims numbers went up to a 10 month high, August of last year. It’s the highest it’s been on a weekly basis since August of last year. But, again, Jerome Powell, when he had his meeting a couple days ago, called everybody out on this and said, you know, I’m concerned about the jobless numbers and what’s being reported, and what’s being reported is a joke.
I don’t even believe the 242. You know, if you believe that unemployment’s at 4%, 4%. I think of everybody you know. Think of the people not working or fully employed. It’s much higher right now, and that is the thing. As we look at all these communities like DR Horton that can’t sell new homes, all these real estate agents that are in flux right now, because it’s summertime and the interest rates didn’t drop, you’re seeing prices sky high. The rumor is that you’re going to see a major purchase from, you know, BlackRock, Blackstone, and whoever, and they’re going to buy all these and have massive purchases at a huge discount and have rental homes.
Again, guys, it’s, you know, rent a lot of houses in my life, and I’m not against renting by any means, but an entire community of renters is different. You want people that own their home so they can have pride of ownership, but with these prices, it doesn’t, right now, it doesn’t make sense to buy a house. It really doesn’t. What’s the advantage of it? Pride? Okay. You know what I have pride of? Having a bank account. I have pride of not owning anybody any money. That’s pride. I have pride of that fact that if I want to go out to dinner, I can afford to go out to dinner, but I don’t have to have a house payment.
That’s $12,000 a month. So it is loony though right now. What prices are going for still, they’re not going to go down anytime soon. But when you think about this and you look at house payments right now, they’ve doubled in price over the last few years. Who can afford that? Who can afford that? I’m on the far end of the island right now. I just wanted to see. It’s funny, it’s hot out here, but this is nothing compared to what Las Vegas heat was. Oh my God. It’s probably 68 degrees, 70 degrees out here in the shade.
But man, oh man, it was hot in Vegas. I just spoke to my friend that’s there. 105 today, guys. But like he says, Dan, it’s a dry heat. Okay. So it’s 105 and it’s a dry heat. Good for you. You know how some people have their favorite stores and favorite places to go, restaurants, bars, golf courses, you know, everything, sports teams. There are certain people that are militant about their shocking experience. And I slammed JC Penney’s about last year at this time and said, Hey, how is JC Penney still open? Who goes there? And I had people write me and say they have almost a billion dollars put into that company this year and they’re going to expand and they’re going to do great.
And it’s the greatest place to shop at. And if you’ve been there, it’s like a Kohl’s lately and it’s dead. I’ve not been to one that has anybody in it other than me walking around with a camera and I’ll prove it again the next time I’m remotely close to one of those. But they’re going to close for JC Penney’s right now. And again, sales volume dropping, Maine, Texas, Maryland, and Alabama. They’re going to close right now. So, you know, sign of the times, guys, sign of the times. But you’re going to see more and more places go out of business.
I want to tell you something that I’ve mentioned you just scoffed over and somebody sent me an email. What do you mean by that? A lot of people get gift cards and save gift cards. And this is not a good thing to do. Spend your gift cards immediately because there was a restaurant chain called Lone Star. And my friend’s dad, this is like, I think it was 2018 when they went out of business. For Christmas, he bought $600 of the gift cards for people. And hey, you’re going to get $100 at Lone Star.
Here you go. He bought them the next day they went out of business, blocked the doors. They are worth nothing. The plastic that they’re printed on is worth nothing. No refunds, no nothing. So he lost $600. So spend your gift cards. You find a gift card, Starbucks, whatever, find out what’s on it and use it immediately because these things are not good forever. That’s the point of that. So don’t get stuck with this because you’re going to see businesses go out of business. You’re going to see bankruptcies. And what’s going to happen is a lot of times during these bankruptcies, they freeze the gift cards right away.
And yeah, maybe 60 days, 90 days, you’ll get to use it or maybe not. So protect yourself. Now, Ford issued a program in 2018 that was going to revolutionize the auto industry and they were going to make you EV certified. You can become an EV certified dealer by giving us Ford $1 million. The only problem was people came back and said, we can’t afford this. We’re not selling these cars. We don’t want to sell these cars. You’re making us sell these cars. And what they did to the bigger dealers that were more profitable, you have to become EV certified and made them pay a million bucks, a million dollars for that.
Well, now Jim Farley, the CEO of the company said, yeah, we’re going to get rid of that million dollar line and make everybody get rid of it for the dealers now. So you don’t have to pay that because EVs are not selling in the way that they should be. What happens if you pay the million dollars? You get it back? Tell me, answer that question. Spend the less, batten down the hatches. Deal with this yourself. I am blown away. I told the story of the idiot that was going to get fired and bought himself a $300,000 car and to make himself feel good.
Then I just got a rash of stories. And the guy, a guy starts a company. Listen, I just started my own business for the first time and I went out and celebrated and bought myself a $20,000 Rolex. Why? You make no money. You make no money. You have no customers, but you need to celebrate opening a business. Okay. Congratulations, fool. Watch who you do business with. Watch what these people do. But I’m telling you right now, just look at history repeating itself. A lot of people don’t remember 2008, 2009, 2010.
It took until 2012 until things came back. But a lot of people don’t remember. And there’s some industries that never came back. If you sell the negative, if you tow cars, if you are into foreclosures, evictions, divorces, things like that, they’re going to be banner. You liquidate cars. You take old trucks and sell them. You’re going to be doing fine right now. It’s the people out there right now that are not doing, look at the signs of this program. It’s the people that are trying to sell certain things that will not be able to do that right now.
You know what’s funny is there’s a very low bridge up ahead. So if I had any sense, I would run up there just to watch this thing. There’s no way that’s going underneath there with this high tide. So maybe we can see something fun together. Okay. He’s going to, oh, he’s going to park it before then. Okay. Let me know what you think. But I’m also one of those guys that loves to see the videos with the guys, you can make it raw and you can’t. So let me know what you think.
You can always email me and share all this stuff. But again, Andrea’s story was really topical right now because of how the economy is right now. What are you seeing in your area? And again, you know, when I was in Las Vegas, you would go into certain areas, certain casinos, certain restaurants packed, waiting, unbelievable. Then you’d go to other places and they are dead. And that’s the way it is. But overall, I would say that the traffic was light overall in Vegas right now, maybe 105 degree weather will do that to you as well.
I’m going to finish this video with these last few stories. And Wells Fargo Bank just fired about two dozen people in its wealth management division for mouse juggling. What is that? Well, what these people did was developed a way of making it look like their mouse is moving on their computer. So they’re busy. So because they have an algorithm and a way of checking to make sure you’re working and is Dan’s mouse moving? Okay, he’s got to be working. So people developed a way of making sure that they could do this. You can watch TikToks and, you know, even shorts here on YouTube where people say, oh, this is how you do it.
So it looks like you’re working. Now my son in junior college, not in big boy school, he was, he would go and he would do different things to get himself out of class during COVID. And from everything from he had a friend made a program that would make it look like he was looking at the screen and he would blink. And it would just run as a loop over and over again, which I was like, you know, it’s very ingenious, but if you actually studied and put the time in, you would be ahead of the game and not have to do this.
I just don’t want to, I’ll do fine in the test or just don’t have to take the class. So that was his thinking. But more and more people are doing things like this. So they got caught in the wealth management, managing your money. Don’t forget that managing your money. And now these people are out of a job and they’re going to have to manage their own money better. Final, final story. The actress, Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn have lived together in Los Angeles for a very long time. I’ve ran into the nicest people in the world, by the way.
And in a four month span, they have their house broken into four times and they’re moving out of Los Angeles. Done. Nothing’s worth this. Don’t want to deal with this. Tired of this. Don’t want to deal with the crime and getting out of LA. So what would you do? Most people would move. Please don’t forget to like the video, subscribe, share it with everybody, comment. Love the comments. And don’t forget, we just had an email go out and if you’re on the list, check your spam filter and onward and upward, guys.
I’ll see you guys very soon. [tr:trw].
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