WARNING! This ONE HOMEOWNER MISTAKE COULD DRAIN YOUR SAVINGS

One thing we've talked about a lot here on the channel is all of the woes in the fast food industry right now. These guys are seeing a lot of trouble because people just aren't coming in because the value isn't there. But to add insult to injury, earlier in the year California made it mandatory for fast food restaurants to pay $20 an hour minimum wage. And this so far has cost thousands of people their job. So we're going to get into all of that how California is essentially putting itself out of business and later on I'm also going to get into the latest inflation numbers too because things are going in the wrong direction with that. But first let's jump into this fast food debacle guys because they just found out that California has so far lost 6,000 fast food jobs after the $20 an hour minimum wage hike. 6,000 jobs. That's equivalent to one of the largest layoffs we've seen all year. You know most of the big layoffs when they come out they're like laying off 6,000 people, 8,000 people, 10,000 people. So that is a lot of people that have lost jobs so far in 2024 due to this $20 an hour wage hike. And it's actually more jobs lost than that. Between September of 2023 and June of 2024 there's actually been 6,166 jobs lost or about 1.1 percent. So if the trend continues in this direction in a year from now they will have lost over two percent of the fast food jobs that were out there prior to this change. During the same period just a year before this law the California fast food industry actually added 17,500 jobs which was a 3.1 percent increase from 2022 to 2023. Imagine that guys. So this law went into effect as of April 1st of 2024. So think about it. This data only actually spans a couple of months of 2024. So we don't even know how many jobs have been lost since June of 2024 when this data set ends. The way it stands right now is that any fast food restaurant that has at least 60 locations nationwide has to pay this $20 an hour minimum wage. And we've seen all kinds of things happen so far. You've seen pizza restaurants outsource the labor to things like Uber Eats and DoorDash so they don't have to hire their own delivery drivers anymore. You've seen other restaurants just let people go obviously as well as people are being replaced with technology mainly robots and kiosks to do work that humans used to do. You also have a lot of restaurants closing down in California due to this as well because it makes it so that if you have multiple chains like that a lot of them become unprofitable essentially overnight. Like Rubio's Coastal Grill for example they closed down 48 of its California restaurants and the reason why they did it? Rising cost of doing business. That's what they cited. 48 places closed. Guys how many of those jobs were due to that 48 restaurant closure? I'm sure a lot. But it seems like people in California are finally starting to wake up and realize the damage this is starting to cause to their economy because in November when we had the election Californians actually rejected Proposition 32 which was a ballot measure that would have increased the state's minimum wage from $16 to $18 and it was the first time in the state's history that Californians actually voted down a ballot measure to increase the minimum wage statewide and I think people are starting to wake up. They're realizing that hey these policies are pushing everything in the wrong direction. We're seeing more job losses and more restaurant and store closures because of all of this than what it was promised to do. On top of that having a $20 minimum wage for fast food it's like you already have a $20 minimum wage statewide because why would anybody go to work a different job for $16 an hour when you can get paid $4 more an hour for working at a fast food restaurant? So I'm sure a lot of these other employers that are paying $16 or less than $20 are having a much harder time getting people to work there but despite all of this some people just don't learn the lesson. They kind of double down on a bad idea and that's exactly what the Los Angeles City Council is trying to do because what they're trying to do now is propose a $30 an hour minimum wage for restaurant workers who work at LAX which is the airport in Los Angeles. Now obviously that's not a statewide initiative or something that affects a wide range of businesses because it's only at LAX. What they're trying to do is first get the minimum wage there up to $25 an hour as soon as the traffic at the airport resumes the levels that they were seeing before the pandemic in 2019. And they think that that threshold may possibly come this year which means that they would get the wages up to $25 an hour as of 2025. And then from that point forward the minimum wage would rise by $1 every July until it reaches $30 an hour guys. Right now the lowest minimum wage for LAX restaurant workers is $19.25 an hour so pretty much on par with the $20 an hour fast food minimum wage. And somehow they're able to throw in a bunch of hotel workers into the mix too from hotels that are near the airport. This would increase wages by 56% for eligible employees just over a four-year period. Now listen I'm all for people making more money. I think everybody deserves to make more money and needs to make more money in this economy but not at the hand of the government. That's where I disagree. That's where it falls apart for me because they try to mandate stuff like this and then that's where it begins to fall apart because if the free market said okay this is the fair pay for people working this job then they would already be paying it. And by the way guys sometimes it's fun to pick on California because even though I love spending my summers there I'm really glad I don't live there when I read all these stories and I can just kind of watch all this from afar. And even when I'm there it doesn't affect me because I'm not a resident you know. So the reason behind all of this supposedly is because people that work at the airport it takes a lot longer for them to get into work due to all of the red tape they have to pass through at the airport every day. They have to circle through the airport to get to the parking lot then they have to go through the security screenings whereas somebody else working a different restaurant job somewhere around LA they might only take 10 or 15 minutes to get to work. So that's the reason that they deserve $30 an hour. I mean that just sounds absurd to me. Nobody's forcing these people to work there. They can work somewhere else if they wanted to. So it's just like when do they learn? You know it seems like they never learn the lessons over there and I feel like California is going to have to learn a lot of these lessons the hard way. You know and I have another California story here that kind of reflects that too because in San Francisco when I was over there they passed a law from the previous mayor where they were going to start towing all of the RVs that were illegally parked over there. They're like you know what we're finally cracking down on this homeless situation. We're doing sweeps on the street and also we're towing all these RVs that are illegally parked. That's what they decided to start doing probably in a bid to try to get re-elected for the mayor there which didn't end up happening because actually a lot of the people in San Francisco are tired of the homeless issue and basically how this program was working was that city officials would go around find these RVs that are parked in spots that they're not supposed to be and then they would offer those people shelter and if they refuse the shelter then they could tow the RV. But now they just reversed all of that say that you know what we're not going to do that anymore. Now that the election's over with now we can go back to doing all the stuff that wasn't working before so that's just what politicians do. And even according to San Francisco laws living in a vehicle is prohibited under the city's policy code but it's something that's not enforced. So yeah we make all these laws here but we don't enforce it. How does that make any sense? Why even have the law? Why not just get rid of it? Why not just let it be a free-for-all? People can park and do wherever they want anywhere. And you know a lot of the residents who live in San Francisco that own a property that actually pay extremely high property taxes due to the high valuations there are pushing for this to happen but now the city officials are going against what they want. You know many residents in these neighborhoods have put out concerns over this because you know you have these RVs parked on the street right and these things are huge and San Francisco is a very small city and the streets there aren't very big either so you got this massive RV that kind of blocks the view of the street first of all which makes driving more dangerous. It creates more blind spots on the road but also a lot of people who live in these RVs they illegally dump garbage and sewage all the time and it creates less parking for people who are actually needing a place to park in the city and parking is a huge issue in San Francisco too. It's very hard to find parking. It's very expensive to park when you do find parking. People who argue against this say oh it's just a waste of resources because all this is going to do is increase the demand for the city's limited shelter beds and it's moving people away that already have a roof over their head. It's super windy today also guys so I'm kind of like walking in the trees here trying to stay away from it but the beach is right over here so I'll take you out there just to show you the ocean real quick. One of the homeless advocates says that you know homeless people living in RVs are creatively solving the homeless crisis for themselves and city officials have been unable to properly address the policy. This would push people backward into a more unstable and temporary housing situations and these homeless advocates are saying the biggest problem is that the city is failing to address the actual homeless crisis and they're not doing enough about all of this. Well I agree they're not doing enough about it although I gotta say when I was there I did a couple videos over there I didn't see nearly as many homeless as I thought I was gonna see but I think what they've done now is they've kind of corralled people into certain parts of the city and listen I'm not like saying people shouldn't be able to stay in their RVs like I don't have any problem with somebody that wants to live in their RV. You got a place to live you're not bothering anybody fine but you know what you can't just park it anywhere. They should have a designated area where people in this situation can park without worrying about being harassed. Got the kite surfers out there. It's pretty dangerous but these guys love it. Look at that one flying through the air. You know it just seems like to me that almost everything California does is just like the opposite of the right thing to do. You know we need more money so let's raise taxes and then more and more of the people that pay the most taxes end up leaving. You know we charge more income taxes than any other state and we now have billions of dollars in deficits and somehow we don't have enough money to operate our state. How did that happen? We don't want people living on the street but we'll let it happen anyways because we don't want to spend any of that crazy amount of money we collect in taxes to do anything about it. It costs 800 grand to build a small ADU for a homeless person in California somehow. Fast food workers don't make enough money so let's force all the business owners to pay them more and cost thousands of jobs instead. Like who's thinking of this? And this video wasn't really supposed to be like a rip-in to California but all these stories I kept finding you know were related to this fast food issue and all these things that they're doing over there that just don't make any sense and going against people's wishes. One of my viewers who lives in California he sent me over this email. I'm not going to show you guys the whole thing but basically he said this. He says I have a small business in California. I'm the sole proprietor so no employees and my payroll company recently sent me this email explaining that California took loans from the federal government, has not paid these loans back, and now me and many other small business owners are responsible for filling in the state's financial fail. Here's the email that he sent me. Our records indicate that your company will be assessed additional FUTA tax by the federal government for 2024 because you have employees working in one or more of the FUTA credit reduction states, California. A FUTA credit reduction state means a state has taken out loans from the federal government to meet its unemployment benefits obligations and has not repaid the loans within the allowable time frame. As a result, the usual credit against the full FUTA tax rate is reduced by 0.9 and the employer will owe a greater amount of tax in those states. He's going to be liable for paying $63 out of his company and he's going to be Okay, $63 isn't a ton of money guys, but still imagine all the small businesses that are getting hit with this notice and have to pay that $63 or more because maybe it's based on how many employees you have. Like for example, he doesn't have any employees, he's just a sole proprietor. So if he has 10 employees and it might be $630, you know, $63 times 10. And these guys are all picking up the bill because California somehow couldn't make even though they charged more taxes than anybody than any other state. I mean, somebody explain to me how this works. Please, I would love to know. And I'm not trying to brag, I'm just like being realistic here, but listen guys, in Florida, we don't have any state income taxes and we run at a budget surplus in this state. We don't have a deficit. How in the world is that possible? I know that Florida is only half the size of California, but still there's a lot of people here, still one of the largest states in the And we can manage to do that and California somehow just drops the ball on all of it. But I don't know who's worse, California or the federal government because now we have to talk about inflation, okay? And of course, the CPI index went up 0.3 percent in November, which is the highest number we've seen in seven months. And the annual inflation reading has now been rising for the past three months in a row. And back in September, it was at 2.4 percent and now in November, it's sitting at 2.7 percent. There's a lot of people that are just making all kinds of excuses of why this is happening. One guy, he's like, there's a lot of data that went into November's inflation number and one of them was that hotel rates on an annual basis went up 45 percent. They're blaming this on housing also because housing continues to rise. In fact, housing's up 4.7 percent year over year still. So they're saying, oh, a lot of it is just this other stuff, you know, housing, who needs that? But they're like, hey, you know, if you want to rent a car, the car rental prices are down 31 percent year over year. So when you tune out the extremes, the rise in November wasn't 0.3 percent, it was closer to 0.2 percent. Oh, well, let's all give a round of applause then because it was 0.1 percentage point lower when you take out the extremes. But the extremes count, don't they? Those are all things people have to pay for. So again, to me, this is just more excuses. And really, how often does anybody need to rent a car, guys? Like, I rented a car one time this year for one day, but before that, I can't even remember the last time I rented a car. It was probably like five or six years ago. But every month people need to pay their insurance, you know, every month people need to eat, every month people need to pay their mortgage or their rent payment, right? That's every single month. But those things don't matter, right? Those are just extremes that we can kind of omit and say, let's not worry about the inflation report. Who's believing this? And they're saying, oh, you know, shelter prices are coming down a little bit, so we can all rest easy knowing that. They say, well, you know, rent and other shelter prices only went up 0.3 percent from October to November, so at least it's starting to level out. Like, yeah, I guess that's a good thing, but it's not going down. And even if it was going down, it wouldn't be going down by nearly enough that people need to see it going down by for it to make a meaningful difference in their life. And they say, well, when you take housing out of the equation, you know, consumer prices are only up 1.6 percent from a year ago, so it's a lot more reasonable than people think. Like, it is just mind-blowing the level of excuses that these people come up with to try to justify that things are good right now. And I know a lot of you who watch my channel are smart enough not to believe any of this nonsense, but I still have to call it out and just point out how egregious of a lie all this stuff really is. You know, we have inflation holding steady for the past three months. When you look at the core inflation, it's been stuck at 3.3 percent, and this is the number that the Fed supposedly has been making their interest rate cuts decisions based on. Okay, but we're sitting at 3.3 percent, and it went up as of August and stayed up. It hasn't been going down, but the first interest rate cut was in September. Doesn't make any sense. The PCE, that's at 2.8 percent right now, which is just as high as it was back in March of this year. And it barely dipped down in the summer, and now it's back to where it was earlier in the year, guys. And when you see this chart going back to basically the beginning of the pandemic or even before, inflation was a lot lower than it is today, and it's creeping back up. You also have the CPI sitting at 2.7 percent, which is up from the 2.4 percent that it was just back in September a few months ago. And that's when the Fed made their first rate cut, and they've already cut the rates twice, and they're looking at doing another rate cut just in a few days from now, here in December. And yet, inflation is cured. I think it's pretty apparent, based on what we're seeing happening with these rate cuts, as well as the inflation data, that they're not serious about getting inflation under control. They never were, and you shouldn't be expecting inflation to go down anytime soon, if ever. Because take a look, guys. I mean, if the CPI number is 2.7 percent, and this government data is all extremely corrupt, and basically the books are cooked with this, and you know that the numbers are basically always double what they say it is, the real inflation number is closer to 6 percent year over year for most people still. Probably even more when you factor in real world things like housing and insurance and taxes, all the stuff that they don't like to put in there. They don't like to acknowledge any of those real world expenses. We just live in the paper world, where we just write numbers down and say this is what it is. And this is why you're seeing the markets of all kinds go crazy, except for the housing market. But the stock market is up. Bitcoin prices up 150 percent from just a year ago, guys. Gold prices keep hitting all-time record highs this year. All these assets are going up tremendously, because nobody believes that inflation has been cured. Not even the bond market. That's why you're seeing 30-year mortgage rates still hovering very close to 7 percent, because this is all a big fat lie. You know, in 2024, we've seen our national debt go up to over 36 trillion dollars already and counting. Now it's going to be well over a trillion dollars a year just in interest payments that we're having here in the U.S. The real inflation numbers probably got up to 20 percent during the peak of the pandemic, because it was around 9 percent according to the official CP lie. So people are pouring into assets that are going to be a hedge against all of this to protect their purchasing power. A lot of people believe in Bitcoin. I own some Bitcoin as well. You know, I bought it when it was a lot cheaper than it is now, and I'm glad I did. I never sold any of it, never bought any more either, because to me it's still a very speculative thing, and it can come crashing back down like it has. I personally, I feel a lot safer with gold and silver, because it is just a time-tested investment. Gold and silver has been money since humans have been keeping track, since humans have been counting money, and that's not going to change anytime soon. So I just trust that more than Bitcoin, although people might say I'm stupid. I don't care. You know, this is what I feel good about. You invest in whatever you feel good about. But I'm happy to see Bitcoin go over a hundred thousand. I think that's something that I thought was going to happen back when I first bought it. I believed in the future of Bitcoin, but that doesn't mean it's not in a bubble. But the thing that makes me happy about seeing all of these markets soar, including the stock market, is that at least the smart people know that inflation is not coming down, like the Fed and the government keeps lying to us and telling us that it is. And that's why you're seeing the prices of all these assets go up. And I think real estate is excluded from that. It has been going up a little bit in some areas, but it's also been coming down in a lot of other areas, because real estate is more of a supply and demand game, and it's also a local game. So you see massive discrepancies in supply and demand in some markets versus others. You also got to look at affordability, too. So part of me thinks like, okay, if inflation continues to be this bad, and obviously they don't have this under control, could housing prices overall continue to go up? Yeah, they can. And I know I've been one of the biggest people on YouTube calling for a housing crash, guys. And I still don't think that that's off the table, because we have been seeing unemployment tick up. We've also been seeing the job market get weaker and weaker. We haven't been seeing the wages really keep up with this massive spike in inflation that we still continue to see. And that ultimately can play into how many people can afford to buy a house, which it already has been. But also, even more importantly, how many people default on their current home because they just can't keep up with these rising expenses anymore. And listen, I think in the long run, real estate's always going to be valuable. It's not like real estate's ever going to come crashing down to zero. That's just not going to happen. But we're still looking at markets that are facing a severe downturn, a big correction, you know. It's already starting to happen here in Florida, certain parts of Texas as well, other parts of the South, even parts of California are starting to see prices come down already. And these are the biggest states in the country, guys. Not just geographically, but also population-wise as well. For the most part, there's a lot of people living in these areas. So once those dominoes start to fall, a lot of the others could follow suit. But we'll be keeping an eye on all of it like we always do. So if you enjoyed this video, make sure you are subscribed to the channel. And if you don't want to wait for my next video to come out, check out this one on the screen right over here. And I'll see you in the next one.