Obviously the "elite conspiracy" angle is silly, but either way, I think framing it as a "convenient excuse" to fire and not rehire a lot of people is a little

Obviously the "elite conspiracy" angle is silly, but either way, I think framing it as a "convenient excuse" to fire and not rehire a lot of people is a little odd to me. Individual businesses are full of inefficiencies that are easy to tolerate when times are good. In many cases, it's often a net waste of time to plug most of them, you usually have higher ROI activities to attend to. But when a crisis hits and the economy slows down, the equation has changed, many higher ROI activities (eg. marketing or sales activities) are no longer higher ROI, and plugging your many inefficiencies remains one of the few lucrative activities you can choose from. So the organization focuses inwards and starts looking for cost inefficiencies. Put another way, you wouldn't tell someone who just lost their job that they're just using their loss of income as a convenient excuse to cancel their Hulu subscription that they rarely use.