Skip to main content

Economist: Poor, Middle-Class People Not Exactly Pulling Their Weight When It Comes To Spending

  • Author:
  • Updated:
    Original:

There's an old saying that goes "Poors- what are they good for? [sing this part] Absolutely nothin'!" Slightly clichéd though not necessarily untrue. Take the economy. Are the poor and middle class, many without jobs and/or disposable income, doing their part to stimulate the damn thing? No, not really. As always, the rich people have to do everything around here.

Rich shoppers are driving an increase in consumer spending, bolstering a recovery that masks reluctance among less affluent Americans to join in. Sales are up at Tiffany & Co. and Coach Inc., buoyed by demand for $6,000 diamond pendants and $1,200 leather handbags as a stock-market surge pads the wallets of the wealthy. At the other end of the economic spectrum, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest discount retailer, reports “everyday Americans” are living paycheck to paycheck as they await an improvement in job prospects.

“The heavy lifting is being done by the upper-income households,” said Michael Feroli, a former Federal Reserve economist who is now chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York. “They’re the ones benefiting the most from the stock market rally, and they’re spending.”

The Rich Go Spend But With Little Help From The Middle Class [Bloomberg via Daily Intel]

Related

News

Don't Talk To Jamie Dimon About Income Inequality When Everyone In The Middle Class Is Taking Pix On An iPhone 6

Twenty years ago they would've been using flip-phones. Life is great. Case closed.

News

For Charlie Gasparino, All The World's A Weight Class

News

Poor People Help Goldman Sachs Alum Sleep At Night

News

You're Not The Only One Affected By Your Diminished Bonus This Year, You Selfish Sons Of A Bitch

News

Lloyd Blankfein Explains How, In Their Own Little Way, Commodities Are The Gay People Of Asset Classes

News

What Percentage Of Harvard Business School's Class Of 1986 Is Lying About How Much Weight They've Gained?

For its 25th reunion last year, the members of Harvard Business School's class of 1986 were asked to fill out an 85 question survey to give their former classmates a picture of where life has taken them since the gang parted ways. In addition to standard queries like "how much money are you making" (median annual net income: $350,000, median personal net worth: $6 million), "did you start a business" (36 percent said yes), "was choosing to attend Harvard Business School the best decision you've ever made" (48 percent responded that it was "one of the best decisions of my life," 1 percent boldly claimed "it was not a particularly productive use of my time or money"), and how many times have you been laid-off and/or fired (4 percent have been "involuntarily dismissed" three times, 13 percent twice, and 47 percent once) the questionnaire writers dug quite a bit deeper to find out that: A quarter of them are wanton little shoe whores. One in four own 25 or more pairs of shoes (58% of the women and 15% of the men). A third of them are actual whores.* A third of the class (33%) admitted to having slept with someone whose last name they didn’t know (37% for men, 17% for women). Ninety-seven percent of them are getting laid on the reg. Just 3% of the alums say they want more sex. The highest priorities? Time (31%), health (18%), and peace of mind (13%). (Poets&Quants, which obtained the results of the survey, interpreted the above as being indication that "sex isn’t a very high priority for the Class of 1986" though couldn't it just as easily be indication that they're getting enough already, figuring asking for 6 times/day instead of 5 would be greedy?) A quarter are on a boat. 25% own a boat. As many as three percent may have wed a mail-order bride. Some 18% dated someone they met online, but only 3% of the class married the person they met on the Internet or by some “other commercial means.” Three percent are that guy. What did the class find to be the most valuable part of getting an MBA from Harvard?...Some 3% said it was “something to drop into cocktail party conversations.” And approximately three-quarters of these people, aged 53-55, are bald-faced liars. Slightly more than one in four alums have gained 11 to 20 pounds since they wore their cap and gown. Some 15% put on 21 to 30 pounds, while 5% tip the scales with weight gains of 31 to 50 pounds. More than a little suspect. Love, Sex & Money: A Revealing Class Portrait of The Lives of Harvard MBAs [Poets And Quants] *We kid the Class of '86. Though hopefully for next year someone will have the balls to actually ask if you knew their name, period, if you could pick them out of a line up, and so on and so forth.

News

Banks Do Some Of Their Best Work When They’re Spending Other People’s Money

News

NYT: Poor People Have Second Homes, Rich People Have "The Four-Pack"

Separating the wheat from the chaff.