The news media, pundits, economists and corporations are all saying that the US economy is being sustained because wealthy people are spending more while poor people are spending less.
They usually then go on to talk about how Trump’s tariffs, inflation, food price increases, prices rising for basic goods and cost of living increases all hit poor people harder than wealthy people. Well yeah…duh.
But – I’d like to know how these people all know that wealthy people are buying more than poor people. When I am buying groceries I doubt Harris Teeter has any idea of my level of wealth. Amazon might have a better idea based on my historical purchases and their data crunching, but at best, I imagine this is an estimate based on average statistics.
How does Walmart know if a shopper is wealthy or poor? Or Target? Or Home Depot? Or any other Fortune 500 companies?
As for the media and economists, I think they are all chasing the soccer ball. Someone hypothesized the “Wealthy are spending more…” theory and everyone else began repeating it.
After all, it sounds plausible.
Still, that doesn’t make it true.