Wealthy Americans Unholster Their Weapons

While Obama sells socialism, affluent citizens aren't buying.

By Dan Kennedy
Business & Media Institute

The resistance is well underway.

Affluent Americans – defined as the top 20 percent of U.S. households by income – spent about 10 percent less in 2008 than they did in 2007, according to a study by luxury-goods researcher Unity Marketing, quoted in Research Alert, July 3, 2009. And those households with incomes of $250,000 or more are cutting back on spending even more than all affluent households overall. 54 percent of these consumers are spending even less in 2009 than in 2008.

Those $250,000+ earners, threatened directly and demonized by President Obama are retaliating with their most powerful and damaging weapon: not spending. It is a quiet, deliberate, determined, very real resistance. Read more.