This is an excelent piece connecting the dots that most economic coverage misses. The Evercore ISI observation about looking behind macro aggregates is crucial because the headline numbers hide massive divergence. Your point about this starting long before AI, back to the QE era after 2008, really nails it. When the Fed flooded markets with cheap money, it went straight to asset holders while regular people got stuck with stagnant wages. The numbers are stagerring: top 20% spending up 49% since 2019 while everyone else just kept pace with inflation. That's not a temporary blip, that's structural. The luxury spending surge you documented, from $50k+ cars to premium air travel, shows the top tier has completly decoupled from the rest of the economy. At some point this breaks, either through political upheaval or some kind of forced redistribution.
This is an excelent piece connecting the dots that most economic coverage misses. The Evercore ISI observation about looking behind macro aggregates is crucial because the headline numbers hide massive divergence. Your point about this starting long before AI, back to the QE era after 2008, really nails it. When the Fed flooded markets with cheap money, it went straight to asset holders while regular people got stuck with stagnant wages. The numbers are stagerring: top 20% spending up 49% since 2019 while everyone else just kept pace with inflation. That's not a temporary blip, that's structural. The luxury spending surge you documented, from $50k+ cars to premium air travel, shows the top tier has completly decoupled from the rest of the economy. At some point this breaks, either through political upheaval or some kind of forced redistribution.