RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, our Morning Update today bounces off an Associated Press story that talks about not only are you suffering economic hardship, so are the wealthy. The wealthy and the rich are finally beginning to share the pain that everybody else in this country is feeling. They are hurting. They are scrimping and scraping and saving and they’re doing everything they can to make ends meet just like you. Here’s how bad it is according to the AP. The wealthy ‘have decided to invest their money more conservatively.’ In the past, the wealthy didn’t care whether the money did well or not in the investments. They just gave it to the broker and went to the golf course. But now things have gotten so tight that the wealthy actually care whether or not their investments are growing.
It’s a big, big change obviously. Everybody knows the wealthy don’t care about their money. They just give it to the broker and if it loses some, fine! Write it off, go play golf, and buy another airplane. But now those days are over, folks. Those days are over. Now they have to pay attention to their money and increasing its amount and size. According to the Associated Press, the wealthy and rich have cut back on all sorts of luxury items and they’ve cut back on their credit card spending. In fact, a lot of the wealthy are in default at American Express. I read the story. Some of American Express’ financial problems right now are that the wealthy are simply saying, ‘To hell with the bill,’ like Aristotle Onassis always did. You get to Onassis status, and you never pay the bill anyway. It’s demeaning. They just carry it. You know, some accountant will take care of it later, but Onassis never paid the bill.
You just give him the card and walk out with your own card after they chalk it up that you don’t pay for it, but now they are defaulting. ‘Some of the wealthy…’ This is really… I mean, this actually makes me sad when I see these next items. Some of the wealthy, some of the rich ‘have asked their personal shoppers to look for bargains.’ I can’t tell you how humiliating this is. The wealthy are sending personal shoppers into Costco now, into Wal-Mart, Target and so forth, looking for bargains. This has never happened before. The wealthy of course look for the highest priced goods, go out and buy them, and then brag to everybody how much they cost. But those days are over, ladies and gentlemen. Personal shoppers, who themselves have rarely been to a Target or a Wal-Mart have now had to, A, find out where the nearest one is, to the wealthy person they work for, and then they’ve had to go in there and look for bargains.
They’re deal hunting, the rich are, some of the wealthy. This is especially devastating to learn. The rich who have their own airplanes, their own private jets? They have told the flight attendants and the flight crew to forget fancy catering services offered by the various airports and instead find a cheap deli near the airport and go there for some baloney sandwiches and cottage cheese, some dill pickles, and maybe some tomato and mozzarella. But no more fancy-schmancy catered meals on the private jets. That’s humiliating. I hope they’re able to remain anonymous. Obviously the Associated Press found out about this, so the staffs of these people — the flight crews — are obviously talking. Then there was a story about this poor guy in Long Island, put his mansion up for sale for nine million, and had to sell it for seven.
That’s an embarrassing thing for people to find out. I mean, times are really tight for the rich, too. Now, normally we’ve been told, a lot of people been told to celebrate this. We had a phone call from an Obama supporter last week who was all excited Obama’s going to raise taxes on the rich because it’s going to improve his life. Which is one of the most dunderheaded comments that I’ve heard in the last couple years on this program, but he actually believed it. This guy is actually the one that’s going to get hurt if Obama starts raising taxes. So with this story, that even the rich are suffering — and, by the way, that was not the point of the story. The point of the story is yet to come. The rich are suffering and you all, we’re all supposed to be happy. ‘Yeah! It’s about time they found out what it’s like!’ Then the AP takes a curious turn, ladies and gentlemen, warning you not to celebrate any of this yet.
‘The scrimping rich,’ according to AP, are contributing to your economic woes. Do you know why? Well, when the rich stop spending money as though it were water, everybody else’s money dries up. Why, AP writes, it ripples through the economy! Quote, ‘The problem is that when the wealthy get stingy, it trickles down to the rest of us.’ This, ladies and gentlemen, constitutes journalistic malpractice. The first half of the story, we’re happy as hell that the rich are hurting and suffering. Now all of a sudden, because they’re getting ‘stingy,’ that’s the word in the story! These cruel people, they hate you when they’re really rich. They hate you when they’re scrimping and saving; they are stingy. And you get hurt when they are stingy, because they are spending less, which means less opportunity for you to have more.
Now, remember the way the left and the Drive-Bys always attacked trickle-down economics. The theory of trickle-down economics, which has just been confirmed here by the witless reporters at the Associated Press, holds that the more money the wealthy have to dispose of as they wish, the more likely that will end up spread out trickling down through the economy — i.e., in new jobs, in business expansion, or in retail spending. Now, this is a simple question rooted in fundamental logic: If we are going to lament the rich getting stingy, meaning spending less money ’cause times are tight for them, then why at the same time can’t we recognize that tax cuts for the rich also benefit all of the rest of the people who are not? So what you have is a glaring illustration of the utter agenda-driven focus of the media, their utter bias, and their genuine ignorance. Somebody ought to realize at the editor level that this story contradicts about 25 years of news stories that AP has run. The only thing consistent in this story is: No matter what the rich do, they’re still SOBs.