Comments on: Rich People Spend Money Despite Recession!

By: Libby Spencer

Libby Spencer — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 18:01:13 +0000

That's assuming the guy is a good tipper. Having both worked on the serving end and been entertained by the wealthy at fancy dinners in my lifetime, it's been my experience that the wealthier patrons are often the most demanding and the worst tippers of the lot. There are exceptions of course, but on the whole I think if you polled servers, you'd find that I'm right. Surely the restaurant owner is happy but then he's the one making the real money on the deal.

By: Patrick T. McGuire

Patrick T. McGuire — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:10:22 +0000

I wonder if this same writer is behind the stories with the theme "prison populations have increased even though crime has reduced"?

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:10:27 +0000

Are they a) resentful that this rich jerk has the audacity to spend money when they’re struggling to put gas in the car

That's a lot of words to avoid using "bitter". Is "bitter" going to be politically taboo now? Not saying you were deliberately avoiding the word, it just struck me that it would have been an ideal place to use it, if it hadn't suddenly become controversial.

By: Hoodlumman

Hoodlumman — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:07:52 +0000

I can't imagine how hard the economy would fail if folks like the gentlemen in the article halted spending or put their lifestyles on hold out of... what? sympathy? for others that may be feeling the pinch of our current downturn.

Clueless indeed, NYT...

By: Triumph

Triumph — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:56:55 +0000

A rather clueless NYT feature

I am not sure if the paper has gone through a change in editorship, but there has been a serious increase in front-page fluff like this story and the dying blogger story from last week.

I have been a print subscriber to the paper for years and even when they have had these fluff pieces in the past they have been presented as modest asides.

The difference now is that these fluff stories have pretensions about speaking to non existent "social trends."

Perhaps they are dumbing down to compete with Murdoch's Wall Street Journal.

They also recently completed a redesign of the paper which essentially strips pages 2-4 of any stories. Instead, the first couple of pages give stupid capsule accounts of that issue's contents--an unnecessary gesture since you can just browse the headlines for the same info.