'Trust fund brats' singled out for luxury item boom as economy reels

As Americans struggle with exploding housing costs, rising food prices -- with egg prices up over 60 percent -- and the country teetering on a recession, a new report illustrates that sales of luxury items took a quantum leap last year, which economists find puzzling.

According to a report released by Bain & Company on January 17, "the luxury market 'surprised everyone in 2022' by growing 19-21 percent last year," while Americans were cutting back on daily expenses.

As The New Republic's Timothy Noah suggested, "... at this point a principal driver may be luxury spending by champagne-swilling plutocrats."

In particular, he singled out what he calls "trust fund brats" whose inherited wealth appears to have made them impervious to the slings and arrows of a troubled economy.

IN OTHER NEWS: 'This is a disgrace': Ron DeSantis sparks protests by receiving same award as Abraham Lincoln

In his column for The New Republic, he noted that economic data suggests "Rich luxury consumers have grown wealthier and more numerous than they were just one decade ago," before adding, "I would venture to guess that no small proportion are members of America’s inherited-wealth aristocracy. Defined, for instance, as the 27 United States families that made both the Forbes 400 in 1983 and the Forbes Billion-Dollar Dynasties list in 2020, this group saw its net worth grow more than 1,000 percent over three decades, according to a report led by Chuck Collins of the Institute for Policy Studies."

As Noah points out, the Bain report makes his case for him.

"The Bain report attributes the 2022 growth to millennials (ages 27-42) and Gen Z (ages 7-26). The Bain report further projects that Gen Z and Gen Alpha (ages 0-6) will over the next seven years conspire to spend three times faster than any other generations, 'making up a third of the market.'"

The Bain report gets right to the point by adding that “a more precocious attitude toward luxury, with Gen Z consumers starting to buy luxury items some three to five years earlier than millennials did (at 15 vs. at 18-20)” is a also a large factor.

More importantly, the columnist adds, their spending on high-end products and services is skewing how the Federal Reserve is combatting inflation, making things worse for the average consumer as interest rates skyrocket.

"The big question is whether these trust fund brats will continue to spend and spend and spend to such a degree that the Federal Reserve will have to keep interest rates high enough to cause a serious recession," he asked before pointing out, "Recessions are still, I think, bad for rich people, even trust fund brats, and deep recessions are even worse."

You can read more here.