Quick, Somebody Get Me a Very Small Violin!
I need to play a number for the distraught merchants along Rodeo Drive and other chi-chi shopping corridors, who face a new crisis in high-end retail: They're no longer able to tell which potential customers are rich. From the Wall Street Journal's Wealth Report:
I was talking to a Jaguar salesman last week and asked him what the hardest part of his job was.“You can’t tell who’s rich anymore,” he said. “It used to be if someone walked in with jeans and a T-shirt I could ignore them or ask them to leave. Now that guy could be a billionaire. You have to be nice to everybody these days.”..
Identifying the rich used to be fairly simple: They dressed, talked and looked a certain way. They had iconic last names like Hutton or Hearst or Phipps, often with Roman numerals at the end.
Today, wealth has been democratized and individualized, and the rich come in all ages, shapes, sizes and ethnicities. People often ask me, “What do the rich wear? How can you tell by looking at someone today if they’re rich?” Such questioners are usually recalling old myths about watches and shoes, but my answer is that there is no way to tell. The rich don’t have a uniform anymore. Today, they all wear their wealth differently, from the dot-commers in T-shirts to the hedge-funders in khaki to the CEOs in classic pinstripes.
Oh, the indignity! The merchants now have to be ... "nice to everybody!" Capitalism can be so cruel.
(H/T Benjamin Kepple's Daily Rant.)
This is truly a vintage whine. They have never been able to tell money by dress in Beverly Hills or Malibu.
Twenty five years ago, you walk into a realestate office in Malibu wearing cut off shorts and with sand in your hair, they had to take you seriously. Made them nuts.
Walk into a Rodeo Dr. store twenty years ago in a suit and they figure you for a working stiff. The real money was in jeans and T-s. The only "tell" they could use--and every pro knows this--was and is: shoes.
I think that removing the Stock Market Listings from the Business Section of the Daily News was the most idiotic thing they could have done.I believe that many people are going to switch carriers after their subscription expires.I still haven't found a substitute on the internet.
Sunday, December 16, 2007. The Daily News ran an article written by a woman in which se complains about not being able to buy present for herself and her family because everything was made in China. Duuuuuuuh, you woman! Where have you been for the last twenty years? Hibernating inside a tent in the farthest corner of the Gobi desert? And why mentioning only China? How about Brazil, Mexico, Taiwan, India, The Dominican Repubblic, and among others Mongolia. Yes! Mongolia! That is where "Fruit of the Loom" manufactured its underwears. Turn around lady and point your finger to the million of idiotic American buyers who bought and bought and bought foreign made thing that were absolutly necessary to have or the family would have fallen to pieces! And stop blaming Bush! He is not in my list of the best and brightest, but he was elected twice! Twice, buy us. I remember getting calls from friends in Europe and South America asking how that could have happened? Twice? You made the same mistake...twice!? And this time he (Bush) didn't have the help of his brother!? Where were you when some people were picketing ToyR'US and Wal-Mart in 2003 and 2004? We need shoes, pants or skirt and a top to get dressed and start the day. Those are essential things that we most have or we don't move, and China make those items, but, must we go into debts to buy the new 50 inch Plasma TV set? The new cell phone? the new Lap Top? And God help us if we miss it, the new toy? Wal-Mart is boasting of the number of people its shops are employeen, but they never told us how many American towns Wal-Mart economically killed and how many American workers were laid off permanently. So, in conclusion. Lets remember or tell Wal-Mart what Jhon Kennedy said about doing something for our country and not expecting our country to do something for us. Or, lets tell that to the people who are guiding/sinking/ us into a bottomless hole.
Today's Daily News has an article on ECONOMY. I read it twice and nowhere there is a suggestion to find a way to put American people back to work in the manufacturing section of our economy. In case we forgot, manufacturing means "making" things. You know, like China does. China makes things. China manufactures things. Things that happy Chinese workers make and sell to us, the perennial idiots. Well, what can we (American) do when we elected (twice) a man that when questioned by reporters about the prospect of $4-a-gallon gas arriving next summer, said "That's interesting. I hadn't heard that...I know it's high now." He didn't know that gasoline's prices keep on climbing and climbing and climbing? He didn't know that #4-a-gallon is already showing up in some gas stations? He should ask some of his buddies from Texas. They know.