The rich, to go along with Ernest Hemingway's imagined conversation with Scott Fitzgerald, are different from the rest of us.
Not only do they have more money, but they also pay less - percentage-wise - in taxes. And they are apparently more stingy and selfish, at least according to a spate of recent American surveys.
According to the influential Ipsos Mendelsohn Affluent Survey, the favourite shopping outlets of the super rich and the affluent are budget stores like Walmart, where 74 per cent of them go, followed by Target (73 per cent) and Home Depot (63 per cent).
Another pastime of the rich is to clip and use coupons - offering a few cents off branded food and everyday items - that appear in the weekend papers (71 per cent) and online (54 per cent).
It is certainly fun to read about the thrifty - or stingy - habits of the really rich, but does it amount to a string of beans in assessing economic prospects? You might think that this is a light-hearted exercise, but if you add up the results of the various surveys, you might be worried that you cannot count on the rich to help jump-start the economy or to care about anyone else.
Ipsos Mendelsohn has advantages of history, size and coverage. Indeed, it has been covering the 'future plans, passions, behaviours and attitudes of Affluent Americans' since 1977. Affluent Americans are defined as adults living in households with at least US$100,000 in annual income. There are 58.5 million of them in 24.5 million households.