WhoWhatWhy82%
The Rolex Economy Is Humming, the Timex Economy Is Not 83%
By Klaus Marre96%
8/1/2026, 4:11:30 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 21 faulty reasoning types, including Politically Left Leaning Bias, Negativity Bias, and Hasty Generalization, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 53.7% saturation with 298 hits. Analysis detected 1,760 faulty-reasoning hits from 555 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 69.8% and a BS Rank of 83% (4,350 of 25,279 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 82.80% of the article peer group.
The US economy grew at a sluggish annual pace of 1.5 percent in the second quarter (against inflation more than twice as high), and it would have been much worse if it weren’t for massive investments in artificial intelligence (AI), which may have disastrous consequences down the road, and “resilient consumer spending.”
In a nutshell, the economy is being propped up by data center investments and Americans buying stuff.
But which Americans, and what stuff?
Regular people are already racking up record credit card debts to deal with Trumpflation, i.e., the higher cost of products affected by the president’s tariffs and the war with Iran.
And many of them are forced to tighten their belts and make painful choices regarding what kind of things they can afford.
In other words, they are either consuming less or going into more debt.
So, how come that consumer spending is “resilient?”
Because the uber-wealthy elites keep getting richer so fast that they don’t even know what to do with all of that money (apart from buying elections, of course).
Take billionaire Kevin O’Leary.
Here he is talking about a $1.8 million watch he bought and how he wept when he got it.
Kevin O’Leary says he begged Rolex for a mythical $1.8 million watch, then cried when the box opened
“It is the grail piece of all watches.
It is the white gold, ruby and diamond Daytona.
Grown men weep just looking at pictures of this mystical beast”
“I got on my knees and… pic.twitter.com/zoszEUqNp4
- Yonan (@yonann) July 28, 2026
O’Leary recently made news when he falsely claimed that anti-data center activists in Utah were funded by the Chinese government and then had to acknowledge that he had no evidence for those smears.
He and Fox News (which has apologized on the air for its part in this defamation campaign) are still getting sued, and we hope that they will have to pay the people they defamed.
A verdict for the plaintiffs would have the added benefit of actually spurring the economy by putting money in the pockets of regular Americans.
But that’s not the point here.
What is, however, is that his Rolex brag serves as the perfect illustration that it is the uber-wealthy who are keeping the US out of a recession by buying obscenely expensive luxury items.
In this case, for example, he spent as much on a watch as would feed nearly 1,800 families of four for an entire month.
And while those 7,100 people have to eat, nobody needs a white gold, diamond, and ruby watch just to prove how rich he is.
Let’s also not forget that it’s fat cats like O’Leary who are railing against lawmakers who want all Americans to have health insurance and food security and for the ultra-rich to pay their fair share.
Oh, and they are doing it on the networks that their billionaire buddies own.
The point is that reports on “resilient consumer spending” obscure the reality that this spending is not necessarily being done by middle-class families; they mean that a very few people at the top have unlimited money to spend on diamond-studded watches, yachts, and political action committees.
The Rolex Economy Is Humming, the Timex Economy Is Not originally appeared on WhoWhatWhy
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.