Anonymous
I have just read that article on ZH and I was thinking that the last several times we went out to eat, which we do not do very often, the restaurants seem unusually empty. We were even offered some coupons to come back, which never happened to me before in a sit down restaurant.
On the other side, the prices were way higher than they used to be. So are the same number of Americans spending more? Or fewer Americans are spending much more? Answer to these question can picture two very different economies.