While long-standing luxury brands will mostlikely be fine if they deliver true quality and the high level of service well-heeled consumers expect, some other brand categories probably won't survive this new era of non-gratuitous spending.
Rather than the exclusive focus on BMI and weight loss, focusing on maintaining an adequate level of physical activity throughout life is likely to be the most effective way to counter the deposition of abdominal fat and the adverse metabolic changes that accompany it.
That spending level is not very different from what the Congressional Budget office figured in its mostlikely fiscal scenario back in August, but taxes are about 0.3 percent of GDP higher.