If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, then it goes here.
Notes for future OT posters:
1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.
2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)
3. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.
4. Unflag the two options "Notify me of new top level comments on this article" and "
In real life? I don't think so.
I don't expect that anyone at my supermarket, or at a corner gas station, or in the local Starbucks is "more sensitive" to the desires of the rich.
There are a couple of things going on here. First, someone rich has the resources to, let's say, exert an economic force. She can use that force to make things happen. Phrasing such events as "more sensitive to" is bad framing: we don't say that a weight is "more sensitive" to a greater force.
Second, as has been pointed out, in free markets a producer cares only about the demand supported by purchasing power. Some producers make expensive things and they are certainly more sensitive to the desires of the rich because the rich are their only customers. However a lot of other producers make common, inexpensive things -- bread, gasoline, jeans, etc. -- and they don't care much about the rich because the rich are a very small fraction of their customers and so a source of only a small fraction of their profit.
The desires aren't the force, the money is. Being rich means the same amount of desire gets translated into a larger amount of money. Framing this as people being more sensitive to the desires seems natural to me. A physical analogy might be levers: a weight is more sensitive to force being applied at one end of a lever than the other end.
But I don't think we disagree about anything real.