The rich are pretty confident in their capacity to both obtain various forms of credit and service the debt. The not-so-rich, not so much.

That was one takeaway from the latest installment of Morgan Stanley’s “AlphaWise” survey.

As we enter what many believe will be a transitional period for the US economy, it’s important to take the temperature of the consumer by income cohort. Sentiment and confidence surveys suggest Americans are feeling a lot better about things, and as BofA’s Michael Hartnett recently suggested, the pandemic policy response might’ve instilled a “secular belief that government intervention [like] stimulus checks, energy rebates and guaranteed bank deposits, nullifies the need to save.”

Still, there’s a lingering sense that some kind of reckoning is inevitable. Notwithstanding Americans’ legendary propensity to spend money they don’t have and to find money to spend even when there isn’t any, there are limits. And according to the July vintage of Morgan Stanley’s survey, households making less than $50,000 doubt they could obtain credit should they reach those limits and still need to spend.

At the same time, the bank remarked, “few consumers making between $50,000 and $100,000 believe they could afford different credit products.” So, the middle-class, to the extent they can get credit, doubt they can afford it. “Mortgages in particular are seen as unaffordable,” Morgan remarked, adding that “high income consumers are confident in their ability to both access and afford credit.” (The people who don’t need credit can get plenty of it, and would have no trouble paying it back. Imagine that, right?)

Overall, though, Americans “are becoming more positive on the economy and on household finances,” the bank went on to say. That’s consistent with recent readings on key sentiment indexes. Morgan Stanley attributed the upturn in moods to “the strength of the stock market,” as well as plentiful jobs and slower inflation.

They looked at spending intentions out six months by income group. That’s particularly instructive at the current juncture. The economy lives and dies by consumer spending and if the US isn’t in a recession within six months, it’ll be very hard for those who predicted a downturn to claim they still have time to be right. The survey showed discretionary spending is poised to drop, and MoM spending intentions were basically flat, but Morgan Stanley flagged an “uptick” looking out over that six-month stretch. The breakdown suggested it’s pretty much all attributable to essentials and higher-income families.

For what it’s worth, Morgan found that just a quarter (26%) of consumers who have student loans are confident they can resume payments without cutting spending elsewhere. That was down from 29% in June.

Note from the simple pie chart on the left that a third didn’t even know the moratorium is expiring.

Ultimately, you can still make the case for a so-called “Wile E. Coyote” moment for consumer spending based on a slowdown in discretionary purchases, waning pandemic buffers, reservations about credit availability among those with the highest marginal propensity to consume and the drag from student loan payments.

But as long as equities are buoyant, house prices rising, labor demand strong and real wage growth positive, it seems unlikely that the spending impulse is set to flatline. Americans have continued to spend under much worse conditions in the past. Betting against the religion of consumerism can be a fool’s errand.