A luxury project is good for the community, he said, which will benefit from an influx of higher-income people.

"A lot of evidence suggested that higher-income people were simply rearranging their finances," she said.

The vote to charge higher premiums for higher-income elderly people was 70 to 30.

Howls from a group of higher-income older people prompted Congress to repeal the program in 1989.

And they say it could still have progressive tax rates, so that higher-income people would pay a higher percentage of income taxes.

States, for example, would be allowed to charge higher fees to higher-income people.

A result is financial products geared mainly for higher-income people.

The poor, meanwhile, who suffer in good times as well as bad, seem less affected than higher-income people.

They also charged that hundreds of apartments were held vacant for higher-income people who could pay market rates.

But rather than a rebellion, an adjustment of sorts is apparently being made, at least for higher-income people.