How Will This Mess End? It’s Simple.
Andy Snyder|May 10, 2021
Editor’s Note: Well, we’ve reached the end of lambing season… but Andy’s lambs are back to teach us another important lesson in economics. As America tries to wean itself from 13 years of stimulus… the new flock tells us exactly where things are headed. And unfortunately for the lambs… and us… it ain’t pretty.
It’s the question everybody wants to know.
Where do things go from here?
We stepped on the answer last night as we walked through our pastures.
For 13 years now, the nation has been working to wean itself off of stimulus. With annual GDP growth still yet to climb above 2% during any of those years – despite massive intervention – the wisest among us wonder how it will all end.
How will – or can – this economy ever thrive on its own?
The answer lies in our pasture.
As you may know, we just wrapped up lambing season. It was a success. Nine sets of twins… and one healthy set of triplets. Not a soul was lost.
But there are two wayward lambs – a 10-week-old white ewe and a three-week-old black ram. Each of them was bottle fed.
Through no fault of their own, they could not survive without help. Their mothers simply didn’t have enough to go around.
In nature, they would have withered and died.
The ranchers who do this stuff for their sole means of income tend to let them. You don’t make money on a bottle-fed animal. The numbers don’t add up.
But we’re soft. And we have the means to intervene.
In that way… it hurts to even type it… we’re a lot like the government. “I own the land and I’m here to help,” we say as we force milk down a newborn ram’s throat.
Our flock is worse off for it.
Begging for More
Walking through the pasture these days, we’ve always got two followers on our heels… that white ewe and that black ram. We trip on them as we stroll.
At sunrise, they scream for their food.
Anytime they see us strolling across the pasture… they come running, begging for a bottle. The grass beneath our feet is knee-high and full of energy. The rest of the herd doesn’t give us a look or a second thought. Those foragers care for themselves.
But not the bottle babies. They beg for more.
And it’s not a phase. They won’t grow out of it. We have one full-grown ewe that begs us for food… the one that just had triplets. She’s three years old.
She was a bottle baby too.
Everybody knows it.
As we write, she’s standing by the gate outside our office window. She sees the light on. She sees the man inside at his computer.
While the rest of the flock munches away on its breakfast, she cries for more.
She does it every morning, proving old routines are hard to break.
Fake Growth
I suppose if we were looking to grow the farm, this whole bottle-feeding thing would give us a great chance. We could hire a ranch hand to feed the bleating mouths. He could build a little place for his family. Once he got good enough at the job, he could hire an assistant… maybe two.
Soon enough, we’d have bottle babies all over the place. The ranch hand would show up in his Cadillac and tight-fitting jeans. We’d have a real business on our hands… and it’d be just as profitable as it is today – probably less.
It’s funny how that works.
That’s what’s great about money and the system it works in.
It’s quite natural. As artificial as it sometimes feels, it’s really no different from our little farm outside the window.
The American economy has been bottle-fed since ’08.
Every time the boss tries to take it away, we whine and cry and roll around in a pile of our own crap. The old man’s got no choice but to stick another bottle through the fence… or else the neighbors will come calling. The roar of the crowd is too loud.
We build out lots of great things to make the system work. We hire ranch hands, build new homes and watch as things grow.
The stock market hits record highs. And so does the price of steel, wood… and chicken wings.
We’ve all got more money in the bank and warm milk in our tummies… but the masses are still hungry and poor.
Where does it end?
Around here the answer is simple.
It ends with a slaughter. The fat, bottle-fed ones usually go first.
Eating the Grass
In the economic world, things aren’t all that different. We’re already seeing it. The middle class is having trouble staying afloat. The rubber teat on the government’s bottle is getting closer and closer to their mouths.
There are plenty of jobs out there… and plenty of money to be made. But it’s easier than ever to just stick a head out of the gate and ignore the grass beneath our feet.
But we beg you… just eat the grass.
The slaughter won’t be obvious, but it must come. It’ll be slow and the knives will be dull. Standards of living will fall. Taxes will rise. And most folks will never know the life they could have had if they only would have thought about tomorrow more than today.
But we can’t leave you with such a dire scene.
Our farm is beautiful. It’s a great place for those who thrive on their own. It’s a wonderful, sustainable oasis that will live on for generations to come.
But then again, we eat well too.
