US dog treat and chew market revenue

The suggestion that the state of global democracy tracks the American dog-treat market is the kind of statistic that should come with a warning label. The dogs are unaware. So, increasingly, are the voters.

The Democracy Index fell sharply in 2020 partly because covid emergency powers suspended parliaments, postponed elections, and gave many governments cover to crack down on dissent, while US dog treat sales surged on the pandemic pet adoption boom and guilt-spending remote workers. Two very different measures of what a crisis can do to a living room.

So the correlation is less causal than contemporaneous. Covid eroded one; covid boosted the other. The dogs, predictably, are fine.