US national debt

It is an oddly on-the-nose observation that American pet food sales have risen in lockstep with the national debt, as though the government were somehow financing the kibble. Which, in a sense, it did. You can thank the stimulus check for the premium wet food.

The US national debt ballooned by nearly five trillion dollars in 2020 as covid relief flowed out of Washington in unprecedented volumes, while pet food sales surged as pandemic pet adoption and lockdown spending sent the aisle into record territory. Neither directly caused the other, but both spiked on the same stimulus-soaked calendar. Some of that federal money, quite literally, ended up in the dog bowl.

So the correlation is the accidental rhyme of a country borrowing from its future to feed its present. Deficits and dog food, rising together. Somewhere, an accountant shrugged.