{"id":1371,"date":"2008-02-11T15:30:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-11T20:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/hungerrumblings\/2008\/02\/11\/359-billion-spent-on-pets-seriously\/"},"modified":"2008-02-11T15:30:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-11T20:30:00","slug":"359-billion-spent-on-pets-seriously","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/worldhunger\/359-billion-spent-on-pets-seriously\/","title":{"rendered":"$35.9 BILLION spent on pets. Seriously!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family:verdana\">Talk about an affluent society! According to the February 4th edition of Time Magazine, Americans spent $35.9 billion on their pets in 2005. $35.9 <em>billion<\/em>! I contributed to that, and I don&#8217;t even own a pet! (My brother-in-law&#8217;s dogs get Christmas presents, too.) <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:verdana\">I&#8217;ve got nothing against pets. I can understand that Fluffy has an important place in the family, and deserves to be fed and vaccinated. It&#8217;s just that, so do people. <\/span><span style=\"font-family:verdana\">My point is simply this: If we can fork out $35.9 billion for our pets &#8211; just one category of discretionary spending &#8211; can&#8217;t we do better in making sure everyone has enough to eat? And if so many of us are willing to take on the responsibility of caring for pets (and, boy, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smallbiztrends.com\/2007\/12\/pet-industry-trends-for-2008.html\/\">are we willing<\/a>!), can&#8217;t we do the same for people? <\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family:verdana\"><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family:verdana\">Just think about it. If Americans gave as much money to one poverty-fighting group (may I suggest the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elca.org\/hunger\/howtogive\/index.html\">ELCA World Hunger Appeal<\/a>?) as they spent on their pets in a year, it would create an organization nearly the size of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gatesfoundation.org\/MediaCenter\/FactSheet\/default.htm\">Gates Foundation<\/a>. Think what we could accomplish&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Talk about an affluent society! According to the February 4th edition of Time Magazine, Americans spent $35.9 billion on their pets in 2005. $35.9 billion! I contributed to that, and I don&#8217;t even own a pet! (My brother-in-law&#8217;s dogs get Christmas presents, too.) I&#8217;ve got nothing against pets. I can understand that Fluffy has an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[74,73,58,75],"class_list":["post-1371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post","tag-affluence","tag-discretionary-spending","tag-hunger","tag-pets"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>$35.9 BILLION spent on pets. 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