The Billionaire Oligarchs Are Coming for Your Pets
The billionaires know you love your furry family members, and they’d like profit from your affection.
Have you had to seek veterinary attention for a beloved pet in recent years? Have you noticed higher costs for vaccines and routine exams? Do you occasionally need a pet-sitter and wish to purchase services from an on-line service? I’ve got bad news for you: the billionaires have fixed their sights on you and on every corner of the pet care economy, with the goal of squeezing more money out of you.
Pet ownership was on the rise even before the Covid-19 pandemic; today roughly 70 percent of US households have at least one pet. The share of household income spent on pets has risen significantly, with an estimated $123 billion in 2021. While pet insurance is available, few pet owners have it. Yet many are willing to take on enormous debt for high-priced medical services. In a recent article in The New York Times about the rising cost of pet care, Katie Thomas writes:
A generation ago, pet owners with a seriously ill animal may have had little choice but to opt for euthanasia if they wanted to relieve their pet’s suffering. Now, they must choose between extending the animal’s life and going into what can be debilitating debt or letting an animal die.
Thomas spoke to pet owners who were still paying off credit card debt years after their animals had died. She reports animal welfare groups are finding pet owners relinquishing their animals to shelters when they can’t afford veterinary bills.
For many people, their relationships with animals are more steadfast than their connections with humans. With a growing percentage of people saying they have only one or two people they can depend on, if any, the unconditional love of a pet plays an important role in our lives. “Pets are filling a gap,” observed Greg Hartmann, CEO of Veterinary Centers of America (VCA), one of the largest for-profit veterinary medical enterprises. He noted that young adults are waiting until later in life to get married and have children, if they have children at all. “We’re seeing now the younger generation, millennial and Gen Z, own nearly half of the pets in the US, and their spending behaviors seem to be outpacing the preceding generations.”
