By J.D. Alt
There’s a joke about a farmer and his pig. The pig is covered with a patchwork of large and small Band-Aids. A puzzled visitor asks the farmer: “Why is your pig covered all over with Band-Aids?” “Well,” says the farmer, “obviously, I can’t butcher him all at once: if I cut out too much he might die—and then I’d soon have nothing to eat.”
Most people who hear this joke chuckle to themselves (in a sickly way) because they intuitively realize the absurdity of the farmer’s misunderstanding the true nature of his resources. It is exceedingly odd, therefore, that most of these same people find it difficult to understand that our political and economic leaders—and the mainstream media that covers them—view the U.S. economy with exactly the same logic as the farmer views his pig.
