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Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Yes, We Have No Bananas


Muppet Songs: Marvin Suggs - We Have No Bananas
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Stolen entire from According to Hoyt

The Banana Index by Sarah A. Hoyt

Ladies and gentlemen, by the one index that has proven reliable over my lifetime, socialism in the United States is receding. Not on the way out, precisely, but promising to go down instead of up. The index is a little forward-looking, you see.

What is this magical indicator? Well, the abundance and price of bananas.

No, wait, I haven’t completely lost my mind, and I do understand that it makes absolutely no sense, but–

The origin of this is a joke. Not a particularly wonderful joke but somewhat funny at least.

Back in 1978 there was a joke about a place in West Germany where East Germany was so close that two kids could see each other through their bedroom windows. And the West German kid regularly taunted the Eastern kid with what he had, toys, and games, and one day bananas.

Well, the Eastern kid’s father had given him the ultimate answer. “I don’t have bananas, but I have socialism.”

To which the Western kid answered, “Socialism drives out bananas.”

Well….

In Portugal through the variations of politics, we found out that for some reason when a more leftwing government was in power bananas became rarer and those that showed up were smaller, spotty, and went up in price.

Take in account that there are things that can’t possibly be linked that seem to be linked in statistical occurrence. For instance, people who eat cheese have lower all-cause mortality. This makes no sense whatsoever. And yet it occurs. There’s a whole boatload of these so called spurious correlations.

Well…. For some reason socialism goes up and banana availability and affordability goes down.

I noticed the week after the election that bananas which in my area had been trifling with 80c a pound were back down at 40c. Since then they’ve bounced between 40c and 50c, which is what they were in the eighties. And the quality is pretty good.

Of course, bananas are a forward looking index, but the prognosis for falling socialism and rising availability and affordability of bananas is good.

Have yourself a banana split and hope for the best.


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