Land in Wyoming
Arte Moreno purchased the Los Angeles Angels baseball team in 2003 for $183 million. In late 2011 Moreno signed a contract with Albert Pujols, agreeing to pay him a stunning $254 million to play for the Angels. In other words, he paid more money for just one player in 2011 than he did for the entire franchise in 2003. What, you might ask, does any of this have to do with land in Wyoming?
Actually, it has a lot to do with it.
The Angels were able to pay such a large sum of money for Pujols because of inflation. The U. S. government is forever printing and placing into circulation more and more dollars, causing existing dollars to become worth less and less through the years. While $254 million appears to be ridiculously exorbitant today, in 10 years from now, it won’t seem near as high in comparison to what other professional athletes are being paid, or compared to how greatly other costs and services have escalated.
Now, let’s see how the same inflation issue affected the price of land in Wyoming. In 2003, when Mr. Moreno purchased the Angels, the cheapest land that could have been purchased in Wyoming would have been approximately $75 per acre. Today, the cheapest land would cost around $225 per acre, representing a price three times higher than it was in 2003. The Los Angeles Angels today are worth $554 million, a price that is also three times higher than it was in 2003.
The lesson to be learned here is that fixed assets—in other words, assets that can’t be printed or reproduced, such as land or professional baseball teams—will forever increase in value through the years, while paper money, which is being reproduced constantly, will forever keep decreasing in value. And the good news is that you don’t have to be a multimillionaire and own a professional baseball team to take advantage of inflation. You can be just a simple working man and buy 160 acres of land in Wyoming!