Politics on Tap
Nollson, John
John Nollson POLITICS ON TAP The distillation of alcoholic spirit is the oldest regulated industry in America, the one with the most burdensome system of taxation, the one most prone to fuel...
...I mean, in the old place, if you didn't take checks or credit cards, or if you wouldn't extend credit, people thought you were unfriendly...
...John Nollson POLITICS ON TAP The distillation of alcoholic spirit is the oldest regulated industry in America, the one with the most burdensome system of taxation, the one most prone to fuel anti-government, anti-taxation ferment...
...Money was not all that tight in the mid-1960s, and Meinhoff was able to raise what he needed to open his own establishment in Washington, not far from the White House, which he called "Master Ludwig's...
...I'm a practical man," Meinhoff told the interviewer from Esquire, "and I figured since I had a little extra cash, I might as well open another spot in town, which is also doing all right...
...It's like my father always told me: 'Ya wanna be a successful tavern owner, ya gotta be a good listener.' "But the real success of my new bar," Meinhoff said, "was based on the simple fact that I refused to extend credit...
...That's the kind of place my old man ran...
...But did they care...
...Ya can spout theories till you're blue in the face, but that won't help your domestic breweries none...
...Of course, it took a little getting used to...
...So that's why I had to leave 'Captain Henry's' and open up my own place, ya understand...
...When it comes to tending bar, you have to be flexible...
...A guy comes in, he has a couple of drinks, he tells me that the money supply is increasing too rapidly, and I say, yeah, that's right, it's in the nature of the Fed to increase the money supply too rapidly, and he would say I was the first barkeeper he ever met who understood anything...
...The consumption of Heineken continued to increase, despite progressive increases in the value of the Dutch guilder as against the American dollar-a result exactly the opposite of what traditional economics would have predicted...
...Then he buys another couple of drinks, and then he starts bringing over a bunch of his friends, and I don't know much about the Fed's money supply, except that I notice that my own money supply is increasing, so why should I complain...
...And so whatever happens in the 1980 election, I figure I'll still be able to make a buck which, after all, is what America is all about...
...One day this guy comes in wearing a lavender leisure suit with a parrot perched on his shoulder, which is not so strange to me because, if you tend bar, you see everything sooner or later...
...I tried to tell my customers that such intrusions into the free market process would wreak havoc with the theory of comparative advantage...
...After a while, it became the place to go if you were of a certain sort...
...In fact, what we now think of as "the new economics" was actually invented in "Captain Henry's," a small bar where the customers first noted the price inelasticity of Heineken beer...
...I mean, I used to be a typical barkeeper...
...It just happens that the purveying of alcoholic beverages by the drink, retail, is a business with a low cost of entry-basically, all ya need is the bribe to get the license, if ya know what I mean...
...And three months after that, some reporter comes from Esquire magazine and tells me I have now become the bartender to the neoconservative movement, and what do I think about that...
...Meinhoff continued, "I'll tell ya when business really began to boom around this place...
...A guy would come in, he'd have a couple of drinks, he'd tell me how his girlfriend had two-timed him, and I would agree that was in the nature of women to behave like that, and then maybe he'd have a hamburger and one for the road and that would be it...
...And everybody thinks this is terrific, so they all start buying him drinks, and pretty soon, I've got a pretty popular Washington spot, because all these Congressmen show up to shoot the breeze about taxes...
...They were the first places where rapid increases in the price of imported beer came to be seen as a function of the dollar's international difficulties...
...Now, ya ask me where I got the idea for that new place of mine...
...So I tell him I think that's just fine, because a dollar's a dollar, no matter how you earn it, as long as it's legal, if ya know what I mean...
...Or am I right...
...I'll tell ya something," said Meinhoff, "used to be people wanted a neighborhood tavern they could come to and talk about baseball or complain about the old lady...
...In my new place, they love it...
...And I've been doin' O.K...
...This has been true since the time of Shays' Rebellion, in 1786...
...Nah, all they tell me is 'shut up and pour.' So I pour...
...Thus, bars of all sorts are an engine of social discontent...
...It requires a change in attitude, if ya know what I mean," said Meinhoff...
...by me, because as long as he keeps buying drinks for himself and his friends, I'm not gonna argue with him either...
...Yeah," he continued, "man is what he eats-as the German fella once put it-or at least what he drinks...
...They tell me I'm being patriotic...
...My best customers don't even pay in cash, they pay in gold bullion...
...I'll tell ya...
...So a guy wants to think I'm patriotic because I won't put anything on the arm, I'm not gonna argue with him...
...If ya went to one of those places and ya had a beef about the money supply, nobody would give ya the time of day...
...They became the sites of furious discussions over the respective merits of price controls, devaluation, return to the gold standard, abolition of environmental standards, and the like...
...So I figured, hell, here's some demand, and I'll be the supply, so to speak...
...I mean, a guy comes into my new place, tells me the oil companies make too much money, which is O.K...
...Next thing ya know they want import controls, higher tariffs, non-tariff barriers...
...And he begins to explain to me that if the government would just collect lower taxes, it would have more money, which sounds fine to me, because I'm like the next man, and don't like to pay taxes...
...And I say, sure, that's why I don't do it, patriotism and all that...
...As Tim Meinhoff, the former barman in "Captain Henry's," put it, "It is one thing to close the gold window, and another to open a beer keg...
...Now they want a place where they can come talk about economics, public policy, marginal tax rates, whether birth control is good for boy-girl relationships, stuff like that...
...They tell me that every time I extend credit, I'm really expanding the money supply...
...People would come in and tell me that all they could talk about in bars these days was socialism and women's liberation...
...Now it's a different kind of thing...
...Am I right...
...Meinhoff no longer denies it, though he once admitted it was actually named after his neighbor's German shepherd...
...Hell, I'm an economic animal, even if they're not...
...these past few years since I hung out my own sign...
...It was only much later that anyone noticed that "Master Ludwig's" was thought to have been named after a famous Austrian economist...
Vol. 12 • September 1979 • No. 9
