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 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...
...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...
...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...
...So I figured, hell, here's some demand, and I'll be the supply, so to speak...
...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...
...Now it's a different kind of thing...
...Now, ya ask me where I got the idea for that new place of mine...
...I'll tell ya...
...Hell, I'm an economic animal, even if they're not...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...Yeah," he continued, "man is what he eats-as the German fella once put it-or at least what he drinks...
...Meinhoff no longer denies it, though he once admitted it was actually named after his neighbor's German shepherd...
...They tell me I'm being patriotic...
...I mean, I used to be a typical barkeeper...
...And I've been doin' O.K...
...Or am I right...
...Ya can spout theories till you're blue in the face, but that won't help your domestic breweries none...
...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 I say, sure, that's why I don't do it, patriotism and all that...
...They tell me that every time I extend credit, I'm really expanding the money supply...
...That's the kind of place my old man ran...
...But did they care...
...People would come in and tell me that all they could talk about in bars these days was socialism and women's liberation...
...It requires a change in attitude, if ya know what I mean," said Meinhoff...
...I mean, a guy comes into my new place, tells me the oil companies make too much money, which is O.K...
...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...
...When it comes to tending bar, you have to be flexible...
...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...
...Next thing ya know they want import controls, higher tariffs, non-tariff barriers...
...It was only much later that anyone noticed that "Master Ludwig's" was thought to have been named after a famous Austrian economist...
...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...
...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...
...This has been true since the time of Shays' Rebellion, in 1786...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...these past few years since I hung out my own sign...
...So that's why I had to leave 'Captain Henry's' and open up my own place, ya understand...
...Of course, it took a little getting used to...
...Meinhoff continued, "I'll tell ya when business really began to boom around this place...
...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...
...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...
...by me, because as long as he keeps buying drinks for himself and his friends, I'm not gonna argue with him either...
...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...
...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...
...Nah, all they tell me is 'shut up and pour.' So I pour...
...In my new place, they love it...
...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...
...Am I right...
...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...
...Thus, bars of all sorts are an engine of social discontent...
...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...
...My best customers don't even pay in cash, they pay in gold bullion...
...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...
...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...
Vol. 12 • September 1979 • No. 9
