The Great Beer Parade Stimulus of 1932
By 1932, Prohibition had obviously failed. But how could the U.S. legally bring back booze? A constitutional amendment had authorized the ban, and only another one could erase it. Luckily, during the Great Depression, anti-Prohibitionists had an economic argument.
Defiant “drys” mocked “wet” schemes to refloat the economy by legalizing beer with low alcohol content and taxing it, which they said would create jobs for craftsmen, bartenders and teamsters, and raise much-needed federal revenue. The jobs claim was bogus, for tens of thousands were working daily, if secretly, to slake the nation’s thirst for suds. But the taxation point had merit.
Weekly Links
Barcelona Graduate School of Economics on debt and default in the age of Philip IIThe Big Picture on how we ended Glass Steagall
Marginal Revolution on structural employment during the Great Depression
Paul Krugman on the historic reasoning for bank regulation and Steve Horwitz's response
The History Project on supporting the study of economic history
Foreign Afffairs on lessons from the recession
Simon Johnson on why economic history matters
When Americans Celebrated the Federal Debt
Addressing a meeting convened by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation in Washington this week, Speaker of the House John Boehner vowed to fight any proposal to raise the U.S.'s statutory borrowing limit this fall, unless any increase is offset by spending cuts.
Joseph J Thorndike
Thorndike is the director of the Tax History Project at Tax Analysts and a visiting scholar in history at the University of Virginia.
John B Taylor
Taylor is the Mary and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics at Stanford University and the George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics at the Hoover Institution. From 2001 to 2005, he served as the Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs.
Ilan Kolet
Kolet is a data editor in the Ottawa office of Bloomberg News. From 2002 to 2010 he served as a senior economist at the Bank of Canada covering the U.S. economy and commodity prices.
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