Can beer save America? Can it save River View?

Black or gallows humor can come when you've reached a point of terminal frustration with those who must be obeyed.

For example, in New Albanian terms, it's the realization that no matter how clearly you explain a position or point, councilman Bob Caesar's view of it will come as the result of an ingrained reflex calculation of (a) utter incomprehension, (b) concern over whether the "right" people will be offended, and (c) what it has to do with selling more diamonds.

Consequently, as the debacle of the River View "condo-non-condo" downtown development creeps forward into inevitable irrelevance with no end in sight, rendering the resulting stain ever more difficult to scrub out of the body politic's frayed carpet, I've gotten quite a lot of mileage about how the $12 million in parking garage pump-priming obligations might be better spent as the foundation of a big damned craft brewery.

Of course, these references are little more than the stuff of an inveterate blogging provocateur's arsenal when it comes to the chances of my own brewing company, NABC, ever accomplishing such a project. I'm a realist, and we haven't yet digested the investment in Bank Street Brewhouse. New bar stools must come first, and so on.

But ...

Given the current position of American craft brewing as a whole, the thin gruel of my satire is somewhat enriched by the growing sustenance of genuine truth. Today's snapshot of American craft beer depicts not a solid image, but a blur, because it is a market segment moving so quickly that it's difficult for anyone to keep up.

Locals are becoming regional, regionals are going national, and expanded exports to other countries look soon to follow. It is reckoned that most Americans now live within 10 miles of a brewery, a condition not experienced since the 19th-century. For a few other craft beer headlines that reinforce these points, visit the Potable Curmudgeon.

Following is a link to one of the clearest explications I've ever read of the economic connotations of the craft revolution, and why my eyes probably should not be rolling when I playfully suggest that $40 million spent on a big damned brewery next to the Y is not anywhere near as dumb as it seems.

To me, David Sirota's article also exposes the many cultural reasons why macro vs. craft is, in fact, an evolutionary/revolutionary struggle, one that demands we espouse principled positions and just plain take sides, because it's only a short step from the philosophy of craft beer to matters like placemaking, complete streets, transport policy, sustainability, and so many other notions of what we might do to make a better community.

Can beer save America? The redemption of the economy may start with the type of brew you keep in your fridge, by David Sirota (Salon)

 ... Nowhere, though, is the battle between the low-price/quantity business model and the higher-price/quality business model more clear than in the world of beer. In the fevered battle between the macrobrew behemoths and the craftbrew insurgents, both sides are digging in for an epic confrontation ...

... A Macrobrew Economy — a high-volume, low-price model — asks us to compete with other such economies throughout the world, and the problem is that countries like China will always have lower-priced labor, more lax environmental regulations and lower production standards to win a battle that rewards more and cheaper for more’s and cheaper’s sake. By contrast, a Craft Brew Economy — a high-quality, lower-volume model — is a different proposition. It follows the German model, which, as Time magazine notes, is all about being “committed to making the sort of high-quality, high-performance, innovative products for which the world will pay extra.”

Holiday reading: Tax history as fashioned by wingnuts.

Turns out that there was time for relaxation after the painting was through. An article by David Sirota (recommended by Randy Smith) was good enough ...

The Tax History Conservatives Want Us to Forget

... but within the comments section there was a link to something even better:

Feast of the Wingnuts: How economic crackpots devoured American politics, by Jonathan Chait, The New Republic (September 10, 2007).

Follow the link for the whole piece, which is too lengthy to reprint in its entirety.

Like most crank doctrines, supplyside economics has at its core a central insight that does have a ring of plausibility. The government can't simply raise tax rates as high as it wants without some adverse consequences. And there have been periods in American history when, nearly any contemporary economist would agree, top tax rates were too high, such as the several decades after World War II. And there are justifiable conservative arguments to be made on behalf of reducing tax rates and government spending. But what sets the supply-siders apart from sensible economists is their sheer monomania. You could plausibly argue that, say, Reagan's tax cuts contributed around the margins to the economic growth of the 1980s. But the supply-siders believe that, if it were not for Reagan's tax cuts, the economic malaise of the late '70s would have continued indefinitely. They believe that economic history is a function of tax rates--they insisted that Bill Clinton's upper-bracket tax hike must cause a recession (whoops), and they believe that the present economy is a boom not merely enhanced but brought about by the Bush tax cuts.