Thursday May 10, 2012, 5:58 pm
OMGdoodness...

Cal~ If Beer is are only Hope, then we are in deep Burps!

Thursday May 10, 2012, 6:35 pm
noted

Thursday May 10, 2012, 7:03 pm
Burp You bet'cha!

Thursday May 10, 2012, 7:41 pm
I believe in the power of beer!

Friday May 11, 2012, 2:11 am
Noted. Thank you Cal.

Friday May 11, 2012, 10:24 am
Hasn't saved America yet, all it did was give us hangovers and beer belly's,lol!

Friday May 11, 2012, 12:04 pm
You cannot discount what it has done to help the economy here...
You can go into a seemingly seedy tavern and see 50 different craft brews on tap..some of the higher end places can have twice that many.
And the author forgot the link of cowboys and Coors Light :-)

Friday May 11, 2012, 12:27 pm
thanks cal!! i'm not sure but i'll keep contributing to the cause with blue moon & oranges!!!

Friday May 11, 2012, 2:17 pm
I don't know, has it saved Belgium?

Friday May 11, 2012, 3:10 pm
One of the contributors to the October 1929 economic disaster was the Volstead Act, also known as Prohibition. It not only failed to quell alcohol consumption, it both increased per capita alcohol use and gave organised crime a foothold in our nation. In the aftermath of its repeal, we got stuck with lousy beer and lousier politicians who promptly used the same disaster as drug policy and buggered us again.

Scrapping current drug policy and turning the whole thing over to the medical profession is a possible cure. We could expel the cartels and give the profits to legal (tax paying) medical companies. Just as with alcohol, scrapping Prohibition increased revenue while cutting product cost. There's using beer - or any legitimate legal intoxicant - to help save the nation!

Friday May 11, 2012, 6:40 pm
Thanks Cal.

Friday May 11, 2012, 6:55 pm
Intersting article. Thanks Cal.

Saturday May 12, 2012, 5:58 am
Noted, thanks.

Saturday May 12, 2012, 6:46 pm
A neat article, using beer to illustrate a larger issue. The problem with low-price, low-quality, large-volume items is that we spend more for them than we realize. They break sooner and need to be replaced. They create more waste. When they are food items, they cost us in terms of health. It is often better to have fewer luxuries, but to make sure that the ones you have are truly good ones you will enjoy.

Sunday May 13, 2012, 2:56 pm
I don't drink beer at all. Nevertheless, this article points up LARGER ISSUES, of which beer is only an EXAMPLE. One that we definitely ought to LEARN FROM.

'The craft brewing industry, composed mostly of independent small and medium-size businesses, know they can’t compete in a volume game, and so they are trying to promote quality and diversity. It’s a straightforward fight — one that may seem only interesting to drinkers, but one that truly transcends the inebriation industry. It underscores both consumer shifts and questions about what kind of economy we want in the future.

Will we be a country of high volume and low quality? Or can we become an economy of quality and price premium? Whether it’s drinking, buying computers or choosing what industrial policy to support, we are in the process of answering those questions.

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.”'
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"questions about what kind of Economy we want in the future...."