The Economic Benefits of Tax Evasion
Revenuers Plugged the Hole in One Spot and Then Guess What ...
“And there was thunder, thunder, over thunder road
Thunder was his engine, and white lightning was his load…”
From The Ballad of Thunder Road
One of the greatest unintended consequences in American history was the creation of NASCAR from illegal whiskey makers trying to outrun revenue cops in souped-up cars.
Here’s the rundown:
It is indisputable that tax evasion created moonshine.
It is indisputable that moonshine created souped-up cars.
It is indisputable that souped-up cars created NASCAR and that NASCAR has become a multi-billion dollar source of revenue for the Federal Government.
Therefore it might be time that the geniuses in Washington considered targeted tax evasion not as a criminal act but as a means of generating more money for the Treasury.
Sadly, your Federal Government prefers penury to entrepreneurial success. The long war on freelance whiskey makers started at almost the same time that the country itself started. Speaking of starts, a lot of the American whiskey enjoyed today got its start in the mash barrels and pot stills of backwoods freelancers.
I have a fantasy that if you are lucky enough to make it to Heaven and luckier still to find a good bar there you might well encounter a few of history’s high-capacity imbibers to bend an elbow with. This will enhance your storehouse of useless information from some of the very people who can make it sound otherwise.
The world’s best minds have always enjoyed a good cocktail or scotch or bourbon, neat or on the rocks. It’s my suspicion that large quantities of whiskey washed William Faulkner right into the Nobel Prize for literature. President Franklin Roosevelt made martinis for himself and guests in the White House, referring to those occasions as “the children’s hour.” General Ulysses S. Grant knocked back many a bottle of “Old Crow”, to the extent that President Lincoln offered to buy each of his generals a barrel of it if it would make them fight like Grant.
One occupant of the spirit realm unlikely to prop a foot on the brass rail is Alexander Hamilton, the country’s first Secretary of the Treasury, whose party-pooper instincts are legend. He’s the guy who levied the first tax on liquor in America and went to war against the local entrepreneurs who were making it.
There were two Americas in 1794; the first was comprised of wealthy towns and cities along the Eastern Seaboard and the second consisted of the relatively poor farming frontier to the west. Many of these frontier citizens lived virtually outside the money economy of the east and survived by barter and the sale of whiskey.
Corn was the preponderant crop in the west, particularly in western Pennsylvania, where growers found converting their crops into whiskey the most beneficial alternative. Transporting a grain crop to markets eastward was costly, the weather and the roads and the Indians were treacherous and the effort could lead to great losses. But when distilled and stored in barrels or jugs, your corn was concentrated, easier to transport and could be stored indefinitely without loss.
Farming families in western Pennsylvania saw the whiskey tax as an affront to their livelihoods. Whiskey making was important for their survival. Many small distillers felt resentment against the Washington government and thought it equally tyrannical as the English regime they had just fought. Protests began in western Pennsylvania and finally boiled over on July 16, 1794, when a large mob attacked the home of tax collector, John Neville at Bower Hill, near Pittsburgh.
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