The libertarian Reason Foundation has come out with a report that “finds drinking can help your wallet”.
According to a study that was published in the latest edition of the Journal of Labor Research, a survey of self-reported drinkers versus abstainers found a correlation between social drinking and increased earnings. For example, “men who drink earn 10 percent more than abstainers and women drinkers earn 14 percent more than nondrinkers.”
And according to economists Bethany Peters and Edward Stringham, the causation can be put down to increased “social capital”, with the theory being that “[s]ocial drinkers are networking, building relationships, and adding contacts to their Blackberries that result in bigger paychecks”.
I think there is an element of truth in the theory - if a social drinker is a more attractive option for an employer and workplace and the two can hook up quicker, then the social drinker has an advantage over the abstainer - but that it can only go so far, especially when the study concludes that any crackdown on social drinking could hurt the economy as a whole and its encouragement can actually improve the economy.
Roughly put, the great increase in earnings in the past couple of centuries for most in the West is a result of a massive increase in physical capital - the so-called material means of production - not social drinking or “social capital”. For example, a worker with a digger is a whole lot more productive than if he simply used a spade, with so-called social capital or increased networking ability that may have got him the job in the first place a mere supporting player.
