This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, September 25th, 2019.

I'm Caleb Brown.

You might wonder why White Claw, the official boosy low-car beverage of summer took so long to arrive?

Well the answer appears to be tax laws.

Cato's Will Yeatman comments.

Josh Barrow wrote this article at New York magazine

How Tax Policy gave us White Claw.

And I guess I had an inkling that this was true

because you can't really go out and buy

Vodka soda or gin and tonic in a can. I mean it's technically possible to

purchase those things but they're regulated in such a way that it's not palatable for a lot of companies to produce them but

white claw is different.

Indeed it is a but it takes advantage or let me put it this way the tax disparity of which you just

spoke has long been of very much interest to beer manufacturers that is to say

it's sort of the the holy grail of beer production is to get a

drink that tastes like a mixed liquor drink but is nonetheless brewed like a beer and thereby you gain this beneficial tax policy.

That's why in the past we've had beverages like more recently Mike's hard lemonade but from my youth we had the Zemas of the world.

The problem was evidently and I've actually never had a Zemah nor a Mike's hard lemonade but because they're

brewed like beers they taste like beer. So you know when you're when you're

shooting for a mixed drink but it tastes like beer that's perhaps an imical to sales.

The white claw breakthrough, sort of the

holy grail of this taking advantage of this disparity in tax treatment between

...