It’s often pointed out that moderate drinking of red wine can improve your health. It turns out that alcohol is good for your income as well. The Reason Foundation, a Californian think tank, has published a study saying that drinking and earnings are positively correlated.

The explanation, the study explains, is because drinking increases people’s “social capital” - in other words the sizes of people’s address books. People who drink go out to bars, network with others, make contacts, and get better jobs and win business.

This is yet another reason why raising taxes on alcohol is a bad idea. In the US, things are worse, especially on university campuses. The authors, Dr Bethany Peters and Dr Edward Stringham, point out one of the unintended consequences of alcohol restrictions is that they push drinking into private settings.

“This,” they point out, “occurred during the Alcohol Prohibition of 1920-1933 [in the United States] and is happening on college campuses today. By preventing people from drinking in public, anti-alcohol policies eliminate one of the most important aspects of drinking: increased social capital.