Halloween and it's Candy Economy

Oct 31, 2009 - 05:43 PM

By: Jeffrey_A_Tucker

Dale Steinreich once wrote that Halloween has a "socialist tenor" because "menacing figures arrive at your door uninvited, demand your property, and threaten to perform an unspecified 'trick' if you don't fork over. That's the way the government works in a nutshell."

And yet, for overall kid excitement, Halloween seems to surpass Christmas, at least from what I can observe. The kids spend months preparing their costumes, and thrill to every detail of the ceremony: pumpkins, scary things, and of course candy. For the children, too, there is the attractive fact that parents are not all that happy about Halloween with its goblins, gore, and gluttony.

But, a deeper lesson to be drawn is that there is also an economic dimension to Halloween that goes far beyond simply demanding property with menaces, however lighthearted.

Unlike at Christmas, where kids must only be good little citizens all year in order to be showered with gifts from their beneficent Guardians, at Halloween, kids must actually work in real time for their candy.

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