The government interaction with liquor is absolutely absurd with respect to all the regulation and taxes on it, honestly it's a horrible joke and practically looks like the middle ages with all the arbitrary taxes and the vehemence with which they pursue people who don't follow their tax codes.

I've seen estimates of anywhere from 50 to 75% of the price of a bottle of liquor is taxes in the US. Pretty crazy...

The entirety of the rationale behind all of the taxation and enforcement on liquor sales and on liquor sellers is all about the revenue. People try to talk about public safety issues and alcoholism and all manner of other garbage but the bottom line is that it's about revenue for the government. The sad thing is that liquor taxes really don't make up that much money of the government's total revenues, but there is a long standing history of antagonism between the government and its citizens when it comes to liquor taxation and enforcement.

Early in US history liquor taxes made up a major portion of the government's revenue, and similarly early on there were lots of people who thought that wasn't right and thought the government was overreaching and overly burdensome with their taxation policies. Even though today the percentage of total income from liquor taxes is MUCH smaller, the same attitude exists with the government of feeling the need to be obeyed with respect to liquor taxes... If you look into the history of it and dismiss all the rationales based on morality and "sin" taxing, you'll see it's a pure issue of greed and desire to be obeyed vs. the desire for individuals to live their lives free of government intervention.

Example: You can brew your own beer and wine for your own private consumption, but it is illegal to distill your own liquor for private consumption. I'm not talking about selling now, I'm talking about for private personal consumption...

 

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He also explained that the retail stores have to have an uniform pricing policy for the first year once they get the liquor.

Unabashed fascism.

Exactly. I was trying to make this point about the way "private" liquor sellers are "regulated"...

 

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The interesting and sad thing about this fascism is that many people in this country have come to accept it without outrage.

Fascism is a bit strong but point taken. I mean people aren't rounding up Zionists and gassing them to death but this is none of the governments business and neither is pot.

 

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True. Prohibition still casts a long shadow when it comes to the regulation of liquor in the US. If you think about it and the entire public attitude about it and similar aspects of government intervention it makes you wonder...

 

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I mean, it was written into the bill that we voted into law....

 

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I assume you're referring to the self convinced morality police. If so, in my observation their rational is the same dictatorial pathology as the leftist who approves of government dictates when it comes things like opinion crime, affirmative action, etc, etc.

We totally went off of the reservation long ago for the idea of government being very limited as per the constitution and just staying the eff out of peoples lives.

Yes, your point is?

Yes, the "morality police" and the "it doesn't effect ME, so how big of a deal could it be?" people... the morality police of course are about curtailing peoples' activities, the "it doesn't effect ME" people let them do it because today, the morality police aren't after something THEY find important, yet... yet.

 

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