Posted on 05/12/2015 6:25:00 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
A tax increase that would raise alcohol prices by 10% is among the most effective means of countering excessive consumption, which reduces economic output in most developed countries and contributes to early death and disability, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said on Tuesday.
The Paris-based research body said in a report that while alcohol consumption has been declining in most countries over the past two decades, it is heavily concentrated, with the majority accounted for by the heaviest-drinking 20% of the population. “Hazardous” and “binge” drinking is on the rise among young people, and especially young women.
The OECD estimated that harmful alcohol consumption results in annual losses in output of roughly 1% of gross domestic production in most developed economies, while it rose from eighth to fifth as the leading cause of death and disability in the world between 1990 and 2010, and is now responsible for a greater proportion of deaths world-wide than HIV/AIDS, violence and tuberculosis together.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
More taxes are the liberals’ solution for everything.
It's "soft power." The taxes lead the target to do the right thing without direct compulsion. Or, perhaps Marx would have said, "Everything is driven by economics."
And, then, there's all that money you get to spread around! A twofer!
I don't believe this for a moment. It may influence the moderate and temperate drinkers but won't influence the "excessive" consumers a bit. It may affect the crime rate though.
“Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development”
boy doesnt that read like something right out of the old Soviet Union though!!
The real issue is that if people stopped drinking the government would then tax water.
It is like the taxes on gasoline, once people bought the more efficient cars and the tax revue went down the taxes were raised to make up the shortfall. Thus people drive smaller cars but spend as much on gasoline as they used to with larger ones
Typical brain-addled LIBs. They have ideas that speak of insanity. I believe that all LIBs should be taxed for existing. They are society’s malignancies.
My daughter had a binge drinking problem since college, but thanks to intervention by her husband and help from AA she has been sober for more than a year.
Hazardous and binge drinking isn’t affected by finances. It is addiction driven.
Just 1 problem, taxes give govt. an incentive NOT to curb drinking.
Even as someone who has been addicted to smoking, I can tell you that they are delusional if they think paying more will make someone stop buying. I kept buying my cigarettes back when I did smoke, even though the price was rising.
Most of the organized crime such as Cosa Nostra had been established long before Prohibition. It’s more accurate to suggest it helped it grow and prosper. FWIW, Cosa Nostra has been around since the 1850s in Italy, and a few years later it was in the U.S.
Yep. I remember years ago my dad swearing he would stop smoking when cigarettes hit $0.50 a pack. He smoked until he died in 2012.
If you are drinking that heavily or are binge drinking, you are probably an alcoholic and a 10% increase in price will not disuade you in the least.
It’s usually not beyond affordable either, it’s really a question of what will be given up out of the paycheck to get the booze.
Meanwhile, legalize marijuana.
America has lost its senses.
This does NOTHING to deter binge drinking and only serves to provide liberals with more money to buy votes.
If you try to sit...
Wow. Just wow. Obviously none of these people have ever opened a history book, and have nothing but disdain for history, either. As such, they would be best utilized living in the chimpanzee compound at a zoo, ordering the chimpanzees to do what they want.
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