Tax Drink: Hurt the Poor
By Sean Gabb
(Published in The Phuket Gazette, 5th July 2014)
There are two cases for taxing alcohol. The first is that government must somehow be paid for, and that drink can and should be taxed more heavily than food and books and clothing. The second is that drink is bad for us, and should be made so expensive that we buy less of it. Ignoring this first case, I will take issue with the second.
It is not the business of government to tell us how to live. That is for us to choose for ourselves. We all ought to know that drinking too much is bad for us. If some do not or will not, that is sad for them. If they make a nuisance of themselves, let there be laws against the nuisance. Let there be laws against being drunk and disorderly in public, and let punishments be greater for criminals who offend while drunk. But it is a disagreeable belief that fools can be made wise, or criminals deterred, by treating all of us like children. It is disagreeable for the reason already given, that we should be left to live as we please, and for the further reasons given below.
First, so far as they are enforced, higher prices will mainly hurt the poor. If drinking too much is an evil, moderate drinking is a good. It dulls unhappiness. It takes away stress. It makes company more enjoyable. There is a reason why, in every civilisation, drink is older than writing, and perhaps religion. Now, double the price from where it is, treble it, multiply it tenfold โ will it keep the higher classes in a country from opening almost as much wine as before? Probably not. But it will take that comfort away from the poor. They have rights too. Their needs may be greater. Prohibitionists talk much about morality. But where is the morality in laws that only hurt the poor?
Second, higher prices cannot in practice be enforced. Anyone can make his own wine and beer. It needs only sugar and vegetable fibre and yeast. If people do not make their own, it is because current prices are less of a burden than time and effort. Raise prices, and the poor will make their own drink.
Third, if making wine and beer at home is harmless, distilling is not. Distilling produces several kinds of alcohol, only one of which is safe. Knowing what can and cannot be drunk needs more attention than most people can manage. Make spirits too expensive for the poor, and they will start poisoning themselves.
Fourth, So far as they do not make their own, the poor will buy drink illegally made by others, or illegally imported. This will subsidise the growth of criminal conspiracies that would not otherwise exist. These will tyrannise over their customers and corrupt law enforcement and politics. It is hardly ideal to live in a community of heavy drinkers. Living with organised crime is always worse.
In brief, the advocates of higher prices for drink look only to benefits that they have no right to demand, and little chance of achieving โ and that, if achieved, would be outweighed by the costs. On moral grounds, and on grounds of the public good, people should be left to drink as they please.
Sean Gabb is Director of the Libertarian Alliance in London. His new novel, The Break, has been nominated for the Prometheus Award.
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You say distilling at home is not safe, but in New Zealand where it is done as a lawful hobby it seems to be safe enough.
I suppose one might argue that unusual hobbies are OK for the middle classes but if a poor person not able to get enough money to buy spirits starts making them out of necessity, not knowing what he’s doing and under clandestine conditions, he’s likely to harm himself?
http://homedistiller.org/
David Davis is our scientific expert, and I will defer to his opinion. However, my understanding is that the different kinds of alcohol have different boiling points, and a distiller needs to know when to change receiving containers. With wine and beer, you can know by smell alone if something has gone wrong. You can’t just boil off the volatile spirits from fermented liquid and collect them in a bucket. The techniques involved may not be complex, but I often read unpleasant news reports from countries under prohibition.
By the way, the Beeb pronunciation is Foo-KET. One of my Thai students, however, always rhymed it with bucket.
The business of both distilling and fermentation (previous to that) is not in itself complex if a few basic rules are observed.
(1) As far as possible, fruit or grain used for fermentation should be fairly clean and fresh. You may tread it with your bare feet in cheerful company bt it must be “started” quickly, and ideally under anaerobic conditions at first so as to favour the yeasts (and those few other fungi which are facultative anaerobes) that you want to make specifically ethanol and not methanol (which is toxic.)
(1A) Grain which you will process for beverages such as beer (or later, whisky or gin after distillation) ought to be “malted” first: This is to say – you start the grain germinating, only a bit, to enable the enzyme pathways to convert the stored starch to glucose etc, which the yeasts/fungi can work with. They cannot use starch directly.
(2) You must stop fermentation as soon as possible after the gas bubbles (CO2) start to reduce in rate of production. Filter the liquid as well as you can, and add sodium (or potassium) metalisulphite, a little not much, to kill any other lurghies lurking as lurghies do, and as GramscoFabiaNazis lurk in our Universities, waiting to pounce and give you the runs.
(3) You could then bottle the stuff, or better, just drink it. Its alcoholic strength could be anyhting from 8% to 12% (sort of 16 to 24 deg proof.)
(4) If you are to distil, you need to watch the following:-
(A) YOU MUST have a sufficiently good “fractionating condenser system” such that you can collect distillates accurately (WITHOUT others either side) to within 2 degrees centigade at the very most of precision.
(B) Ethanol boils at exactly 78.37C at normal air pressures ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol ) and you must not save any distillates boiling lower than about 72-73C for these will contian a proprtion of Methanol (BP about 68C) which is toxic and can cause blindness.
(C) There is not much point saving distillates above about 79.5C as this will be mostly water and will dilute your primary product. This always contains about 71% by volume of ethanol, whatever you began with, and this is merely a law of physics. You may either dilute it to drinking strengths, which are usually about 50% or less, which is still just over 100 deg proof. Most of the stuff you can buy commercially is about 70deg.
(D) As you can see, you need good gear and accurate thermometers at the top of each fractionating column.
(E) YOU also may take your 71% distillate, and redistil it, collecting in the same band of about 76-79C. In this case the alcohol % will be (71% + (71/100)x(100-29)) %, which is about 92% roughly.
This is functionally-undrinkable, and is called colloquially, “firewater”, for that is what it tastes like. I would not recommend adding any of that to your stomach juices, really, honestly. Speaking as a “half-doctor” or “Noos-hakim” as my mother sneeringly used to call my father, I would not recommend it at all.
ูุตู ุงูุทุจูุจ
Note: Distillation of your own spirits is illegal in the UK for tax reasons, although you may ferment as much wine and beer as you like, for private use.
I have a forty year experience of making wine, and there is little I don’t know about it. Indeed, I should have guessed there was something wrong with Chris Tame when he began drinking a litre of my orange wine every night – not that my orange wine isn’t delightful, but Chris always bordered on the abstemious.
This being said, I know enough about the ways of making my own drink to be cautious about distillation. Extracting alcohol in the freezer is one thing. Applying heat to a must is something else, and I’ve never felt competent to do it.
By the way, I’ve just come home from a well-lubricated lunch round the corner with some friends, and find that, while my fingers still seem to move at the usual speed over the keyboard, I need to take more care than usual over the order with which my fingers strike on the keyboard.
To distil reliably, you mustn’t heat the “must”.
You MUST (sorry…) filter it properly first, having also I would say precipitated cellular material with fine clay such as bentonite. I didn’t mention that for I thought it was known. And preferably have “stopped” it properly.
Otherwise you might get a large percentage of stuff like methanol which is toxic, or other alcohols (there are others) which are not necessarily toxic but don’t taste that good.
Well, David, there you have it. I have four decades of experience with making wine, and have a detailed understanding of how to get the best from any set of ingredients. Even so, distillation remains a mystery that I have wisely left alone. Higher taxes on drink will simply produce an ocean of antifreeze.
I’m afraid you’re right, because most if not all of the guts of proper science teaching has been taken out of schools on purpose.
I would also say at present that distillation for drinking purposes – as opposed to making un-knowable rotgut – ought not to be attempted by anyone who hasn’t been shown in detail how to do it with proper practicals in front of them.
Therefore I guess you’d say I’m discouraging it for now.
Taxing to change behaviour (rather than just for revenue) is an old idea.
Back in the 18th century gin was taxed – in order to push people back to beer and cider (which were less harmful). It is supposed to have worked – however I am still hostile to the whole principle of behaviour modification by taxation.
As for home distilling – as in Tory Island (“Tory island, remote cold and ruled by brigands – like the Tory party”).
Persecuted home distillers (who would not pay for government licenses and taxes) fled Scotland and Ireland for America.
In America the Crown still tried to tax and license them – so they revolted (Scots-Irish “Rednecks” were the backbone of American fighting in that war – and in every other war).
However the new government taxed them as well (violating the Constitution to break the “Whiskey Rebellion” – the Constitution clearly states that the Feds may use force against “domestic violence” ON THE APPLICATION OF THE STATE LEGISLATURE – the State Legislature and Governor of Penn made no such “application” in 1794).
Thomas Jefferson swept away the whiskey tax after 1801.
But the tax was back with the Civil War – and it (and its armed tax Federal tax collectors) is still there.
Perhaps the Rednecks need to revolt again – and this time not get fobbed off with a lot of fancy double talk (as the new government does exactly what they revolted against the old government for doing).
“if the Rednecks are so good at fighting how did they lose the Civil War?” – they actually were the backbone of BOTH sides.
Anyone who knows Irish (and Highland Scots) history knows how even close kin can kill each other – it is not even “divide and rule”, as kin will kill each other even without any intervention from London.
The reasons given are normally absurd (because an absurd reason makes a better story – and Scot-Irish loves wild stories).
In reality the reasons are understandable – if not “good”.
The Hatfield V McCoy thing was not really over who stole a pig (or all the other …… tourists are told).
A McCoy came home came after fighting on the Union side in the Civil War – and was murdered, the McCoys blamed the Hatfields and…..
[Nor is the other tourist story true, that both sides were mirror images doing the same things, the Hatfields killed women and children the McCoys did not).
One might as well say the fighting in Thailand is over “Red Shirt” or “Yellow Shirt” – yes the two sides do use these colours, but that is not what the dispute is really about.