State legislators are trying to pass liquor privatization. I’ll leave it to other people to point out that liquor privatization initiatives failed last year, as well as the pros and cons of this particular measure.
There is one thing I do find interesting about last year’s results: how poorly it did in Eastern Washington. Maybe there’s some moralizing and concern for the budget that compelled the rest of the state (myself included) to oppose liquor privatization. But there’s something else unique to rural Washington.
You see, in many rural parts of the country, capitalism doesn’t work very well. There aren’t enough people in the market for various goods and services, so they don’t get there. In some cases, that’s just how they want things. I think most people who chose to live 50 miles from the nearest stop sign wouldn’t trade with me, no matter how much I’m glad to have a few bakeries within walking distance, and the ability to go out on my bike anywhere I want. Still, rural people want some things that the market can’t provide. So we as a society have set up things like rural electrification, farm subsidies and public radio.
Surely, there are places in rural Washington where there would be less hard alcohol sold if we privatize the system. For a lot of people the selection and hours may not be all they want, but they know they would get less if the state stores went away.
You’re absolutely right, Carl. If you drill a little deeper into Washington state history you’ll find vicious fights over public-versus-private power. Rural electrication was a product of the FDR era. Basically, private enterprise wanted to take the low-hanging fruit, and left unprofitable services (such as rural electric service and reclamation projects) for government to provide. The truth is, eastern Washington is almost as socialized as Communist Russia was. That lifestyle couldn’t exist without largesse from urban taxpayers. Thus, it’s highly ironic that the people who benefit most from “government socialism” rant the loudest against it. Now that we have a perceived “deficit problem” they’re demanding we solve by making draconian cuts to social programs of all kinds, maybe their taxpayer-subsidized social programs should hit the chopping block. I say let those eastern Washington conservatives live the self-sufficient life they claim they want! We need the money.
We should send each and every one of those Republican-voting eastern Washington farmers a $2 million bill for their share of the costs of the federally-subsidized irrigation system that makes agriculture possible in that part of the state, and we should send them another bill of $200,000 for the costs of running power lines to their farmhouse and barn.
I don’t see why I should give up my Medicare, which I paid 40 years of taxes for, to keep guys like Clint Didier in business.
ahhh yes, Carl is back on his rural-hating rants again….
and the retired lawyer is right at his side…funny how both forget how the food ended up on their table.
you know you have entered seattle bizarro land when the American Farmer is in the shit list.
Remember, these are the same idiots who live in a world where they cant fix anything, feed themselves, or figure out where their electricity comes from.
Carl, didnt you try this shit a few months ago? and got your ass handed to you also….
I bet carl and the dis-barred lawyer also hate native americans too – since many live in rural eastern wa too…..smells a little racist to me.
carl, take your smug elitism and shove it up your pansy metrosexual ass.
Actually, for rural communities this is a non-issue. The WSLCB contracts with local small businesses (i. e. mom-and-pop country stores) to sell booze where there isn’t enough business to justify the state opening and staffing one of its own stores nearby. These would also be places where it would be equally unlikely for Costco or Wal-Mart to build a store either.
Maybe we should send a bill for 200,000 dollars
to every FAKE black farmer Obama gave over a
billion dollars to so they will vote for him
again. I mean FAKE farmers need power too! I wonder if Michelle got a check? She farms.
@4,
This piece isn’t pro or anti rural. It didn’t stake out a position on if we should continue except pointing out in passing that I voted the same way as Eastern (and Western) Washington on the initiatives. When you bother to read the posts here, you’ll be able to know that all on your own.
5,
Until privatization.
6,
Many of the black people denied loans in the 1980’s, didn’t have the money to become farmers. Again, because they were denied the loans that the lawsuit was about. I assume that’s what you were writing about, but if you read this post about alcohol in rural areas and your reaction is “black people are screwing us, somehow” perhaps the problem isn’t black farmers.
The best way out of our current budget crisis is to hand over our $500m/year profit from the state liquor business in exchange for a $300m one time payment. Then next year when we’re in an even bigger budget hole we can sell more of our government.
Also known as the arizona approach to budget.
Roger Rabbit spews:
I don’t see why I should give up my Medicare, which I paid 40 years of taxes for, to keep guys like Clint Didier in business
Sure, that’s how everybody feels about Medicare & Social Security. They all paid-in, and they want the bennies. Unfortunately, the actuarial and cost assumptions were never updated to reflect increased life expectancy or changes in health care.
To make it more in-line with real life, I’d suggest making the retirement age for Social Security at least 70 and probably doing the same with Medicare. These programs can’t be self-sufficient without these types of adjustments.
Since when is the govt in the business of making profits?
Perhaps the govt is just another giant corporation….
it just sounds kinda f-ed up on its face.
As far as the liquor thing goes, our state’s retail sales system for spirits is perfect for the eventual legalization of pot. It’s only a matter of time.
@11
I agree with the state pot store deal.
Now, if that were to happen, you can bet Lee adn all his pot selling buddies will be up in arms….and their little black market would continue.
Only 40% of Spokane County voted for the initiative, and Spokane is in no danger of losing access to liquor under privatization. I don’t think rural vs. urban is to blame here, I think it’s just moralism – social conservatives wanting to restrict the supply of liquor.
Clearly, Costco isn’t interested in making liquor more available anywhere they don’t already have a big-box store. Having been soundly defeated in their initiatives, they are simply making a power grab by going directly to the legislature. What they really want is to sell hard alchohol by the caseload in the very urban central puget sound, and make big profits in the process.
The legislature should quit fooling around with this issue and allow it to die a quick death.
I would gladly stop advocating for liquor privatization if they’d do something about the hours at the state stores. I can buy beer and wine at a grocery store until 2 AM, I can drink at a bar until 2 AM, so why can’t I buy bottled liquor after 7-9 PM?
@9 I have a better idea. Let’s raise the income cap for Social Securit and Medicare taxes so the middle class doesn’t have to pay higher overall tax rates than the rich.
The wingnut solution is always to make the working class work harder and longer for less so the rich can get another tax cut.
The reason we have a deficit problem today is because the Bush administration raised military spending to historic highs and reduced tax revenues to historic lows. The working and middle classes got little or no benefit from either of those policies. All they got was thousands of their children returned to them in coffins. (In case you didn’t notice, the rich don’t die in their wars; only the “little people” die in their wars.)
@15 So you think your personal convenience in buying hard stuff (beer and wine are available in grocery and convenience stores until 2 AM) matters more than keeping drunks off the roads and funding schools and other public services?
For a state with truly idiotic liquor policies, try Wisconsin — they’re stupid about more than the politicians they elect.
In Wisconsin, liquor sales are privatized, so you can buy whatever you want — beer, wine, Old Crow — at corner liquor stores (which abound) or grocery stores … until 9 PM.
Wisconsin shuts down ALL carry-out sales, including six-packs purchased in taverns, at 9 PM. But bars serving liquor-by-the-drink stay open until 2 AM. This means if you want to drink after 9 PM in Wisconsin, and forgot to buy your six-pack at Safeway before 9 PM, you have to sit on a bar stool and drink at the bar — then drive home drunk.
Another idiotic thing Wisconsin does is their “local option” minimum age for beer. Each county can decide whether the beer drinking age is 18 or 21. So naturally you get weekend migrations of teenagers living in age 21 counties to age 18 counties … and a slew of accidents after the beer bars close and thousands of drunken teens are driving back home. In particular, Milwaukee County — the state’s population center — is an age 21 county but Washington County, just north, is an age 18 county, so Washington County is full of teen beer bars and the 30-mile stretch of highway between the two counties for years was a graveyard of smashed cars and shattered teenage bodies. This crazy system spared no one; even the son of Schlitz’s CEO died on that road.
# 17: Yep, remember Romney running for President in 2008, and supporting the Bush Iraq war, until someone asked him why none of his own children were serving in the military? His answer that they were “serving” by helping him campaign for President didn’t come off very well – but that’s exactly how the rich and their Republican lackeys think.
After all George W. Bush not only was shielded from potential service in Vietnam by being scooted to the top of the list for Texas Air National Guard service, but when he started getting into trouble with his commander for missed drills he was allowed to transfer to an Alabama unit so he could work at his job on the political campaign of a Republican politician there. Nobody in Alabama can ever seem to remember seeing him on base, for any reason.
Likewise, Karl Rove managed to keep getting student deferements from the Vietnam draft while leading the College Republicans, even though he never completed even one quarter of full-time study and often skipped quarters of school entirely – ommissions which would have had just about anyone else immediately called up for service. Once college student deferrments ended, he was mysteriously labeled “not subject to service” and never had to worry about it again, while he (literally) took lessons from the Watergate plumbers in dirty campaign tactics. He avoided investigation and potential prosecution for some of his tactics in the 1972 election only because he was considered too small a fish for the prosecutors to be bothered with at the time.
@18: I don’t believe that keeping liquor stores open later would put more drunks on the road. Frankly, I suspect it’d *reduce* drunk driving, since people who want liquor at midnight would be able to take it home instead of drinking at bars.
As for funding schools and other public services, there are other ways to raise revenue. Less regressive ways would be nice. But hell, you could even just slap a fat tax on private liquor sales.
Um… You can by booze over the internet and have the UPS man deliver it right to your door.
I doubt privatization would change anything as far as access to booze.
# 19: Where I grew up, the drinking age was the same (18) across the state (it was raised to 21 after I left). But the rules varied from county to county, and from one municipality to another. Counties were much smaller than here in Washington state, you could drive across a county in thirty minutes with no problem.
You had some rural counties which were completely “dry”, which provided a living for the local moonshiners and whiskey runners. The larger cities allowed pretty unrestricted liquor sales from private stores, convenience stores, and bars and clubs. In between there were a patchwork of suburban incorporated entities with all sorts of strange rules – some allowed only beer and wine, some wouldn’t allow liquor-by-the-drink but allowed you to bring in your own bottle if you paid a substantial “set up” charge.
Since liquor sales were all private, there was a plothora of liquor stores on any main stretch of road – and each morning the daily newspaper would list the robberies and shootings at those stores, they were prime targets at around 2:00 a.m. Most had a big guy with a shotgun posted on a stool at the store entrance to discourage robberies, but as things escalated robbers would simplly shoot him first as they walked in the doorway.
The liquor store in Ritzville is in the back of a quilting store. If liquor were privatized the only thing that would change is who the quilt shop would place their booze order with.
# 22 Perhaps you can, but not legally (at least not in Washington State). And I seriously doubt the UPS guy checks the ID of whoever is signing for the package.
@25
I’ve done it, no problem.
And if it’s not OK we could always change that law.
re 4: “carl, take your smug elitism and shove it ….”
The only people who do not understand how Republicans manipulate the informationally deprived voters of many rural states are those rural voters.
Why even bother repeating it here? Are you just proudly displaying your Republican liar bona fides?
Well done!! You are an excellent manipulator. Keep doing it here where it will do no harm.
@25
The real point being that, thanks to the internet, rural folks have access to about everything that urban folks have.
@4
1. Plenty of people in urban areas can cook from scratch raise gardens and chickens and can fruits and veggies.
2. Hell, most farmers get their food at the grocery store, just like everyone else.
3. Farmers get their electricity from the same places urban folks do.
4. The only smug elitism on here is coming from you.
5. The only person that mentioned eastern WA is you. What about the 850K people that live in rural western WA?
Rural broadband, which Obama and the Dems are trying to build and the Republicans are trying to scuttle, might be a better example of what Carl’s talking about here. Plus, it’s another example of how Republican’s don’t give a shit about rural folks.
@4 “how the food ended up on their table”
Yawn. It gets here on ships after being raised by peasant farmers in foreign countries. I suppose you’re unaware that 90% of the processed food sold to American consumers contains imported ingredients …
Like everything else nowadays, our food supply is being outsourced …
As a percentage of GDP, taxes are at an all-time low, and incomes of the rich are at an all-time high, so there’s plenty of room to raise taxes on the rich to help reduce the deficit. And it won’t hurt the economy a bit, because there’s already a vast amount of surplus capital sloshing around in the financial markets, so much that the returns paid to investors for use of their capital are almost nothing.
Since I’m gainfully employed I had to wait until now to read this since I don’t get paid to comment like some folks.
Most definitely not a social conservative, most definitely against privatization, for reasons similar to the 2nd and 3rd point 19 made.
In California, most arterial intersections will have at least one or two of the following: a supermarket that sells, booze, a private store or 7-11 that sells booze, a gas station… that sells booze. Catch the drift? More DUIs (yes, people will get drunk at home, AND STILL DRIVE, even if they didn’t go to a bar), more domestic violence, more substance abuse problems, etc., etc., etc. We can all pretend like booze isn’t a national epidemic because it’s legal, but it’s both. And don’t give me the false equivalency with marijuana, I’ve read and am tired of all the propaganda, thanks.
@21 So let’s extend the hours of state liquor stores and make more money for the state (which helps keep taxes down and our schools running).
In fact, this has already been done to some extent. State liquor stores used to be closed on Sundays, but unless I’m mistaken, you can now buy liquor on Sundays.
@33 Alcohol doesn’t cause domestic violence. Domestic violence occurs even in “dry” states. When alcohol abuse is added to existing family problems, unemployment, and other causes of stress, it aggravates those problems. Alcohol, per se, doesn’t cause alcoholism either. About 10% of the population is genetically predisposed to alcoholism. Of course, not all those people become alcoholics, and not all alcoholics have that genetic predisposition — there is much individual behavior involved. The majority of people can drink moderately without significant harm to their health and work/social relationships — if they can control their behavior.
This country experimented with trying to avoid the harmful effects of alcohol by prohibiting alcohol consumption, but all that accomplished was to spawn huge criminal enterprises and encourage drinking. In the aftermath of Prohibition some states (including ours) tried to regulate drinking by directly controlling liquor sales through state liquor monopolies. The thinking behind this is a holdover of the “blue nose” era, when do-gooders believed that making it harder to get liquor would reduce drinking and alcohol-related problems (it didn’t). For several decades now, our politicians have looked at state liquor sales as merely a revenue source, although the influence of “blue nose” ideology still persists to some degree; you occasionally hear arguments that abolishing state liquor stores will lead to more alcohol-related problems.
State liquor stores raise about $300 million a year for the state. That’s not a small sum, but it’s less than 2% of the annual state budget. If we give those profits away to private enterprise, then either we have to replace them with a new revenue source, or make further cuts in public services. Why do that? Do you want to pay higher taxes or cut public services?
@31
Maxie’s got a nice little delusion of what rural life is like.
When you consider the poverty and unemployment rates and how few Americans work on any thing farm related, you realize that for many rural folks income comes from a check from the government and food comes from the store and the food bank. Right now Clark County is the only non-rural distressed county in Washington state.
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/planni.....dRural.htm
@35 I don’t disagree, but I’m not talking about prohibition either, and privatized alcohol distribution would definitely amplify all those problems. I think the state-run monopoly is a good thing because it provides a necessary “limit”, impediment, whatever, to purchasing booze. If you NEED to get drunk all the time you have bigger problems then when, where and how much booze you can buy, no?
Dumbest analogy on the planet. Since when are liquor stores basic infrastructure? By the way where I live (Carnation) the Ace Hardware store is also a liquor store…privately run.
Roger Rabbit @ 16,
We can raise the Social Security wage cap from the current $106,000 +/- to unlimited on earned income. However, those who make more earned income will receive higher Social Security benefits once they hit retirement age. You can’t expect high income earners, simply because they’re high income earniers, to fund the Social Security benefits paid to lower-earning workers. That would be like charging a high income earner $1,000 for a haircut while charging a middle class worker $10 for the same service. That doesn’t make sense.
I agree with PI: let’s adjust the age and actuarial assumptions of both Social Security and Medicare to reflect the changes in life expectancy and health care advancements. Social Security is operating under 1930s assumptions, and Medicare is stuck in the mid-1960s. If people want to retire early, then their defined benefit plans, defined contribution plans, IRAs, and accumulated wealth can be used to fund early retirement until Social Security kicks-in at a later, more actuarily-workable time. It’s all math, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. People are living longer, so Social Security must be adjusted to reflect this fact. Medicare, too!
@38
Huh? Where did we call liquor stores basic infrastructure?
@9 Actually, since demographic changes actually take quite a long time to happen (just doesn’t feel that way sometimes), the analysts who designed the details of SocSec in the 1930s DID take into account increasing life expectancy. That’s a smaller issue than how to figure COLA’s, and how to account for the fact that life expectancy hasn’t gone up very much for lower-income brackets.
“However, those who make more earned income will receive higher Social Security benefits once they hit retirement age.”
Actually, it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s not a savings account, and was never intended to be. It is a safety net system. My father and mother both died long before they were able to collect a dime of the Social Security benefits they paid in their entire lives – it’s not fair, but that’s the breaks. Given a choice between cutting Social Security benefits for those who rely upon the program for most of their income, vs. having those making in excess of $107K pay a bit more, I’d choose the latter.
One of the things which isn’t getting much media attention is how the much the Bush rescession will affect the retirement of Americans down the road. Social Security benefits are based upon contributions made over the last quarters of work-life before retirment (I’ve long since forgotten the exact number). Some older workers who’ve been out of work for over two years now, and exhausted all unemployment benefits, may find this period of unemployment within that “window” which calculates their eligibility for Social Security retirement benefits.
Although they may have worked and contributed into Social Security their entire life, their retirement payments – for the rest of their lives – may be reduced because they haven’t worked much recently.
This rescession has been particularly hard on those in their fifties and sixties. They expected to use these last few years saving up as much money as possible, and paying off their last debt, so they could enjoy a retirement. Instead, quite a few found they were the first to be laid off, and even though we have a slow recovery the older workers are tending to be the last ones hired. In the meantime many are having to exhaust their 401(k) plans and I.R.A.s just to get by.
The jobs they get at age 58 or 63 will unlikely pay nearly as well, or have as many benefits, as the ones they had before – they will be competing with entry-level workers to see who can get paid the lowest wages and benefits. Employers might value their experience, but are unwilling to invest much in a worker who won’t be around for more than a handful of years.
So instead of making the highest wages of their lives, and saving half their take-home pay to fund give a final “kick” to their retirement savings and pay off their home mortgages before retirement, they are instead looking at a retirement with an even larger mortgage (borrowed against equity to get by), credit card debt, reduced or evaporated retirement savings, and even reduced Social Security payments to boot.
@13,
I didn’t mean to imply that it was the only reason. Only that it was a factor that nobody mentions.
@30,
I thought about using rural broadband as another example, but decided to use only programs that already exist for simplicity sake.
@44
Rural broadband is a good one, cause Dems are for it and Republicans are against it.
Tom Fitzpatrick at 41,
If the actuaries in 1935 planned-in life expectancy adjustments for Social Security benefits, then nobody ever bothered to actually update the retirement age to keep track of the expected increase in life expectancy. Sure, I think they’ve run the “normal” retirement age to something like 67 or 68, but that’s not anywhere close to the situation we had in 1935. In the year Social Security was enacted, when life expectacny was about 62 for men and women. Heck, back then, most people would have already died before receiving any benefit! (I don’t know what the standard deviation of that average life expectancy statistic, however, so I can’t guess-timate what percentage of people died before hitting 65. I’m assuming a normal distribution here. We can say, however, at least half of the people at that time died before reaching 62.) Tom, history doesn’t support your statements very well.
My dad died about two months shy of his 62nd birthday, and my mom died at age 67 and 8 months. They never got all their money out of Social Security. It is fair – it’s just not favorable. People confuse “fair” and “favorable” all the time.
One other problem with Social Security is the growth of payments outside the original intentions for the funds. There are a lot of, in my view, spurious and bogus claims for disability against the system. We should definitely look at cleaning-up that portion of the program.
rhp6033 – I can’t hang with you on higher income earners being shorted on benefit payments simply because they contributed more to the fund. Those who are taxed more up-front deserve to receive their proportionate share of the pie at retirement. Anything else is wealth-redistribution via government mandate – an abhorrent thought for all of us!