Taxing beer to Death

If you can't outlaw beer, you might as well tax it to death.

Just when it looks like Prohibition was dead, with a stake firmly planted in its miserable little heart, you get a surprise. The evil impulse to spoil someone else’s fun has reappeared-this time in the form of a proposal for a twenty-fold increase in taxes on beer in the otherwise brew-friendly state of Oregon.
The arguments there are pretty familiar:
•Increasing the tax will reduce underage drinking. Will it? Studies show that most teenagers who drink are drinking wine and distilled spirits.
•Oregon’s low taxes and large number of breweries creates a climate that encourages adults to tolerate underage drinking. But Oregon, with taxes that are almost the lowest in the nation has a rate of underage drinking that’s about the same as the national average.
•Higher beer taxes can support more alcohol and drug education and treatment. Perhaps they can, but beer drinkers are not responsible for all the abuse of other substances that cause social problems. Is it time for a tax on previously illegal narcotics? Household cleaners? Aerosols? Prescription pain-relievers and other psychoactives?

Picking beer for a tax hike is easy because beer is easy to pick on. In 1990, Congress raised taxes on ‘luxuries’ like limos, fur coats, jewelry, yachts, and private ‘planes. The same legislation doubled the federal beer tax. This drastic increase is estimated to have cost more than 60,000 jobs in breweries and related industries. Lobbyists for special interests were able to get all of these taxes repealed-but the one on beer remains. The tax component of the cost of a glass of beer now averages 40%. Direct excise taxes amount to somewhat less, amounting to a national average of about 70 cents per gallon.

In case you haven’t noticed, that money hasn’t supported any particularly effective drug policies. What may be more to the point is that at a time when the Senate has just passed a law rolling back the taxes on inherited fortunes of over $3million dollars, posting a ‘luxury’ tax on beer is penalizing the wrong people.

A look at the Consumer Expenditure Survey shows that beer taxes are regressive, costing lower- and middle-income taxpayers many times more than those in the middle-income range. They are also pretty reliable job-killers.

(Legislation to return federal beer taxes to previous levels and provide a minor assist to medium-sized brewers has been introduced to Congress as S. 1995 by Senator Ken Salazar (D-Co) and H.R 1610 by Congressmen Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.) and Phil English (R-Pa).)

So what’s behind the move in Oregon? Culturally, it’s a long story, but the tag line is the same: it used to be easy to pick on beer as the sinful pleasure of the least powerful people. Some people think it still is. If you’re one of the people who wants to make beer a better-defended target, this might be a good time to call your representative in Congress.

For more on Beer and Its Enemies, may I humbly suggest:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1601641915

The Beer Bistro-Toronto

Most of the great beer bars in the world seem to exude patina. The décor- the wood, the leather, the mirrors, even the light itself tends to suggest that it’s all been there forever and that somehow, it wishes you could be too. In this respect as in several others, Toronto's Beer Bistro is radically different. It is a place that’s designed to challenge and change the way people think about beer
The main room is high-ceilinged with huge light-gathering windows and an air of shininess. In an architectural translation of the house style, the bar is separated from the dining room by no more than a line of banquettes.
The menu nods to some traditions, but it’s a brief nod indeed. Chef Brian Morin takes off on some inventions that explore the possibilities of beer as an ingredient in food as well as an accompaniment to it. The whole business is pulled off with exceedingly good humor and not a hint of pretension.
You can get the feel of the place by ordering the corn dog. For those of you who haven’t been to a state fair or a boardwalk lately, the corn dog is a hot dog dipped in corn meal batter, fried and then put on a stick to be eaten out of hand. At the Beer Bistro, the pair of corn dogs are made from molded duck leg confit and served with a pineapple mustard and a house-made cherry beer ketchup. Put aside the fact that pineapple is the lover that mustard has been waiting for all these years and that the ketchup begs to be eaten with a spoon. Concentrate on the richness of the duck and the crispness of the batter and the heightened sensitivity that these little condiments create in you mouth. Try to remember to breathe, sip your beer.
Salmon sliders are strips of salmon, house-cured in beer served on blinis with a capered cream cheese and micro-thin slices of red onion. The blinis are just firm enough to be a foil for the moist fish and the whole combination of taste and texture is just crying out for a beer to make it complete. The house suggests underchallenging them with a belgian wheat beer, you could just as easily confront the taste head-on with a pilsner.
Mussels are pretty much old-hat in a beer bar, but baked mussels florentine open up a whole new field. Without subverting the firm, oceanic character of the mussels, baking opens up a whole realm of possibility. In this case the shellfish are topped with cubes of beer-cured bacon, three cheeses, sauteed spinach, arugala, shallots, and garlic butter. The menu urges you to try Saison Dupont and that seems just about perfect.

You expect beer bar service to be friendly and casual-after all this is beer which even at its most elegant is somehow easy, effortless and available. At the Beer Bistro, you get that and a little more. Listen to manager Kathleen McGinn: “Our staff feels like teachers. We want customers to be confident that if they have questions, their server has answers.” The wait staff goes to regular on-premise beer school and they are more than just knowledgeable, they understand that the point of all that knowing is for you to end up drinking something wonderful.
Then there’s the matter of beer ice cream. (I'm having a hard time believing that I used those words together in a sentence.) You’ll just have to try the one made from Jamaican stout and chopped candy bar.
The owners of The Beer Bistro describe the place as worldly, casual and elegant, just like you and me. They also say that everything is made from scratch, no shortcuts, no premix. They bake their own bread, cure their own bacon and salmon, smoke their own short ribs. They are the first of their kind in this large, exciting city and unlike most pioneers, they seem to have found exactly the right path. It’s time for the rest of the city-and maybe the rest of the world- to play catch-up.

For more about beer, check out The Short Course in Beer at:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1601641915