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Tax avoidance is the catch-all phrase economists use to denote activities you would not otherwise engage in, other than in an attempt to avoid paying some sort of tax, or to lower your overall tax liability. Maybe you don’t work as much as you could to avoid being bumped up into that next income tax bracket, or put in that questionably necessary home office.

Well to the surprise of no one, tax-happy France has even placed excises on it’s signature product. The city of Paris has a tax on wine served in restaurants… but it’s levied by the piece of stemware or glassware used.

National Geographic’s Intelligent Travel blog has the story about a trip to the restaurant in question. I’ll let you read the whole thing for a better idea of how they avoid this tax, but here’s a hint:

Having served my time behind the bar for about 6 years, I’m becoming more and more dismayed about the current state of cocktails as I find them practiced.

Bartending is a craft. It’s an art and it’s a science but first and foremost, it’s about service. Thus for the betterment of drinkers everywhere, some advice:

• First, be fast and accurate. Except in very rare occasions people are not at the bar to see you or to sample your latest squid ink and pomegranate juice specialty drink. They’re there to hangout with their friends, listen to music and locate prospective sexual partners. You taking too long with your vanity projects only impedes these goals. If it takes you more than 90 seconds to make a bloody mary, simplify your recipe. Move the drinks, move the customers and move the money.
• Making great drinks with 15 ingredients and 10 minutes of your time does not a bartender make. The question is: when its 1 am and you’re down to half bottles of gin and tequila, lemonade, one lime, a two liter of Sprite and some frozen orange juice concentrate, can you keep the party going?*
• Give the people what they want. Don’t bemoan someone for ordering a Bud Light instead of your favorite microbrew from Lithuania. Give them their damn beer and shut up.
• A martini is vodka or gin with vermouth and an olive. NOTHING else is a martini. Stop naming them ____-tinis. It’s a cocktail in a triangular glass. Accept this. Even a change as small as replacing the olive with an onion keeps it from being a martini. (That’s a gibson.)
• Know your trade and know your tools. Study up. Read Dale DeGroff’s books and get some DVD’s. You practice an ancient and honorable profession, so take the time to do it right. Even if you work in a dingy corner bar you can still provide Rainbow Room class service. Keep things clean and be able to get to all your tools quickly.

Thank you.

* Yes you can. Mix up the orange juice concentrate with the Sprite. Add the tequila in about a 5:1 ratio and use the lemonade to add some tartness to taste. Serve with ice and garnish with slices from the lime. Now sit back and wait for the inevitable sexual advances.

Following up on what Aaron said, it’s possible that Mr. Meyer doesn’t understand the concept of value added. In his Herald-Leader response to Aaron, Mr. Meyer writes:

Wine, which typically contains between 11 percent and 14 percent alcohol by content, is an alcoholic beverage, not a value-added agricultural product. Grape juice is a value-added agricultural product.

Wikipedia has a fair defintion of value added:

In modern neoclassical economics, especially in macroeconomics, [value added] refers to the contribution of the factors of production, i.e., land, labor, and capital goods, to raising the value of a product and corresponds to the incomes received by the owners of these factors.

In Mr. Meyer’s view, the labor and capital employed to turn grapes into grape juice delivers value to the final product. But somehow - transubstantiation, perhaps - the labor and capital used by vintners to turn wine grapes into wine simply doesn’t deliver any value … no matter how much more profitable wine might be over a big pile of wine grapes.

In the very next paragraph, Mr. Meyer says this:

Beverage alcohol products — distilled spirits, beer and wine — are the only products sold in the marketplace that are the subject of two amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Because of the potential harmful effects of abuse of these products, the government stringently regulates their sale and consumption.

It’s probably worth noting that the two amendments to which Mr. Meyer refers are the 18th and 21st. Technically speaking, the 18th Amendment is no longer a part of the U.S. Constitution. The 21st Amendment repealed it. Given that the 21st Amendment is little more than an open admission that the 18th Amendment was a terrible mistake, what point is Mr. Meyer trying to make?

The headline of his article is, “Regulation of wine sales protects public.” It doesn’t help his case to say that the one time an amendment to the U.S. Constitution was repealed was to abolish a particularly stringent regulation on alcohol.

Catallaxy.net’s own Aaron Morris was published Monday at the Lexington Herald-Leader on the subject of wine. His op-ed follows: Read the rest of this entry »

Jacob Sullum (of the often excellent Reason Magazine) makes note of a prosecutor in Arizona who places DUI offenders’ names, mug shots and BAC levels online. Sullum concludes that the prosecutor is “imposing extrajudicial punishment, based on his unilateral conclusion that the penalties prescribed by law for DUI offenses provide an inadequate deterrent.”

Publicizing records that are, by nature, public is normally fine by me. But the prosecutor seems to have created, in a sense, a DUI offender registry. Appearance on sex offender registries are determined by law, not the whim of prosecutors. Also, Mothers Against Drunk Driving won’t endorse the idea:

“Some parts of the Web site are good because they are informational and trying to provide the victim’s perspective,” said Misty Moyse, the spokeswoman for the group. However, she said, “M.A.D.D. would not want to be involved in calling out offenders. We are interested in research- and science-based activities proven to stop drunk driving.”

 (crossposted at Overlawyered.com)

Prohibition, one of the darkest chapters of American government, officially came to a close 74 years ago this month. John D. Rockefeller, once a supporter of a national ban on alcohol, concluded that Prohibition had reduced respect for the law and driven crime “to a level never seen before.”

Sadly, Kentucky’s consumers and wineries are still paying a heavy price for policies that came after Prohibition’s repeal.

When Prohibition ended, it was replaced by a system placing alcohol distributors as legally ordained middlemen between alcohol producers and consumers. The policy was meant to get the mafia out of the alcohol business. Today, Kentucky distributors can use their legal status to arbitrarily increase the price of spirits, wine and beer at the expense of producers, retailers and consumers.

Kentucky is among a shrinking number of states (sixteen, at last count) that prohibit direct wine shipments to consumers. Wise to the competitive threat posed by UPS delivering cases of riesling to consumers directly, distributors have sought to keep this government-sanctioned monopoly in place with a variety of tactics.

Arguments favoring a law to protect distributors from the rigor of the marketplace rarely amount to anything more than, “We must protect the children!” If we leave aside the prevalence of Kentucky drive-thru liquor stores and the cheap availability of beer in every grocery and convenience store in every wet county in the state, it becomes difficult to imagine many teenagers wanting to risk a federal mail fraud charge as they seek home delivery of a case of fine California pinot noir. Never mind the extra cost for shipping and handling, and the wait of up to a week for that first drink.

As weak as the case is, that’s essentially the public defense for laws protecting distributors. The reality of how these distributors harm Kentucky is even less defensible.

Following a 2005 Supreme Court decision requiring states to give in-state and out-of-state wineries identical treatment, the Kentucky General Assembly made a half-hearted attempt to adjust its laws accordingly. It passed a law allowing visitors to any domestic winery to have wine shipments essentially follow them back home. Unfortunately, the only way out-of-state consumers could ship Kentucky wine back home was to first visit a Kentucky winery in person and jump through a few other hoops. While it certainly helped distributors keep a stranglehold on supply, it’s not the kind of policy meant to spur the development of a strong wine industry.

There’s plenty of reason to believe that a change of policy might strengthen Kentucky’s ability to compete with some neighboring wine producing states.

Just fifteen years ago there were zero wineries in Kentucky. Missouri and Illinois - two states that allow direct shipment of wine - had 10 and 7 wineries respectively. By 2006, Kentucky had 31 wineries, but Missouri and Illinois vintners had larger ambitions. The states had 56 and 63 wineries, respectively. Virginia, which allows direct wine shipments, went from 6 wineries to more than 100 over the same time period.

The Kentucky Department of Agriculture features a “Kentucky Proud” campaign spotlighting local agricultural products. Agriculture commissioner Richie Farmer wrote in a letter to Kentucky Proud businesses that: “Consumers will be strongly motivated to seek out products bearing the Kentucky Proud promise of home state excellence.”

If “Kentucky Proud” is a moniker worth claiming, why do Kentucky’s politicians insist on keeping Kentucky’s quality wines a secret with these burdensome anti-competitive policies? Wineries in neighboring states are growing their businesses, advertising and selling their homegrown wines across the country. Kentucky wineries are simply being shut out, utterly prevented from competing globally.

Had our lawmakers in the bluegrass decided to favor the wine-buying public instead of wholesalers and liquor distributors, consumers all over the world could today order the small batch wines made in Kentucky over the phone or the internet. Elk Creek and dozens of other Kentucky wineries could ship directly to Paducah, Louisville, New York or Los Angeles. They could even ship wines right down the street, all without using an expensive and often useless middleman, an activity prohibited right now.

Wine is a value-added agricultural product, one that Kentucky is uniquely suited to produce with its rolling hills, quality soil and temperate climate. Distributors don’t care about having a thriving wine business. They just want their government-guaranteed piece of the pie, even if the pie is smaller than a free wine market would dictate.

Whether the lesson is taught with great wine, street drugs, sex toys or oral contraceptives the outcome is the same. Prohibitionist’s tactics simply do not work and they create many many more problems than they solve.

Today is the 74th anniversary of the 21st amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It’s the anniversary of the repeal of America’s great failed experiment with alcohol prohibition.

Celebrate as you see fit.

The science is settled. It’s more persuasive than global warming. It turns out that our parents and grandparents were right: a nightcap or a cocktail after arriving home from work is good for you.

“The healthiest people do include moderate drinking in their lifestyle,” says Eric Rimm, Sc.D., associate professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. You can reap alcohol’s health benefits within weeks, and the gains accumulate over time. (Stick to one drink a day, and fewer than seven a week.)

It turns out that moderate alcohol consumption raises HDL (good cholesterol) and makes blood platelets less sticky, lessening chances of blood clots and strokes. It also helps your pancreas regulate insulin levels and may dampen inflammation and suppress the immune response that can lead to painful rheumatoid arthritis.