In the many efforts to close the budget gap in New York, Governor Patterson is proposing to free the sale of wine to supermarkets. It is unfortunate that this only being discussed now that the government needs money. There are no good reasons why supermarkets aren’t allowed to sell wine now. Ideally, any store that wants to sell wine should be allowed to.

Why do wine and liquor stores get a monopoly? We know that monopolies are bad. The more competition there is in the market, the better it will be for the end consumer–us.

I’ve seen little flyers at my local supermarket in support of this and I’ve heard the arguments against it. Those against the freeing of wine sales have a weak case at best.

“In addition to charging grocery stores franchise fees of varying amounts for the right to sell wine, it would nearly triple the excise tax on wine sales and eliminate financing for the New York Wine and Grape Foundation, a trade group.”

An increase in excise taxes is a bad thing but the elimination or reduction of government financing for the New York Wine and Grape Foundation is perfectly fine. Why do they need subsidies in the first place? If the foundation cannot exist without government aid then it shouldn’t exist at all. The active participants in the wine industry can maintain their own foundation.

As a consumer, I would love it if I could buy wine at my local supermarket. However, I wouldn’t expect any specialty wines at a supermarket. There will always be a market for specialty wine and liquor stores. It will likely be a smaller market and their business models may have to change but, that is how business is. There is never a guarantee that your market will stay the same forever nor a guarantee that you will stay in business forever.

The mere fact that the government grants wine stores a monopoly on the sale of wine makes consumers worse off. The availability of wine will increase and the price will decrease. This is better for the wine industry as a whole as the market will expand.

“A coalition known as the Last Store on Main Street, representing 2,742 New York wine sellers and liquor store owners, says the move would force more than 1,000 such stores out of business and lead to a loss of more than 4,000 jobs.”

Those who lose their jobs due to this can find jobs elsewhere. There is no reason why millions should suffer just because thousands will lose their jobs. The benefit to society is greater than the loss.

“I’m a parent,” he said. “For the 25 years I’ve been in business, I’ve been extremely conscious of people who try to buy liquor when they’re not legally entitled to it. So I’m concerned kids might be able to get alcohol more easily. I don’t want those kids on the road.”

The argument of an increased sale of alcohol to minors is asinine. Supermarkets already sell beer and card their patrons. The process of the sale of beer can just as easily be applied to the sale wine. This is clearly a moot point. Ideally, there would be no age restriction on the purchase of alcohol but, this is the society we live in.

“And are more people going to drink more wine just because it’s in a grocery store? I don’t think so,” Mr. Massoud said. “I think the demand is finite.”

That is just a gross misunderstanding of economics. Demand is always infinite. It is supply and price that keeps demand in check. We always want more things. If prices are lowered, demand will go up. It is an absolute certainty that more people will drink wine if it was more widely available and cheaper.

It is about time NY got rid of the wine monopoly. It will be better for all of us.

I finished reading Tom Wood Jr.’s book, Meltdown, a while ago and I loved it. Tom does a fantastic job of explaining sound economics in layman’s terms. Anyone can understand what he is saying and his explanations of what is going on in the current economic crisis and previous depressions.

Tom is entertaining and informative in this 50 minute speech. You need to watch this!

Politicians love comparing the Great Depression to what is going on today. The reality is that it will never be as bad as it was in the 1930′s. Not because we have such great government institutions in place to make sure something so devastating never occurs again–in fact, we have the opposite in place–but, technology and the free market has improved everyone’s lives so greatly that it would be very difficult to literally relive the 1930′s.

There may be comparable numbers in terms of relative stock market losses, unemployment, etc. but, we still have the technology that we didn’t have back then. No matter what happens, unless we go back to the stone age, we are going to live through this depression in a much more comfortable state.

Now that we have put things into perspective, the heads of state attending the G20 Summit in London are using the threat of a world wide Greater Depression to further undermine people’s Liberties and make the situation worse for the masses. Obama is pitching his monkey-devised economic rescue plan to the world in hopes that everyone will adopt it.

I plea to the rest of the world to ignore what Obama has to say. He is either intentionally trying to feed poison to a weakened world economy or he has no economic understanding–either one is bad for all of us.

“We cannot afford half-measures and we cannot go back to the kind of risk-taking that leads to bubbles that inevitably burst,” he (Obama) said Wednesday.

This line is mostly meaningless. Who is taking risks? What the hell are half-measures? Obama has never said anything meaningful so this is certainly not something new. He is all about vague ideas of hope and change. Obama’s economic stimulus plan is an economic disaster.

The stock markets have rallied in the past week. Some people may call this the beginning of the new bull and that we’ve hit a bottom. It could be possible but, that is highly unlikely. The more likely scenario is that this is a bear market rally.

The sad reality is that ever nation at the G20 has the same plan. They want to argue over how much regulation here and there but, the ideas are all the same. They want to pump in enormous amounts of money into the economy. It doesn’t take an economic genius to understand that you cannot solve the problem of too much spending and credit with even more spending and credit.

However, it is the economic geniuses who will tell you we need to spend more and go deeper into debt to solve the problem of being in too much debt! There is no financial wizardry that makes this a workable solution. Natural laws cannot be defied by government!

The entire G20 hocus-pocus is to make it look like world leaders are doing something to save the world economy from ruin. There is nothing they can do that they also like to solve or mitigate the problem. The real solution is to shrink the size of government all over the world. Politicians don’t like to do that. Why would they want to take power away from themselves?

The real point of the G20 Summit is about how governments around the world can make this economic crisis worse.