Tax Death, Not Beer!
"24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence?" --Stephen Wright

Although difficult as it is for me to digest, I finally agree with something that notoriously imperious windbag George Will has to say. Although I can't imagine his motivations were borne out of an interest in saving a few hundred dollars a year on his beer tab, Will notes that "Taxing beer at all is a seriously bad idea, like taxing the elemental necessities of life, such as bread or salt. Or beer pretzels, which are just bread and salt."

According to Roll Back The Beer Tax, which cites a January 2001 study by Standard & Poor's DRI, 44% of every Beer sold in the United States is consumed by taxes.

This means, that according to the latest figures adjusted for inflation, Desultory Turgescence alone funded approximately 8% of the Federal Tax Revenues.

The tax revenue generated from the beer consumed by Desultory Turgescence's crack team of analysts and researchers could fund approximately six small-scale invasions of third world countries by now.

"A tax is considered regressive if it falls more heavily on lower- and middle-income families than on the wealthy. And this is certainly true with beer taxes. For example, a recent study by Citizens for Tax Justice found that people whose family incomes are in the bottom 20% pay a tax burden from beer excise taxes 5 times greater than people with family incomes in the top 20%. The higher the beer tax, the more regressive it is -- and the harder it hits working men and women."

George Will notes that "Most beer is consumed in households with annual incomes less than $45,000.".

Of course they do! They're trying to drink themselves to death to save money on taxes!

Consider that death is only taxed 37%. There are 30 million regular beer drinkers in the United States. While death only happens once in a lifetime, imagine how many times those 30 million regular beer drinkers are having a beer. It seems natural that instead of making beer drinkers pay for every beer they consume, those who die should have to pay a significantly higher tax rate since they are only going to die once. Why should the dead get off so easy?

Consider those facts in light of Congress giving its final approval today to $330 billion in new tax cuts for families, investors and businesses and one must ask the eternal philosophical question: What About The Beer Drinkers?!