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"Session":b7o19ydj wrote: In fact, what they decided to do was increase the income levy which makes the beer in their local store more expensive proportionate to their newly depleted income!![/quote:b7o19ydj]

Yes but the northern beer is also proportionatly dearer. By increasing the levy they essentially incrased tax cross border (both sides).

But id alcohol was cheaper we would become a nation of binge drinkers! Oh,wait...

[quote:15y6xiwi]
In fact, what they decided to do was increase the income levy which makes the beer in their local store more expensive proportionate to their newly depleted income!!


Yes but the northern beer is also proportionatly dearer. By increasing the levy they essentially incrased tax cross border (both sides).[/quote:15y6xiwi]

I absolutely agree. So the situation we find ourselves in therefore, is that we have less money to spend on goods and services in both the north and the south, but the actual prices of goods in the two jurisdictions have not changed.

Economies of scale would say go north, and buy big!

More evidence about when you try make things more difficult for addicts by making them more difficult for normal people. Turns out you only make them more difficult for normal people here[/url:20cnvm10] (pdf)
[quote:20cnvm10]In mid-1995, a government effort to reduce the supply of methamphetamine precursors successfully disrupted the methamphetamine market and interrupted a trajectory of increasing usage. The price of methamphetamine tripled and purity declined from 90 percent to 20 percent. Simultaneously, amphetamine related hospital and treatment admissions dropped 50 percent and 35 percent, respectively. Methamphetamine use among arrestees declined 55 percent. Although felony methamphetamine arrests fell 50 percent, there is no evidence of substantial reductions in property or violent crime. The impact was largely temporary. The price returned to its original level within four months; purity, hospital admissions, treatment admissions, and arrests approached preintervention levels within eighteen months.[/quote:20cnvm10]

Obviously this is a very different drug but I would expect serious addicts of both to act in a similar way.

New one from the Rand Corporation:
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="ec.europa.eu/health/ph_determinants/life.../alcohol_rand_en.pdf">ec.europa.eu/health/ph_determina ... and_en.pdf

Alcohol has become more affordable, is taxed less in real terms than it used to be, and kills lots of people. They leave you to draw your own conclusion that raising alcohol taxes will reduce consumption and lessen the social damage caused.

However, there's a [i:b8i0xhgh]massive[/i:b8i0xhgh] get-out clause at the end

[quote:b8i0xhgh]‘unplanned’ (i.e. non-policy) social and economic changes may account for some of the upward trend in alcohol consumption in the Scandinavian countries, which have traditionally been considered the ‘gold standard’ in alcohol policy (with high taxation, production and retail monopolies, and other controls). Equally, as discussed elsewhere in this report, unplanned social and economic changes may also contribute to understanding the downward trend in alcohol consumption in southern European countries such as Spain and Italy, which have traditionally have much less strict alcohol control policies than their northern European counterparts.[/quote:b8i0xhgh]Translation: stuff we can't explain just happens...

[quote:b8i0xhgh]Analysis combining examinations of these two broad variables (policy and unplanned socio-economic developments) may help better explain alcohol consumption and alcohol-related harms than merely examining one or the other. It is important to note, however, that this kind of research is very complex.[/quote:b8i0xhgh].. but give us another truckload of cash and we'll take a look at it for you.

[quote:2558wcpc]Alcohol has become more affordable, is taxed less in real terms than it used to be[/quote:2558wcpc]
Has it? From here[/url:2558wcpc]

Year Ratio wage to pint cost

1969 100
1973 159
2007 149

could off licence sales be making alcohol cheaper because pub costs have not changed much since 1973.