Today I found the national beer tax map (via TaxingTennessee), and promptly got mad.  Again.

See, the states to our south and east all have higher beer taxes —  some substantially higher — and yet, their end price to consumers is lower.  How could that be?

Simple. Some, maybe all of these states just happen to sell wine, or sometimes both wine and spirits, in grocery stores.  They don’t have the same kind of convoluted cartel system that we do, and the middleman is the difference.

Over the summer, I stopped in Georgia to buy beer (hubby’s favorite, Red Dog, is no longer available in Tennessee), and noted the prices of several that I like.  They were all lower than at home.  In Florida, I happened to walk past the beer section in a grocery store, and the same thing was true there.

So here’s the deal, folks: I’ll be happy to accept — even advocate for — a tripling of the beer tax if we can just change our outdated distribution system.  Let’s allow wine sales in grocery stores, and allow the purchase of wine and beer for home delivery.   Get rid of the protectionist distributor system, and let the free market prevail.

Bet that additional 28 cents per gallon looks pretty good right about now, amid a budget crisis… and that doesn’t even count the additional sales tax revenue that would come as a result of increased wine sales.

I don’t know if it’s possible to drink our way out of a recession, but it’s worth a try.