Booze and bad behaviour

The British Government is about to impose minimum pricing for alcohol, with the result that a bottle of wine will cost at least £2.10 (€2.50) and a bottle of spirits at least £11.40 (€13.70). This idea is very wrong, and in a number of respects.

They say it is targeted at the 25% of people who drink more than the Government guidelines, a group amongst which I number myself. It’s not, though. It’s targeted at poor people; people who don’t fit into the social category of our rulers and therefore need to be controlled. Poor people sometimes want to get drunk.

This is a tax on behaviour the political class doesn’t approve of. Now, in my opinion, the State has no business regulating behaviour. We did not elect it for that.

I might mention in passing that this is not a good time to be taxing poor people.

The economist and statistician Sir Robert Giffen identified what has become known as the Giffen good. This is a good for which demand can rise as the price rises, a reversal of the traditional demand and supply equation. An example used is the price of bread for a poor family. Because of a rise in the bread price, the family has less disposable cash, and so cuts down on the more expensive things – meat, cakes etc, and makes up for the loss of food by buying more bread, still the cheapest thing on the shopping list.

For a poor family used to heavy drinking, alcohol can be a Giffen good. Following this discriminatory price rise they could well be drinking the same, cutting back on other things, or more.

Lastly, as I have said before, we shall begin to solve the problem of alcohol induced loutishness once we realise that it has nothing to do with price. Here in Italy, where wine costs a third of these levels and spirits a half, there is nothing like the problem that exists in the UK. This problem stems from the collapse of the family and the normative moral relativism encouraged by bien pensant liberals – the idea that there is no moral standard by which to judge others and so we should not judge them. Or as my grandparents would have put it, there is no sense of shame.

The problem, and I accept that there is a problem, has everything to do with social liberalism and nothing to do with the price of lager. We should either let people behave as they like - which may be preferable - or we should teach them how to behave, not punish them when they don't.