Some things just need to be said...

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Campbell ready to sell Liquor stores?

Here we go again. There is a crisis in BC and the Government is in deep doo doo. What an opportunity for a right wing government to sell off government assets and guess who is there to help them. The Vancouver Sun. Hey I'm not surprised. These folks are just not playing straight shooter on this issue.

BC has one of the most well run liquor distribution systems in the world. The profits go to the government to assist in paying for health-care, educations, building new roads, fixing old ones, replacing schools with newer ones etc.

Its a darn good bargain for the people of BC. Alberta went the other way a decade or more ago. They decided to sell off government liquor stores. It was good at first for price watching public as prices for everything fell. That lasted all of 15 minutes. Today Alberta is littered with little corner liquor shops, selling some things as a loss leader, but largely charging the same prices as BC or Saskatchewan.

The Alberta experiment has failed. It has only hurt the people that work in the liquor stores. These people use to make a decent wage, have a pension and security. Today they make minimum wage, no pension and no security. The profit in privatizing liquor stores went to people that could buy the license. The savings that were heralded from the roof tops for consumers never happened.

Today the profit from liquor sales goes to the owner of the store. Like always, the little guy loses. The little guy pays the price. Now look at what beer costs you.

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