This morning I found an article in the Fayetetville Observer that I found very interesting and would like to share with you. It deals with the government shut down and "non-essential" government functions. I too if they are really "non-essential" why is our government wasting the hard earned tax payer's dollars on it. In this particular case alcohol research. Prohibition was repealed on the 5th of December, 1933, and there is still way too much money being spent to further limit the free choice of the people of the United States. It is illegal to serve alcohol to minors or persons with known alcohol addiction, in addition it is illegal to drive a vehicle with a blood alcohol level over.08%. That pretty much covers the subject.
Op-ed: Anti-alcohol
research should be cut
By Edward Peter Stringham
During sequestration,
thousands of nonessential government workers have been told not to show up for
work. My question is, why should government be doing anything nonessential in
the first place?
I can think of a million
nonessential things that government should stop doing, but let me focus on one.
Eighty years after the
end of Prohibition, the government hires scores to "scientists" to
study whether there should be restrictions on drinking. Despite the scientific
language of their arguments, much of their arguments are driven by a moralistic
set of assumptions against alcohol. (Let us put aside, for the moment, that
Jesus' first miracle was turning water into wine.)
Take, for example, the
"Cost of Alcohol" study recently developed by the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention. Such studies routinely make fanciful claims about how alcohol
is bad and costs the economy an astronomical $220 billion. Their estimates
include not just the cost of problem drinkers but how drinking decreases
productivity. (Let us put aside, for the moment, that my research of 10,000
Americans found that drinkers earn 10 to 14 percent more money than otherwise
similar nondrinkers.) Their studies are usually accompanied by proposals to
tax, regulate and restrict alcohol.
As an economist, the
methodological flaws in the CDC estimates have often surprised me, and I have
long wondered why government agencies could fund such bad research.
But, then I came across a
statement published by Thomas Babor, a well-known practitioner within the
public-health industry. In Babor's own words, "In a democracy, politicians
and policymakers often need to be shamed into doing the right thing, and costs
to society have the ability to shame, blame and even defame."
Every once in a while,
true motivation is revealed. Concerns for accuracy and proper methodology are
secondary. The cost of alcohol estimates are not designed to be accurate - they
are designed to "shame, blame and defame."
Babor and other advocates
are deciding for us what the "right thing" is, and science to them is
not a factor. Far from being analytically valid, societal cost of alcohol
estimates are really just lobbying numbers. One would think the CDC would have
better things to do with scarce resources. Every dollar spent on "cost of
anything" studies by the CDC is a dollar taken from taxpayers or a dollar
that adds to the trillions of dollars of government debt.
You can read more at http://www.fayobserver.com/articles/2013/07/21/1270479 .
I think if some thought was given to this kind of waste by our government officials a lot of the problems that we are facing right now would be reduced. Government of the people and by the people is a great thing, but "government manipulating the people" is a "train wreck".
