{"id":1966,"date":"2012-07-26T21:16:12","date_gmt":"2012-07-26T21:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/?p=1966"},"modified":"2023-07-13T23:42:14","modified_gmt":"2023-07-13T23:42:14","slug":"are-american-alcohol-prices-a-ripoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/misc\/are-american-alcohol-prices-a-ripoff\/","title":{"rendered":"Are American alcohol prices a ripoff?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-f56f613f wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/mrericsir\/7652064358\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7259\/7652064358_b5efc12c1c_m.jpg\" alt=\"Wine at Spanish supermarket\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/mrericsir\/7652070344\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7262\/7652070344_115a4dbc16_m.jpg\" alt=\"Amstel at Spanish supermarket\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ever feel like you&#8217;re overpaying for alcoholic beverages? If you&#8217;re in the US of A, you are probably right; our society seems to treat alcohol as a luxury rather than a commodity, and it&#8217;s priced accordingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I took the above two photos in Spain. If you factor in the exchange rate the bottle of wine comes out to about $2.25 and the six pack of Amstel is about $2.85. These prices seem low but neither of these were on sale or special deals; <strong>these are everyday prices in Spain<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Granted, you can pay more for imported alcohol (i.e. from outside the EU) or for fancier wine, but even the top shelf wines top out at about $30. The prices here are simply a fraction of what us Americans are used to paying. I&#8217;ve found this phenomenon to be true throughout western Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This all makes me wonder: are we getting ripped off? Sure, you can attribute some of this to the import tax &#8212; but that can&#8217;t be the entire story since domestic alcohol isn&#8217;t much cheaper. American has a sad history of puritanical anti-fun policies, a particularly embarrassing heritage when our supposed &#8220;freedom&#8221; and &#8220;abundance&#8221; aren&#8217;t reflected in the prices we pay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It makes me wonder: are we simply getting ripped off? Why is the rest of the world paying a fraction of what we pay for alcohol when we purportedly value capitalism and freedom? Who&#8217;s pocketing the difference, and how are they getting away with it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ever feel like you&#8217;re overpaying for alcoholic beverages? If you&#8217;re in the US of A, you are probably right; our society seems to treat alcohol [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","slim_seo":{"title":"Are American alcohol prices a ripoff? - MrEricSir.com","description":"Ever feel like you're overpaying for alcoholic beverages? If you're in the US of A, you are probably right; our society seems to treat alcohol as a luxury rathe"},"autoblue_enabled":true,"autoblue_custom_message":"","autoblue_shares":[],"autoblue_post_url":"","autoblue_publish_document":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[316,841,798,797,222],"class_list":["post-1966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","tag-alcohol","tag-europe","tag-liquor","tag-spain","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1966"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10175,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1966\/revisions\/10175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}