Quote of the Week (Czech edition)

A few weeks back, I wrote a post about how I was still proud to be an American, because the beer is cheap and plentiful. That is still a glorious fact. Nevertheless, I am at least considering the alternative of moving to Prague, where the median income may be lower, but the beer prices are too. Diving right in...

This week's QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"At a typical local pub, a pint—500 milliliters, actually, in this metric-measuring country—costs about $1. A similar portion of water, juice or soda generally costs twice as much. Offering free tap water as at U.S. eateries is extremely rare. At U Zelenku, a neighborhood institution for more than a century, for instance, a pint of the cheapest beer goes for 99 cents. The same size of soda water is $1.30. At the fancier Kolkovna restaurant in touristy Old Town, a pint is $2.50, while mineral water is $2.29, for a bottle less than half the size."
                                      - Sean Carney; Wall Street Journal

This dynamic isn't exactly new to me, as I experienced a similar economic curiosity in my trip to Italy a couple of years ago—the house wine carafes (vino della casa) sold for prices around €3.50 (about $5) for a half-liter. That's not quite cheaper than water, but it was certainly in the same ballpark as the soft drinks at many restaurants. Wine for lunch, it is, then...

Of course, there's always a risk to looking only at the price of one product and trying to determine anything meaningful about the overall state of the economy. Beer prices alone are meaningless, for example, without also knowing what typical food prices might be—it could be that in Prague, general business practice is to slash the prices of booze, and to attempt to make the money on the food instead (as I've previously argued, the opposite seems to be the case in many U.S. restaurants). Or there may be dozens of other factors at play, all of which help drive down the cost of beer in restaurants.

Either way, who wants to go on a Czech pub crawl with me? First pilsner is on me.

[Wall Street Journal]
(h/t Tyler Cowen)

An update on prohibition

A couple of days after Christmas, I published the one and only post that I intend to write about the tragedy in Newtown (and the surge in support for gun-control laws in its wake). You may have missed it if you were still out celebrating the holidays, so I'll summarize some of my points here.

In the post, I shared some of my skepticism with respect to the efficacy of bans on (or prohibition of) behaviors that many people find dangerous or distasteful. I wrote,

The last thing we need is to institute a counterproductive law that ironically makes our problem worse, not better. History has shown that when people have an intense desire to possess or to do something, they typically will find a way. People and corporations are incredibly resourceful when they need to be, which of course is why we now have corn in our Coca-Cola.

That's a viewpoint that I'd shared here on previous occasions, most notably in the wake of the tragedy at the Harvard-Yale game in New Haven in 2011. In that case, I wrote about the trend toward banning kegs at tailgates, and the at-best-uneven success that they'd had. As I wrote then,

Harvard first banned kegs at its tailgates in 2000, while I was a student there. The primary argument that I remember at the time—when keg bans were very much in vogue at Boston-area colleges—was that kegs were a "symbol of binge drinking", and that eliminating them would temper binge drinking. I called bullshit then, and I'm calling bullshit now. If you want a real "symbol of binge drinking", I'll show you a 9-dollar handle of bottom-shelf vodka. Popov was always a favorite; Aristocrat was a winner, too. 

The irony of kegs—an irony lost on most administrators—is that while they may indeed have looked like a symbol of binge drinking, they were in fact the administration's best friend. Beer, with its high water content and low alcohol content, is in fact the alcoholic beverage least likely to directly result in alcohol poisoning. The administration should have been doing all they could to encourage the drinking of beer, and to discourage the drinking of cheap wine and rot-gut liquor. 

Unsurprisingly to those who knew better, the keg ban was a disaster. In the first year of the keg ban (2002), alcohol poisoning cases skyrocketed, leading to calls from student newspapers to reverse the ban entirely for the next home Game. Some accommodations were indeed made, but not enough to turn back the clock entirely. From what I have learned and witnessed at recent Games in Cambridge, less drinking is happening on-site, and now much more drinking is happening off-site, away from the watchful eyes of Harvard and Boston Police.

I bring up the Harvard/Yale case because just this weekend, a similar mistake was made up in Green Bay during the Packers' Wild Card Playoff game against the Vikings. Concerned about the potential for binge drinking with an 8pm (7pm Central) kickoff time, the team decided to cut off all alcohol sales after halftime, hoping to control fan behavior.

Somewhat predictably, the plan backfired a bit, as resourceful Packer fans did what resourceful Packer fans do—they got loaded before they even entered the stadium, and many of them double-fisted drinks once they got there. A total of 21 fans ended up getting arrested on the premises, and I'd guess that a few more got arrested for drinking and driving on their way home.

While it's hard to know exactly how things would have gone without the attempted alcohol ban, the principle of the matter is still clear—if you ban something for which people have an intense desire, they will find a way to get around the ban, legally or not. In the case of gun control, gun sales have soared to record levels around the country in anticipation of new legislation. Even if the government does pass new laws, will it really be able to put that cat back in the bag and confiscate the weapons that were purchased ahead of time? Is there any reason to believe that a ban on any type of gun would be any more successful or productive than the long-standing ban on marijuana?

I continue to raise this issue because I refuse to believe that simply banning guns or certain types of guns will eradicate the mass murders that we've seen at schools and elsewhere in recent years. To actually tackle serious and complex issues, we need to attack the roots of the problem, not merely to take away the tools or "symbols" of those issues. We can get rid of all the guns we want, but there will still be people in this country (and the world) who are disillusioned, angry, or mentally unstable, and who want to do great harm to other people.

Until we try to figure out why these people exist—and what we can do as a society to temper their anger or mental illness—our gun control laws will be a sideshow at best, just like the alcohol bans at Harvard, Yale, and Lambeau Field. If you want to get rid of a behavior, you don't do it by getting rid of the tools. You do it by getting rid of the underlying mentality, and that's a much harder (and much more essential) task. And in the greatest country in the world, I'm sure we won't shy away from those difficult tasks, right?

Where we spend our booze money (and why)

There's an interesting set of charts over at NPR's Planet Money that shows the changes in Americans' spending habits on alcohol over the last 30 years. We don't generally spend more money on booze now than we did then (it accounts for roughly 1% of income, same now as in 1982), but we've certainly changed where we're spending it.

Here are the two primary charts:

As the author (Lam Thuy Vo) points out, it's clear that we've spent a much bigger portion of our booze money at bars and restaurants, but it's not because we've been going out more often--it's just that the prices of alcohol-at-home and alcohol-at-the-bar have gone in wildly different directions.

The author suggests a productivity argument to explain the disparity ("Over time, you expect productivity gains and falling prices in manufactured goods. But a bartender today can't make drinks any faster than a bartender 30 years ago. In other words, there haven't been major productivity gains at bars. When a sector lags in productivity growth, it tends to have increasing prices."), but I'm not buying that dynamic as a sufficient explanation.

I think that if it was a brutal lack of bartender productivity that was to blame here (to the tune of a 79% overall increase in cost of providing the service, despite a plunge in the primary input cost), then bars and restaurants would have figured out a way by now to bypass the bartender entirely--pre-mixed drinks, auto-pouring wine dispensers, self-serve beer taps, something, anything to get that pesky bartender out of the way and bring liquor prices back down. So instead, it seems like booze prices at restaurants are headed higher as a matter of business choice, not necessity.

What I think is most likely is simply that there has been a fundamental change in the restaurant/bar business model. Instead of enticing customers with super-cheap drink specials--selling the booze at a loss in hopes of making up the difference on profitable sales of food--restaurants have mostly gone in the other direction, selling their food at cost or at a loss in hopes that their customers will buy super-marked-up drinks to wash it all down. That business model would frankly make a lot of sense, and I know from anecdotal evidence that it can also be incredibly lucrative.

I spent some time over at the Bureau of Labor Statistics website trying to track down some more granular data to support my theory, but my eyes glazed over in a hurry and I quickly gave up the chase. Nevertheless, I think that given the data presented, it's highly illogical to presume that booze prices at restaurants are skyrocketing simply because of lagging bartender productivity. More likely, those prices are increasing (or, at least increasing more rapidly than they otherwise would be) in tandem with decreasing prices elsewhere, probably on another part of the menu.

There are also other potential factors that might drive a business choice in this direction--for example, it's possible that restaurants are deliberately setting their prices high so as to discourage binge drinking and the negative consequences that can result from that behavior (fights at the bar that create property damage, DUIs that result in lawsuits, etc). Whatever the explanation, I think it's fairly clear that the upward pressure on in-restaurant alcohol prices has been a conscious choice on the part of businesses, rather than an unfortunate accident.

Of course, if my theory is correct, then the best move for us as consumers would be to order take-out food from restaurants, then eat that deliciously cheap food at home with booze that we bought for ourselves at the store. That's a move that I've already pulled quite frequently myself, and might just do tonight as a matter of principle.

[NPR]

Yale update

My friends down in New Haven tried to sneak this one past me by reporting it on a Friday afternoon (standard P.R. practice), but I caught it eventually. In keeping with my tradition of trying to update past topics on the blog, I'll do so here.

You may remember my post in the immediate aftermath of the tragic fatal accident at this year's Harvard-Yale tailgate, in which I shared my opinion that the Yale administration would most likely ban kegs and U-Hauls as a means of "doing something", even though such a policy would be unlikely to help the overall situation, as it has not at Harvard. I wrote then:

I think that the memory of the deceased woman deserves better than this kind of kneejerk reaction, just as I think that the memory of the 9/11 victims deserves better than the disaster that is the TSA. I do think that we need to examine just why it is that college students seem so intent on drinking to excess, and blaming the venue (Lot D) or the method (U-Hauls full of kegs) doesn't do anything to address the issue at the heart of the matter. 

A woman is dead, and it is a tragedy. But we will only compound that tragedy if we use her memory as an excuse to Do Something Stupid. We may all look at this case and assume that "U-Haul full of kegs" was the problem, and that we need to eliminate U-Hauls full of kegs. But would the tragedy here--or the inherent risks  involved, or the response to the tragedy--have been any different if these women had been hit by a Chevy Suburban full of bottom shelf vodka? What if it had been a Ford Taurus full of hot dog buns? The media treatment would certainly be different, even though it's easy to argue that the tragedy at its core is no different. 

I was hopeful that Yale would take this opportunity to initiate a comprehensive review of campus life and tailgating in particular, but of course, no such luck.

Yale University has tightened its policy on tailgating after a Massachusetts woman was killed and two others injured when a U-Haul truck drove through a tailgating area at the Harvard-Yale football game in November. 

Yale will no longer permit kegs at university athletic events or functions, according to the revised policies released Thursday. The school said the policy is consistent with practices at many other universities, including Princeton and Harvard. 

Yale also said oversized vehicles, such as box trucks or large commercial vehicles, will not be allowed in university lots at athletic events unless driven by a preapproved authorized vendor. Student tailgating will end at kickoff, and all students and guests will be required to leave the student tailgating area.

Ultimately, this is a predictable, safe, and completely disappointing response from Yale. The result will undoubtedly be quite similar to the result at Harvard--students will drink just as much, but they will do it in private residences far away from the security staff and police presence that exists at the tailgating areas. If they do come to the tailgating area, they'll come armed with flasks full of cheap liquor, instead of kegs.

Is that safer? No, of course not. The risks to student safety will remain (and perhaps even be amplified), they will just be shifted elsewhere, farther from the public eye. I'm not surprised by Yale's response in the least, but I am disappointed. They had a chance to make bold moves, and so far it seems that they've squandered that opportunity.

[WTNH]

About what happened on Saturday

I didn't bother to hide my excitement here in the leadup to last weekend's Harvard-Yale game in New Haven. Harvard's bid for a perfect Ivy League season--in combination with the Patrick Witt saga--made for one of the more intriguing storylines in recent years, and I was disappointed that I couldn't be there like I am for most Games.

But as my friends were preparing for their tailgates outside Yale Bowl, piling into Lot D as they do in every odd-numbered year, things took an unexpected and tragic turn, one that would turn Harvard's blowout victory into a mere footnote.

A driver of a U-Haul truck carrying beer kegs through a tailgating area before the Yale-Harvard game Saturday suddenly accelerated, fatally striking a 30-year-old Massachusetts woman and injuring two other women, police said.

It's not clear why the driver sped up, New Haven Police spokesman David Hartman said. The truck then crashed into other U-Haul vans in the lot, an open playing field used for pre-game tailgating parties before Yale home games in New Haven. 

Needless to say, when this news first broke on ESPN's College GameDay, my heart leapt up into my throat. The accident took place at the entrance to the aforementioned Lot D, and things struck just a little bit close to home. I tailgate in that lot regularly, and I've even driven a U-Haul truck into it on multiple occasions in the past. When The Game is in New Haven, Lot D becomes a home away from home for me.

Not surprisingly, no word about the identity of the deceased woman was immediately forthcoming, and I was therefore left to worry and hope that none of my close friends were involved. Given how many people I know who fit the "30-year-old Massachusetts woman" description--and who would have been tailgating in that lot--it was a pretty unsettling afternoon, to say the least.

I was relieved to learn that I knew none of the victims (I use that word loosely, as I don't intend to indicate or assume that a crime was committed), and I then shifted my thinking to wondering what the aftermath of the incident might look like. And that, ultimately, is the focus of this post.

It seems inevitable that there will be some sort of policy response from the Yale athletic department, in the form of tailgating restrictions at future Games. There is always pressure on administration officials to "Do Something" in the aftermath of a great tragedy, even if that "Something" would have done little or nothing to prevent the original incident.

The battle lines were very quickly drawn in this story, even before any meaningful details of the matter had been determined. Nearly every article (including the NY Times story cited above) took great pains to mention that the U-Haul truck was "full of kegs", strongly implying that it was a relevant detail in the accident.

Despite the fact that the driver of the truck passed a field sobriety test, and that there are some indications that an equipment malfunction may be to blame, public opinion had already been shaped to the point that the victim's mother--still grieving and trying to sort out the facts--knew only that her daughter had been "hit by a U-Haul full of alcohol". Facts be damned, the Cliff Notes for this tragedy had already been written.

As we try to sort through this incident, one element that won't change is that "U-Haul full of kegs" will have been determined to be the cause of death, and this will be assumed to be relevant. Harvard has already banned both kegs and U-Hauls at its tailgates, and Yale seems almost certain to follow its lead. The lingering question is, will it matter?

Harvard first banned kegs at its tailgates in 2000, while I was a student there. The primary argument that I remember at the time--when keg bans were very much in vogue at Boston-area colleges--was that kegs were a "symbol of binge drinking", and that eliminating them would temper binge drinking. I called bullshit then, and I'm calling bullshit now. If you want a real "symbol of binge drinking", I'll show you a 9-dollar handle of bottom-shelf vodka. Popov was always a favorite; Aristocrat was a winner, too.

The irony of kegs--an irony lost on most administrators--is that while they may indeed have looked like a symbol of binge drinking, they were in fact the administration's best friend. Beer, with its high water content and low alcohol content, is in fact the alcoholic beverage least likely to directly result in alcohol poisoning. The administration should have been doing all they could to encourage the drinking of beer, and to discourage the drinking of cheap wine and rot-gut liquor.

Unsurprisingly to those who knew better, the keg ban was a disaster. In the first year of the keg ban (2002), alcohol poisoning cases skyrocketed, leading to calls from student newspapers to reverse the ban entirely for the next home Game. Some accommodations were indeed made, but not enough to turn back the clock entirely. From what I have learned and witnessed at recent Games in Cambridge, less drinking is happening on-site, and now much more drinking is happening off-site, away from the watchful eyes of Harvard and Boston Police.

Is this outcome safer, or better, for anyone? Almost certainly, it is not. Ironically, the safest outcome for all involved is for these students to drink tons of beer in the immediate presence of dozens of uniformed officers--drinking bottom shelf liquor, or drinking where nobody is watching, is dramatically less safe. But the one thing such a policy does accomplish is a decrease in the likelihood of a "Harvard student dies at tailgate" headline in the newspaper, one like we saw this weekend. Note that it does not dramatically increase the likelihood of a tragic incident--it only changes who gets the blame if and when it occurs.

Ultimately, I am confident (in a pessimistic way) that Yale will end up pursuing some sort of counterproductive policy in the near future, in the name of "Doing Something". Tragically, "Doing Something" very often means "making the problem worse" or "creating a new problem". That's how we ended up with the TSA in this country, radiating and/or groping all of us as we try to board airplanes. Are the airplanes--or U.S. citizens--any safer as a result? Who cares? We "Did Something", and that's our job as administrators--results be damned.

I think that the memory of the deceased woman deserves better than this kind of kneejerk reaction, just as I think that the memory of the 9/11 victims deserves better than the disaster that is the TSA. I do think that we need to examine just why it is that college students seem so intent on drinking to excess, and blaming the venue (Lot D) or the method (U-Hauls full of kegs) doesn't do anything to address the issue at the heart of the matter.

A woman is dead, and it is a tragedy. But we will only compound that tragedy if we use her memory as an excuse to Do Something Stupid. We may all look at this case and assume that "U-Haul full of kegs" was the problem, and that we need to eliminate U-Hauls full of kegs. But would the tragedy here--or the inherent risks involved, or the response to the tragedy--have been any different if these women had been hit by a Chevy Suburban full of bottom shelf vodka? What if it had been a Ford Taurus full of hot dog buns? The media treatment would certainly be different, even though it's easy to argue that the tragedy at its core is no different.

Here's hoping that sanity prevails here, and that we can all in fact learn something and make real progress, rather than spinning our wheels for the benefit of newspaper headlines. Unfortunately, history indicates that the "Do Something" outcome is infinitely more likely. Sad.

[NY Times]

Teetotaling Americans

Hope you all had an enjoyable Presidents' Day weekend (though if you were in Libya, you probably didn't). I spent a portion of my weekend up in Washington, DC, a pretty appropriate place for the occasion.

Following in the spirit of what I'm sure many of us did this weekend, I came across this graphic at The Economist, detailing per capita alcohol consumption by nation. I was surprised to note that, at least in the "developed" world, the United States shapes up as somewhat of a teetotaler as compared to most other nations.

Unsurprisingly, Russia shapes up as among the largest abusers of alcohol, with The Economist noting that nearly 1 in 5 male deaths can be attributed to excessive boozing. But I was somewhat surprised that Moldova took home the dubious prize of the world's highest liquor consumption, with its 18.2 liters per capita edging out second-place Czechoslovakia by 2 liters.

Who knew that America's colonial roots of temperance and Puritanism had survived so well over the centuries?

[Economist]  
(h/t The Mess That Greenspan Made)