Just how much is the PLCB screwing us with "variable pricing"?
A good question, and one that the PLCB doesn't really want to answer. There is no sunshine at PLCB HQ; their mission is to hide as
much as possible, keeping as much
information away from the citizens as they can. And why? It's not like they have any
competition to worry about, no business secrets to keep: no one else is in
their business, they've made sure of that. They do it for one reason: to keep the owners — that's you, and I, and the Legislature — ignorant of what they're really doing; of how they're desperately shuffling prices and margins around to try to look "profitable."
Would the wine kiosks have passed if the citizens, if the press, knew about them, knew that the PLCB had been advised against implementing them...by their own people? Would Joe "Da CEO" Conti been brought back after having been found to have committed ethics violations if the citizens knew, and could do something about it?*(Correction: please see below.) Maybe anti-competitive branding and placement wouldn't have taken place with citizen involvement. But that all did happen, mainly because the PLCB kept it all hidden away and secret, to the point of having records destroyed, to the point of appearing to have had secretive off-book meetings to make decisions that are supposed to be discussed in public.
Now they don't want you to know how much of a shaft you are getting on variable pricing, the one thing they wanted more than anything else from "modernization." Remember, the PLCB said that they couldn't negotiate prices for 82 years, even though there was nothing in the Almighty Liquor Code that prevented it, and then they said that they did negotiate on some things, but not most. ACT 39 changed that, and supposedly allowed the PLCB to do something they could have been doing all along...only now the game is rigged to benefit the PLCB and not the consumer. That sounds fair.
Now, a real retailer wouldn't tell you this either. But the PLCB isn't a real business; they have a police-enforced monopoly to ensure their market share! A real business doesn't tell you this stuff, but their competition keeps them honest, and you can be sure that they're passing along savings to you; if they don't the competition will.
But the State Store System has no reason to benefit the consumer by lowering prices in order to increase market share or maintain their customer base. They don't have to worry about that, and there's nothing in the Almighty Liquor Code that says they do. Remember the founding principle of the PLCB, as stated by Governor Gifford Pinchot himself: “to discourage the purchase of alcoholic beverages by making it as inconvenient and expensive as possible.”
Last year the PLCB charged an average of 45.36% above cost for every product sold. For the first eight months of this year it has risen to 45.46%, and I guarantee that will continue to climb as time goes on. If you remember, the Democrat's modernization plans said that the PLCB will make an extra $75-100 million because of this alone. That would mean they'll have to raise the charge above cost to over 60% — such a deal!
The choice comes down to this. Do we want to continue to have limited selection, limited convenience, Harrisburg bureaucrats selecting the booze for the entire state, and anti-consumer pricing? Or do we want the freedom of choice that the private market brings?
Privatize - all of it. Retail and wholesale. Why wait one variably-priced month longer?
*Correction: Conti was ruled to have violated the state's ethics code about a year after he was brought back as an 'emergency consultant' and paid about $67,000 more of your booze dollars. Our error, which we own up to...unlike Joe The Ethics Violator, who is currently on the faculty of the Fels Institute of Government, and a lobbyist with Triad Strategies. Great places for a known ethics violator.
** Since the PLCB hides all of their purchase information now, the $1.16 is just my best guess, but it is an educated guess...and it is most likely more.
