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Better than the Boston Tea Party

We've been blessed with plenty of drinking items lately. Now there's this story about the Japanese's efforts to get around their government's onerous beer tax. According to the article: "By using less malt and more of other ingredients, the rebels got around Japan's legal definition of 'beer' ”“ a malt content of 66.7% or higher ”“ they lowered the malt content, and they created Happoshu. Happoshu sells for about 1/2 the price of regular beer with the same alcohol content." Happoshu tastes like a watery beer, but it's not bad and was good enough to capture 40% of the beer market in Japan last year. The government is striking back, however, and seeking to impose beer-tax-like taxes on Happoshu.

They say sin taxes don't work. We don't know if that's true, but it's surely true when the sin taxed isn't a sin.

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