Editor:
Was union leader Wendell Young saying that the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board had $265 million in profit, while costing taxpayers nothing? (“Views clash over privatizing liquor sales,” Reading Eagle, Jan. 26) He’s kidding, right?
Before collecting one cent from sales, the PLCB spends $2 billion or more annually for stores, liquor, warehouses, trucks, and 6,000 employees. To collect that much profit, the PLCB needs $2.265 billion dollars in sales.
To collect that much, PLCB prices often are much higher than those in other states, and might even send Pennsylvania liquor buyers into the other states.
Private wholesalers deliver liquor to PLCB warehouses that shelve it. Then PLCB trucks deliver it to PLCB stores to sell. Private store owners will deal directly with private wholesalers, eliminating the PLCB costs while lowering retail prices.
Abolish the PLCB. Sell the state stores, the warehouses and the trucks to transfer the total cost of liquor sales from taxpayers to private store owners, whose employees will pay taxes into the state treasury and no longer take money out.
There will be no transition costs and no annual costs because the state will be totally out of the liquor business. Private liquor store employees won’t have to pay union dues any longer, further reducing prices.
Ronald Shultz
Kenhorst
Source: Berkshire mont