Noooooooo!!!

Can you imagine paying $20 a beer at a Dodger's game? As if they aren't expensive enough. Well, if a San Jose lawmaker gets the hike he wants on the beer tax, those baseball games -- and any other beer purchase -- just got a whole lot more expensive.

Lawmaker seeks to raise beer tax
By Mike Zapler, Sacramento Bureau
Article Launched: 04/10/2008 11:34:34 PM PDT

Joe Sixpack will have to pay a lot more to get his buzz on if Assemblyman Jim Beall has his way.

The San Jose Democrat on Thursday proposed raising the beer tax by $1.80 per six-pack, or 30 cents per can or bottle. The current tax is 2 cents per can. That's an increase of about 1,400 percent.

Beall said the tax would generate $2 billion a year to fund health care services, crime prevention and programs to prevent underage drinking and addiction.

"The people who use alcohol should pay for part of the cost to society, just like we've accepted that concept with tobacco," Beall said.

He added that the beer tax hasn't been touched since 1991, and the increase then was meager.

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Dan Gordon, co-founder of Gordon Biersch Brewing Company, calculated that the tax on a barrel of beer would go from $6.40 to $89. "We would all be looking for jobs," he said.