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Show Never Give Your Customer a Break The people of Utah have recently had fin demonstration of why government govern-ment operation of a business monopoly usually see scant attention paid to the consumer' interests. In Utah we have state monopoly of the liquor business. .The reason is basically basi-cally sound to Insure that the liquor traffic will be handled In the way leaat lnjurioua to the public' welfare. But it work out in practice to the detriment of the consumer. The other day the liquor commission decided It would simplify operations if price of item on the shelve were rounded out to the nearest nickel, eliminating elimi-nating the use of pennies. So did they knock off a few pennies to bring the price from, let u say, $3.98 down to $3.95? Oh, no! Never give the customer a break! That' the theme of government govern-ment business monopoly. The rounding out process was at the customer' expense ex-pense the price being rounded out upward up-ward in every case. Then Governor J. Bracken Lee announced an-nounced the other day that the commission com-mission was considering ' lowering the price of distilled liquors, now the highest in the nation. But will the Utah liquor tor patrons In general benefit from any such price cut ? No, the drop in distilled dis-tilled liquor prices, if carried out, would be offset the governor said, by an increase in-crease in the price of wine, which is generally lower in Utah than in surrounding sur-rounding state. And why would thi be done? Not because the governor particularly want to penalize wine purchasers, but because be-cause the Utah Municipal league, representing repre-senting Utah's local units- of government, govern-ment, insist on protecting it present million dollar annual take from liquor revenues! With private monopoly, there 1 always the hope of government regulation. regu-lation. But with a government monopoly the people are at the mercy of revenue-greedy revenue-greedy government The queation is not whether the price ia fair, only how can the most dollar be extracted from the publie with the leaat effort and trouble. Maybe at that it' a good and worthwhile worth-while lesson for the people of Utah on the evil of government in business. |