Blue Laws Kill Jobs

The Colorado legislature killed a bill this week that would have allowed grocery stores to sell full strength beer. This is surprising, coming on the heels of a popular new law to allow liquor stores to open on Sundays. The ill informed rail against these Blue Laws on the grounds the laws enforce morality. However, as is always true, morality has little to do with politics. Blue Law supporters, mostly Republicans, are simply selling favoritism at the expense of prosperity.

If Blue Laws were ever based on a morality argument, that conceit was abandoned long ago. These laws’ real purpose has always been to prevent competition by forcing ambitious retailers from opening on Sundays, or by requiring unnecessary licensure for professions such as hair braiding. The Institute For Justice has fought the good fight since 1991 by attacking the overly cozy relationship between businesses and the pandering class.

Colorado State Rep. Ellen Roberts(R) epitomizes the protection racket. She claims that by allowing increased competition between liquor stores and grocery stores, certain small beer brewers will lose their jobs. Of course what she really fears is narrowing profit margins for her donor base. By protecting her donor base, she is actually forcing the rest of Colorado to pay more for beer and other protected goods. Whenever the government picks winners and losers, the consumer pays a price. On average, Blue Laws restrict trade, prosperity, and ultimately jobs. While it is easier to identify the Blue Laws’ beneficiaries than their victims, the net effect is harmful to the economy.

Democrats, who generally support Blue Law repeals, are on the right side of this issue, but not for noble reasons. Since Democrats are funded by labor unions, they see an upside to increasing sales at union controlled grocery chains. Hypocritically, when non-union stores threaten smaller businesses, Democrats have no problem reversing course to stifle competition, such as with Wall Mart. While they claim to protect small business jobs, they are really protecting unions against Wall Mart’s open shop efficiencies. No organization has done more to better the lives of the regular Americans, whom Democrats claim to represent, than Wall Mart. Democrats gladly hurt their constituents to protect the flow of union donations.

The average voter is unlikely to realize that the Blue Law debate is actually a reaction to the political protection racket – business to Republicans and unions to Democrats. Most people just scratch their heads and wonder how such a stupid law as the one outlawing beer sales in a grocery store is allowed to persist. Fortunately, most states allow the people to override the corruption of their lawmakers. The ballot initiative is ideally suited to correcting idiotic, unpopular laws that are solely a product of back-room corruption.

While the so called Stimulus Act will not create any jobs over the long term and will actually harm the economy, voters can do something to increase prosperity and employment: repeal protection racket laws. Given the size of the US workforce, simply removing these impediments to competition and innovation will easily eclipse the paltry dollar-a-day Obama rebates. As is always true, to create real job growth, the government simply needs to back off its choke hold on US innovation and risk taking.