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Jamaica Plain businessman praises Republican tax cuts
By adamg on Wed, 08/08/2018 - 5:11pm
The White House has posted a transcript of comments made by businessmen invited to have dinner with the president at his New Jersey golf club the other day. Search on "Koch" to see what our own Jim Koch had to say:
When I started Sam Adams, American beer was a joke, and it pissed me off. And now, American brewers make the best beer in the world. And the tax reform was a very big deal for all of us, because 85 percent of the beer made in the United States is owned by foreign companies. ...
I mean, Americans - I’m the largest American-owned brewery at 2 percent market share. We were paying 38-percent taxes and competing against people who were paying 20. And now we have a level playing field, and we’re going to kick their ass.
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Comments
That’s great he got a tax cut
That’s great he got a tax cut. My beer isn’t any less expensive than it was 6 months ago.
Why should we be surprised,
Why should we be surprised, as we all knew that Trump's tax cuts would only go to the rich?
Pricing
The price of a product has very little to do with it's cost.
I'm curious how Koch plans on kicking ass.
Koch's little speach was solely intended to stroke Trump's ego, nothing more.
I remember when Sam Adams was cool...
Jim Koch promised to never sell light beer, and Daddy told his second wife he would never leave her !!!!
Ha, ha, ha
#liarliarpantsonfire
#shouldhavegotstakeinSox!
I remember when Doyle's was cool...
It was actually just like the old Drinking Fountain, or the Cottage, or the Hyde Park Pub, Nicky's or a dozen others on the strip from Cleary Square to Egleston Square.
When the Burkes took over, this was in the eighties, they made a decision to remove Budweiser from the taps. All the patrons said they would go out of business. They hooked up with a kid from Amory St. that was starting a brewery and they came to an agreement. It, like all alcohol sold in the Commonwealth, had to go through an authorized wholesaler, so the state could properly tax it, but that just paved the way for better distribution of the product. Jim Koch (amazingly for such a short name, there's so many ways to pronounce it) sold them his beer, they both benefited from it, and I guess the rest seems so easy.
As far as light beer, I have a couple of sleeves of these coasters, I'll call it 1992 or 1993 off the top of my head. Stuff actually tasted pretty good.
We all got a tax cut
If you are earning money above the threshold for paying income taxes you also got a tax cut
So since you have more money in your pocket after taxes -- your beer is less expensive -- in that it costs you a smaller fraction of your now larger disposable income
Yeah but his is permanent.
Yeah but his is permanent. Mine expires and I’ll be paying for his when it does.
I have a nice "multilevel marketing scheme"
You might be interested since you are so gullible.
But they have been hiring
But they have been hiring more employees, expanding their business and market share. Sam Adams doesn't market itself on price, they are a "craft" beer company.
If you want cheaper beer, drink PBR.
But they have been hiring
But they have been hiring more employees, expanding their business and market share. Sam Adams doesn't market itself on price, they are a "craft" beer company.
If you want cheaper beer, drink PBR.
Do you know where they're hiring?
I have a few former student workers, recent grads, who would love to work for Sam Adams. Where are they hiring?
Hey, FDR, I'm totally serious about my question above
I found 12 openings for the Boston area on the S.A. site, which is, to the best of my recollection, about the same as it usually is in the summer-- as you may guess, Sam, Harpoon, & the myriad small craft breweries are popular places for recent grads to apply. Maybe their openings have gone up outside of Boston, but I think it hasn't changed much here.
But if you have the inside scoop, please pass it along!
Put your money where my wallet is
He has a tiny part of the market share because craft/micro beer is still a very small part of the overall beer market in the US. Am I to take his statement to mean that a six pack or case of Sam Adams is now going to be the same or less than that of (Belgian owned) Budweiser? I won't be holding my breath.
Sam Adams
Sam Adams beer sales have on a downward spiral for a few years , not because of the competition from the conglomerates but because he's losing market share to better micro brews with clever marketing. For a guy who considers himself a marketing guru & trying to stay relevant, he did a good job giving people one more reason to jump ship from his brand.
" I won't be holding my breath."
Don't. You'll just turn blue and die.
Part of what made Jim Koch a billionaire ten or more years ago was how he proceeded at important junctures in his career. He didn't invest in large amounts of expensive equipment, he 'contract brewed' when he needed to expand. He contracted with Gennessee (sp?) in New York to brew his specific recipe on their equipment.
I have no idea about his current operation, but the beer is of great quality and consistent, which is not easy to do.
Another thing...when there were hop shortages and market disruptions a while back, he stepped up to the plate and made some of his hop reserves available to other brewers.
Budweiser's hop fields in the Pacific Northwest are well secured. They have to be.
It is illegal to import hops rhizomes into the Pacific Northwest. Hop wilt and other diseases can put you out of business.
It's effectively all still contract brewed
Boston Beer Company has never had a proper facility for the volume they do in MA. It's all in PA and OH and somewhere down south too I think. The facility in JP does small batch and test brews.
Harpoon is an ACTUAL MA brewery and employee owned. Very clear where my money goes...
Yup.
They also have a brewery (but you probably already know this) in Windsor, Vermont.
I consider their IPA a benchmark for all American IPAs. It's in many bars and bartenders tell me it's a bit 'generic'. I just shake my head.
Harpoon...owned by the workers.
What doesn't make sense to me
What doesn't make sense to me is why this is helping make the case for tax cuts. Sam Adams is an example of a company that was able to flourish without the tax break. From my perspective, Sam Adams has been kicking ass for decades. They're huge! They have been doing well enough to waste money on a campfire beer that tasted like ash. I get that now maybe they can get a little bit bigger, but I feel like the White House needs to highlight companies that were struggling, not the royalty surfing the craft beer tsunami.
Oh the Humanity!
How dare he praise those policies that make it more conducive for his business to thrive, and employ all those people. If anything, he should voluntarily pay more in taxes just like those who advocate for higher taxes do.
Howie is calling
Get Fish and your group of misenthropes together so you can get the talking points at the same time.
Someone had a bad Tuesday...
"misenthropes"
I think the word you're looking for is "coelocanth". No...'lycanthrope'. Ya, that's it.
Please peddle your trickle down economics somewhere else
If he takes the money and hires more people to expand his market share, good for him. The problem is beer demand didn’t expand with his tax break, he’ll just get a bigger slice of the pie but the pie stays roughly the same size. Someone else’s slice gets smaller. The big fish like InBev won’t care because he might as well be brewing in his garage as far as they’re concerned.
Maybe he’ll sink the money into r&d, that’s the ticket. It’s going right into his pocket.
How do you know?
So you're saying there's no chance an increase in disposable income will increase demand for an elastic product like beer?
Psst- SAM is a public company, it's not all going in his pocket. SAM is up over 40% YTD. Guess who the biggest holders of SAM are? T. Rowe, Blackrock, Vanguard, BONY, State Street. Guess what those companies do? Manage money for mutual funds, endowments, pension funds.
Look at history
This tax cut is about wealth hoarding by the rich, not extra any money for the poor to spend, and is paid for by the middle class.
Find a clue, please.
To quote Bobby Brown
"I made this money, you didn't." I'm so tired of hearing pontification (from everybody, not just you) about what amounts should be seized from which people through armed theft without hearing talk about which public expenditures should be cut.
We pay Betsy DeVos to do anything, and yet, I hear a lot of talk about how Jim Koch should be further robbed at gunpoint. It would be obscene to me if increased taxation was forced upon a middle-class family, I don't view Jim Koch any differently just because he invented a beer and made more money than me.
Hating the rich is not the path. Hating the forced economic engineering crafted by government is the path.
Yes, Will
Did you miss the part where people at the bottom and in the middle will have money taken from them so that the rich can loot the treasury?
Of course you did.
The wealthy aren't just getting a tax cut, but a loot credit on this. Sad to see you are one of the poor simps at the bottom who suckered into that bet.
Nothing quite so precious
As a condescending lecture from an anon.
What the (expletive) do you mean "will have money taken form them?" That happens already, and has for decades. You new around here?
I wasn't suckered into anything. The tax cut was done without me being asked by any elected official for my opinion. They just did it. It's not representative democracy if the representatives are inventing problems instead of responding directly to things we say are problems.
Hating the rich?
No, honey - calling them out on their bullshit looting of MY money.
Hey, you know, there is this moneymaking system I have ... interested? You put in a little money, and then get others to put in a little money and keep that! FOOL PROVED!
The rich didn't loot you
The people who won the last election did. Vote against them.
Who the fuck do you think won
Who the fuck do you think won the last election, Einstein?
Ooh, I know!
Russia!
Ah yes
Ah yes, the inevitable libertarian has weighed in. Equating taxation to "armed theft" is guaranteed to prove that you are a Very Smart Person with a realistic vision of government and governance. Thank you for offering reasonable arguments in good faith, we will give them all the attention they deserve.
I mean, it is armed theft
If I don't pay my taxes, ultimately, people with guns will attack me. The law is violent.
I'd actually be less bothered by this premise if my seized money weren't so flagrantly wasted.
Yes, dear, we know
Now run along and play. The grown-ups are talking.
They are
And they're saying "it's okay if the rich people get even richer, even if it's at our expense, and I tacitly endorse that at the ballot box."
Make up your mind
Are you a libertarian or a communist?
Says William k
On the day the treasury auctioned a record $26 billion in 10 year treasuries because our debt is skyrocketing. Jim Koch and friends just borrowed tens of thousands of dollars from your grandkids. Guess who will pay it back? Not Jim and not Don.
I'm pissed sbout this and thanks to the new laws I get a 20% tax deduction for waking up on Jan 1 as a small biz owner. Thanks William K. Or should I thank your grandkids?
Heh.
T auction will be $78 billion, but the interest rates are holding low. It's not a bad move on the government's part, actually.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-08/record-10-year-treasu...
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/treasury-to-begin-auctioning-new-2-mon...
It's a lot, but not panic level. I think if spending is actually cut, then it could work out OK.
That's a big if.
Bigger if
78 biillion total, 26 billion in 10 year treasuries, a record for that maturity. Fortunately 61% were bought by central banks, keeping interest rates liw. For now.
If spending is cut. Cut from where?
And the biggest if? rates sre still artificially low because the Fed and the govt own trillions in debt. Now the Fed is unwinding about $2 trillion, the treasury is issuing a trillion a year and the SS administration is throwing in billions more now that they are in deficit. If we do cut our trade deficits, the Chinese and Japanese stop buying treasurues. Who steps up at 3% for trillions in debt? Every 1% increase in rates is $200 billion in interest payments, or 5% of the budget. Where do you cut 5 or 10% of the budget to pay this?
As Janet Yellen said. If our debt levels don't keep you up at night, they should.
Cut from where?
As you might hear at any football or basketball game, D-E-F-E-N-S-E.
-DEA
-Department of Education
-Military occupation of any country which spends less on their military than we do on ours
-Any Southern state which was in the the Confederacy and remains a net recipient of federal funds
-Funding for Israel that isn't contingent upon them moving to America so that they can be away from people who keep bombing them once and for all
Flush them all down the toilet. This country made it to 1913 without a personal income tax.
Even if u did it all
You would save half of one year's budget increase.
You must go after SS, medicare and medicaid to make a dent. Maybe some defense which doesn't win points w the base. And the optics after giving a $500 billion cut to the swells so you can cut lifelines to the poor and middle class doesn't get you re-elected.
"If spending is cut. Cut from where?"
Smoke and mirrors. The interesting thing is that if a department has budgeted a 5% increase and they cut it to 2%, they consider that a 3% decrease. If I tried that on my 1040, I'd have problems...
Truth is Janet Yellen is right. Something that can't go on forever, won't. If they stop adding to the deficit, it will actually level off, get smaller, then be fine. An inflationary spiral is bad, a deflationary spiral is worse, just fly level and you might get through it.
Indexing government bonds to inflation is great for investors, but for taxpayers...?
So, adding universal health care at $37 trill over 10 years? Not too sure about that.
Cutting trade deficits tends to keep more money in the country, where it gets taxed in regular circulation by local and state sales taxes and when it changes hands by employment.
If the government could only play its cards right...
If they consider that a 3% decrease
They suck at math, because going from 5% to 2% is a 60% decrease.
Um
A 5% increase in something is the norm, so they cut it to 2%.
"I, Senator Goodmath, just delivered a 3% cut to (insert favorite pork here). It's tough, but we all have to sacrifice."
Yet, (pork) actually got larger.
No pain, no, um, pain.
Win, win.
that make it more conducive
You do know that the corporate taxes he discussed come on profit. Whether you pay 20% or 38% in taxes doesn't impact whether you are able to hire someone. You hire someone because you believe on the margin they will bring you more profit. And that happens in pre-tax money.
Samuel Adams Would Never Support A Tyrant
The papa John's of beer
He can't have it both ways. He's always calling himself a craft beer brewer, a small brewery who competes with all the microbrews around the country, who are all American companies. Yet here he is saying he is competing against the big foreign breweries like inbev. and that the tax cuts that just pushed us into the trillion dollar deficit mark made the difference. It's been awhile since sam Adams was better than most offerings, and since their growth recently has been bc of spiked soda and cider they seem to be a different company.
Was just talking to someone
Was just talking to someone the other day about how Sam Adams has become a neither-fish-nor-fowl-type product these days- any level of the hopheads have long since moved on from it since its not craft/ small enough and Joe and Jane Six-Pack- who never warmed up to it- are still drinking the same Bud/ Miller Light
Hops...
Right. The old IPA brews, like Harpoon IPA are classics. The hopheads are just going overboard. I can drink a well hopped beer, but some of it is just crazy.
Boston Beer co Rebel is good, but it calls itself 'West Coast' because it is.
We have hops out there now that didn't exist fifteen years ago. It's the small batch stuff that is interesting. Go to a store with a good selection of beer and you'll see 100-150 beers.
We live in a golden age.
Fun fact
Sam Adams is still a "craft beer" because the industry group backing craft beer keeps bumping up the limit of how many barrels you can produce a year and still have your product labeled "craft beer." In 2011, they bumped it from 2 million to 6 million barrels/year ( https://beerpulse.com/2011/01/brewers-association-enacts-sam-adams-provi... ), and they're poised to do it again now that Boston Beer Company is approaching that number. It's essentially an homage to Jim Koch for pioneering the craft beer movement 30 years ago.
That said, Sam Adams stopped being the smart buy at the liquor store about fifteen years ago. I'm now done with their products after Jim Koch proved he's just as much of a sociopath-chasing-profits as the next guy over at In-Bev.
Plenty of good beer out there
No need to drink his.
Yep.
Average Beer + Kissing up to a person that mocked a Vietnam POW = Go Harpoon!
Yeah, but then that Harpoon
Yeah, but then that Harpoon president guy said all that ignorant stuff in the Harvard Crimson, so there's one other brewery that doesn't get my money. I love Harpoon beer, but I haven't touched it since then, and I don't need to. Like everyone else said, I have hundreds of amazing breweries I can pick from just at the grocery store.
Tell us the rest of the "Storey"
Harpoon is employee-owned and the owners showed him the door.
He works in investment banking now.
Harpoon is worse
A couple of years ago, Charles Storey, President of Harpoon, said that Harvard's final clubs shouldn't be forced to admit women, because that would increase the likelihood of sexual misconduct and assault. [Not by the women.]
There are plenty of other good beers out there--I now make sure to avoid Harpoon.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/04/18/elite-harv...
Harpoon is Employee Owned
That kind of crap is self-correcting - CEO answers to the employees.
If only it were possible
To buy less Sam than I already don’t.
Wow unhinged much
An American company becoming more competitive and looking to expand because of a tax break. The horror.
"Ваше здоровье! "
Da!
We offer you familiar toast in your city of Boston!
And, we have new name for one of your famous places....
No longer "Cheers" we call it now Ваше здоровье!
"zda-ró-vye!" Where someone, yes, knows name...knows all name and is friends!
Is good?! LOL Da! We want place where everyone knows your name! (And, everything else about you too!" LOL yes,
Comrade...
Welcome to America...now for a taste of the old country...
Sam Adams was a Patriot.
Sam Adams was a Patriot.
Would he approve of hobnobbing with a usurper President, illegitimately installed in the White House by a hostile foreign power?
Perhaps Jim Koch should change the name of his flagship brew to Benedict Arnold Lager.
Sam Adams Beer, Kim Koch with the President and such
Actually, had Arnold been killed at Saratoga where he was a hero who perhaps saved the Revolution -- we would be celebrating his heroism and toasting him with a Sam Adams
Sam Adams in his patriotic fervor led his Stamp Act mob in 1765 to destroy the house and life-work of Boston-born Governor Thomas Hutchinson -- who had collected the most complete library of documents about the early history of the Mass Bay Colony and would eventually publish a three volume series
Moral of the story -- Politics is not only local [Tipster O'Neil] its also complicated
While I didn't support Donald Trump in the primaries I did vote for him in the General Election-- his platform was far superior to the others running including my neighbor
And he has delivered -- to the individual citizen -- more than any president since Ronaldus Magnus. With the present administration the Citizens whose industry together makes the country us the US and who pay the taxes to support the necessary parts as well as the rest of the bloated government -- Well we have an actual seat at the table -- just ask Jim Koch
What part of Trump's platform was superior to Johnson's?
Go.
I did not know that
"... the most complete library of documents about the early history..."
It is so much easier to destroy than to build.
" Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
Robert A Heinlein
I don't care about his dinner
I don't care about his dinner with the President, I just don't like Sam Adams. I'd rather have a 'Gansett, seriously.