Shoppers don’t like inflation. For drinkers and smokers, there’s a silver lining. Your sin tax costs — which pay for repairs at Cleveland’s three professional sports stadiums — are in decline.
Numerically speaking, you pay the same 60 cents today for a bottle of, say, Beefeater gin as you did in 1990, when Cuyahoga County voters first levied the tax. But that 60 cents in 1990 is the equivalent of about $1.48 in today’s money.
That’s one reason why Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne is talking about an “inflationary adjustment” to the sin tax. That’s a nice way of saying quadrupling the tax that the county levies on cigarettes, beer, wine, mixed drinks and liquor…