As the rum and beer companies tussle over their market shares, trying to gain a bigger piece of the pie at the expense of the other, their strategies are including lower prices for their products. The fight has spilled over into Congress and the new fiscal package debates, with each sector presenting its case to get a lesser tax burden than their rival’s. The beer companies want the new selective consumer tax to be based on the amount of alcohol in the product, while the rum companies want the tax to be based on the sale price of the product. According to young economist Pavel Isa Contreras, the idea is to gain market share within the consumer base that is looking to “buy some happiness” in times of crisis. Rum sales increased 16.4% in the first half of 2004, in part due to the substitution of beer for rum caused by the price increases. Beer producers admit to a 5% decrease in sales over the same period. Consumers have switched from beer to rum because, as Isa Contreras explains in El Caribe, “they can buy a contented feeling for less money.” This implies that, aside from income and social status, price is a vital factor in the consumption of alcoholic beverages. The tax reform legislation now in Congress prescribes the same taxation scheme on these beverages as that found in Law 3-04. Taxes on these items will rise each year until 2008, but each sector will pay for the absolute volume of alcohol contained in their products. A gallon of alcohol will be taxed equally, be it beer or rum. While breweries are happy with these proposals, the rum companies are not. They say that rum sales will return to the lesser levels of 20 years ago. The “beer boys” offer the counter-argument that each liter of pure alcohol in beer ends up paying 2.4 times as much tax as the distilled beverage and 50% more than the wines. This tax gap is not favorable to the beer companies. Before the latest tax structure, made up 78% of the alcoholic beverages market and used 37.7% of the alcohol consumed, but contributed a hefty 68% of the money collected by the selective tax on alcoholic beverages. Spirits and liquors, on the other hand, made up just 19% of the market, used 58.8% of the alcohol consumed and paid just 32% of the money collected with the selective tax. The consumer will undoubtedly have the final word, but in the estimation of Isa Contreras, the poorest consumer will probably turn to rum rather than beer to find his (or her) moment of happiness.