You are just wrong.
If oil wasn’t subsidized, ethanol would be comparitively cheaper.
I’m for no subsidies of any kind to any industry. In that respect, I’m for ethanol if and only if the blinders on folks like you can think from that perspective.
You endorse subsidies everyday. Admit it. Once you do, don’t apologize. I don’t need it.
“If oil wasn’t subsidized, ethanol would be comparitively cheaper.”
The nonsense of your position is obvious to all.
The subsidization of ethanol directly via credits and indirect via mandates is inconsequentially small in the oil and gas sector as compared to that given ethanol.
I am speechless as to why you think making oil cheaper would impact the competitiveness of ethanol.
In Economics 101, making a competitive alternative cheaper gives one less reason to invest in something as the alternative is what people would buy.
General Response—Point one-
First of all CO2 isn’t a pollutant, it is a neccessary
building block of life on earth, used by plants to produce
our food and fiber.And any process that produces more CO2
and water, less other carbon/hydrogen compounds and soot,
is actually cleaner, more efficient, like a clean
burning engine using a 10-15% ethanol gas mix.My 20 yr old
tandem Lincoln pickup that folks see running around central
Michigan, gets an extra mile per gallon on 10% ethanol
blend, due to ethanol an oxygen carrier and mix burns clean.
Two—Farmers get no price supports on corn, and only
aid ethanol gets is the oil/gas companies get about
a 4 billion per year dollar tax credit to blend in ethanol,
not money paid, but a credit. But ethanol on market is
almost a dollar cheaper than gas and its extra supply
has been calculated to lower gasoline pump prices enough,
that consumers save 4 billion dollars at the pump every
two weeks or so.Good deal for that much per yr tax credit.
And oil companies get 15 times that much in tax credits,
and depletion, on all their other operations, per year.
Three—Ethanol doesn’t short anyone on food. Ethanol
in practical terms is a secondary porduct of making high
protein feed concentrated that helps raise the meat we eat.
More lbs of that come from a bushel of corn than ethanol,
plus other products used in food and beverages.Prices
did go up on corn and other ag products as speculators
in 2006-7-8 pulling money out of real estate bonds going
bad, went crazy in ag sector before they went busted,
but prices now for corn as an example, are barely above
expenses. Their is about 90 million acres in corn,
And we have 30 million acres that land owners, mostly
non-farmer owned, have in con-reserve, which shouldn’t
be plus twice that much setting idle also, so we can have
plenty of ethanol and high protein feed if we need it,
which most farmers want to do. You raise 140 bushel per
acre corn, no till and roundup resistant type using
least amount of work and energy to raise, you take off about 8000 lbs corn kernals per acre, but leave 15-20 tons of stalks to build up the soil. By increasing soil carbon and organic material content, so you can improve land to raise more corn, which by the way uses CO2.
Ed Hubel.