Ethanol Subsidies Have Many Bad Consequences | Robert Higgs

[ecnerwal999]

LIBERTARIANMONARCHY . COM

[switchgrassfuel]

i am not a fan of subsidies. but i like Ethanol, i use it in my car every day and my car runs grate on it. in my opinion the government should put blender pumps in and let the people decide which fuel to run. keep in mind oil companies got help with their infrastructure and still get government money. make them compete without government help in the future. in my mind Ethanol can compete with oil if the pumps are their.

[stevechallis2002]

@switchgrassfuel

Yes, My car runs also very well on an Ethanol/Gasoline mix; I use is whenever I can.

I entirely agree with putting in pumps for supplying the blend, and in car companies making cars designed to run on 85% Ethanol.

I think that subsidies or (differential taxation) could be applied more efficiently than they are.

[stealthswimmer]

@switchgrassfuel

Why should the blender pumps be there? I think that they should be put there by business owners once they see there's enough demand for them (which probably isn't gonna be any time soon)

[switchgrassfuel]

@stealthswimmer the blender pumps in southern MN get allot of use. the demand for ethanol is growing fast. in 2006 their was 1 station that sold E85 within 35 miles of my home, now their is E85 at almost every gas station around. now if Minnesota waited for business owners to want to put the pumps in instead of giving some sort of incentive i probably would have went broke paying for gas. even thou you get lees gas millage it is cheap enough around hear to save money. another reason is PEAK OIL.

[stealthswimmer]

@switchgrassfuel

No, actually business owners, just like consumers, respond to prices. That's why you don't need subsidies.

[switchgrassfuel]

@stealthswimmer i agree with no subsidies. but gas stations don't want to spend thousands of dollars for the pumps unless they need to replace their old system. like i said before i would go broke weighting for people to upgrade their systems. pumps and tanks are a huge expense. allot of gas stations go out of busyness because they couldn't afford the new equipment they needed to stay competitive. my home town used to have 4 gas stations now we have 1. most closed when they needed new tanks.

[megatherium100]

@switchgrassfuel In order to be justice in this debate of oil vs ethanol you would have to take the state out of this industries, NO MORE SUBSIDIES FOR EITHER FUEL OF ETHANOL, let them compete and the costumers choose what the prefer

[switchgrassfuel]

@megatherium100 i agree their should be no more subsidies for ethanol. but i don't think it is to much to ask for the pumps, because oil pumps were helped along by government. right now if they were allowed to compete without government help ethanol would be the fuel of choice in some places. because people tend to forget 80% of our military is used to guard oil and keep the supply chain open. and that price is not represented at the pumps.

[pretorious700]

Ethanol laced gasoline ruined my chainsaw

[LibertyMike1]

@pretorious700 And my weed whacker!

[qadison]

Ah! My fav, Bob Higgs.

[tapary]

Excellent talk! On a side note, I'll make sure to buy only Weaver popcorn, due to their sponsorship of this most excellent talk.

[zalida100]

@tapary That's fair enough. I guess it's kinda nice that weaver popcorn has helped to bring this info to us for free.

Robert Higgs mentioned Bruce Yandle early in his talk - about bootleggers and baptists. Here is a link to that podcast (about 70 mins) just in case you were interested. (Remove all the spaces in the link and it should work).

econtalk. org / archives / _ featuring / bruce _ yandle /

Just in case it's of interest to anyone.

[TheBullionBull]

@tapary Good idea!