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Re: Ethanol & $4 gas (CA)--RR Subsidy Related- "redistributing" consumers incomes
Author: BOB2
Date: 04-16-2019 - 03:00
Summer "ethanol" blends are supposedly designed to reduce carbon monoxide levels. It is also justified as a supposed reduction in CO2 emissions, since this is a "natural" fuel (part of the earth's natural carbon dioxide cycle from "plants").
The "gubmint's" regulatory requirement to use "ethanol" blending to do this is nothing but a socialist "redistribution" of incomes, from the pockets of consumers, to ethanol producers, including transport costs by RR's, at around 24 cents per gallon, when we could be using chemically derived MBTE's to achieve to reduce the local carbon monoxide, for about 2 cents per gallon.
The fuel used by the ethanol producers, truckers, and RR's to transport the corn and the ethanol produced to "add" to gasoline, is actually estimated to add more carbon dioxide through shipping, than the ethanol would reduce it, as a supposed "natural" fuel, from the earth's natural carbon cycle. It is a massive "gubmint" mandated subsidy, paid for by all of the rest of us, in higher fuel prices, for "nothing", in terms of an improved public health or "planetary" benefits. The ethanol "mandate" is the product of "good' politics, not good "science", and certainly not good "economics" (unless you are the product of Senator Grassley's "largesse", with the able assistance of Ms. Feinstein, in a the "ture" spirit of "bipartisanship"....????)).
It is good for the UP and BNSF as it adds a significant traffic base, however.
Of course, this "indirect" subsidy to UP and BNSF, along with the "gubmint's" forced "income transfers" to ethanol producers does cost you and I tens of billions each year for the added cost of this "indirect" "tax" which we are forced to pay at the pump, by our political leaders, fittingly, right around tax day....
The phony game of closing certain refinery's, to manipulate gasoline prices this time of year, is now a time honored tradition in the CA refining industry. Now for the "good news" crude oil is topping out, and the ships full of unleaded "summer blend" gasoline, in tankers from India and Indonesia, are arriving, soon. So the annual spring gasoline "price gouge" should be ending soon.
If you don't like high gasoline prices, then try saving fuel, and not driving as much. The price of gasoline is "inelastic" not only in our "demand" for it, it is also inelastic in the "supply", and if consumers in CA really did reduce consumption, by as little as between 1 and 3 percent, price of gasoline could drop by as much as 10 to 20 percent.
Which is why all of the "industry" experts you see in "media" interviews always tell the media and the public that "there is nothing you can do", and that "boycotts" definitely would never work to bring down prices..... Of course they do....they're "industry" experts telling you that the laws of supply and demand don't apply here.... right?
Pogo was right: "We have met the enemy, and he is us...."
The "gubmint's" regulatory requirement to use "ethanol" blending to do this is nothing but a socialist "redistribution" of incomes, from the pockets of consumers, to ethanol producers, including transport costs by RR's, at around 24 cents per gallon, when we could be using chemically derived MBTE's to achieve to reduce the local carbon monoxide, for about 2 cents per gallon.
The fuel used by the ethanol producers, truckers, and RR's to transport the corn and the ethanol produced to "add" to gasoline, is actually estimated to add more carbon dioxide through shipping, than the ethanol would reduce it, as a supposed "natural" fuel, from the earth's natural carbon cycle. It is a massive "gubmint" mandated subsidy, paid for by all of the rest of us, in higher fuel prices, for "nothing", in terms of an improved public health or "planetary" benefits. The ethanol "mandate" is the product of "good' politics, not good "science", and certainly not good "economics" (unless you are the product of Senator Grassley's "largesse", with the able assistance of Ms. Feinstein, in a the "ture" spirit of "bipartisanship"....????)).
It is good for the UP and BNSF as it adds a significant traffic base, however.
Of course, this "indirect" subsidy to UP and BNSF, along with the "gubmint's" forced "income transfers" to ethanol producers does cost you and I tens of billions each year for the added cost of this "indirect" "tax" which we are forced to pay at the pump, by our political leaders, fittingly, right around tax day....
The phony game of closing certain refinery's, to manipulate gasoline prices this time of year, is now a time honored tradition in the CA refining industry. Now for the "good news" crude oil is topping out, and the ships full of unleaded "summer blend" gasoline, in tankers from India and Indonesia, are arriving, soon. So the annual spring gasoline "price gouge" should be ending soon.
If you don't like high gasoline prices, then try saving fuel, and not driving as much. The price of gasoline is "inelastic" not only in our "demand" for it, it is also inelastic in the "supply", and if consumers in CA really did reduce consumption, by as little as between 1 and 3 percent, price of gasoline could drop by as much as 10 to 20 percent.
Which is why all of the "industry" experts you see in "media" interviews always tell the media and the public that "there is nothing you can do", and that "boycotts" definitely would never work to bring down prices..... Of course they do....they're "industry" experts telling you that the laws of supply and demand don't apply here.... right?
Pogo was right: "We have met the enemy, and he is us...."
