Farming: The Most Pampered, Protected and Subsidized Industry in America
The farm legislation proceeding through Congress symbolizes much of what's wrong with Washington. It's government by inertia. We do today what we did yesterday, because politicians draw their power from distributing benefits and various interest groups feel entitled to receive them -- even if they serve no defensible public purpose. Our extravagant farm programs capture the absurdity as well as any other.
Farming has become the economy's most pampered, protected and subsidized sector. Mandates for ethanol, which raise demand for corn but save little crude oil, are the latest unjustified promotion. That's in addition to the subsidies in the farm bill: easily $50 billion from 2008 to 2012 in the bill passed by the House. The Senate will soon debate its version.
~Robert Samuelson, writing in today's Washington Post
3 Comments:
Well consider how the federal Health & Human Service are climbing into the farming scam, especially the ethanol end of it...
BTW this same agency is pushing foreign cars instead of American made cars (which of course is a mixed bag since car companies have been buy into each other for quite sometime now) which is seems at best questionably ethical:
E-mail to federal HHS employees
Gasoline Alternatives
You have probably seen those commercials with young people urging everyone to "go yellow". These ads encourage everyone to choose an efficient fuel type to power their vehicles. Today, there are several fuel options such as ethanol, biodiesel and cellulose based fuels that are much more energy efficient than the petroleum based fuels we regularly use.
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Ethanol...more energy efficient...
For the amount of land used, processing, government subsidized refinement and distribution, there is nothing efficient about the use of ethanol.
I understand the need to get broaden our energy resources. They way that ethanol is being billed, as the wave of the future, can not be substained. Even if every single acre of available land was used to raise the crops, not more that 10% of the current oil production could be manufactured.
Does this 10% help? Every product that uses corn is going up in cost due to the increase in demand of the corn. Are we saving money by investing in ethanol??
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