Thread: Student Loans Good or Bad?

I think you are looking at corn as just corn. Corn is like Soybeans as it gets turned into everything. Corn is earths superfuel. It is THE feed the world shit.

As for affecting you at the pump....I bet it would. I bet it would double or triple dino piss. I costs a lot to make, and produces far fewer miles per gallon. E-85 blows, and if you had to pay its full price at the pump, you wouldn't.

As for its proponents being willing to fork over their own cash....never. If it could stand on its own, it would. Some people spend "our" money much more freely than they spend "their" money. Strip the subsidies, and E-85 would be gone in weeks.

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Exactly. Take away the givt money, and e85 would be gone almost immediately.

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Only so much corn can be used for food. If we were to eliminate e85, complete industries would collapse. Tens of thousands of people would lose their jobs. The price of corn would be incredibly low, making the farmers that were farming corn for food sales pretty much bankrupt.

Eliminating it simply wouldn't work. If you want to attack subsidies, go after fossil fuels. You think the corn farmers have a shit ton of money? Look at the oil and natural gas companies.

Fossil Fuel Subsidies: Overview - Oil Change InternationalOil Change International

If this article is anywhere near accurate, the U.S. provides up to $52 Billion in fossil fuel subsidies with global amounts approaching $1 Trillion. That is fucking crazy. I don't have a site to reference, but I recall seeing somewhere that the Corn/Ethanol industry receives near $5 billion in subsidies. Pretty big difference considering how damaging oil drilling has become to the environment. I am sure there is some pollution with turning corn into a fuel source, but I haven't heard of an ethanol spill wiping out entire ecosystems. You can't say the same for oil and natural gas.

Anyways... um... student loans?

Originally Posted by AetheLove

Definitely.

Take the money used to prop up the ethanol-as-fuel industry and use it to improve the terms of - and access to - student loans.

Your argument about the elimination of ethanol subsidies being a bad thing because of industry shocks and job loss seems odd. Yes, of course the industry will need to adjust, and yes that could easily mean job losses. But so what? The reason those jobs exist in the first place is because they are subsidized.

The subsidy creates an economic distortion. If the distortion helps a new industry gain traction and become self-supporting then that's great. If it doesn't then continuing the subsidy is simply feeding a parasite.

"All men are created equal" is an excellent reason for there to exist policy that helps each generation find opportunity and realize potential independent of the wealth of their parents.

All commercial production is not created equal.

Cheers,


AetheLove

The ethanol fuel industry supports more than 350k jobs in the U.S. Completely eliminating E85 from consumer gasoline would pretty much bankrupt the industry. Removing $5 billion in subsidies means that companies would have to pay $15k/employee out of their own pockets. They would either have to cut that many jobs, this also further cutting production, wages, etc... it would be disastrous to the industry, and not simply some little "shocks".

Fuck, do you remember what Papa Johns was doing because of the Obamacare costs? Can you imagine if a company had to pay $15k out of pocket per employee per year?

This example is extreme, of course, but still, simply removing subsidies for E85 is a bad thing. In no way would it be 100% beneficial to anyone as likely tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people would be unemployed, plus, as I mentioned, the quantity of corn supplied would go so high through the roof that farmers couldn't sell it even if they wanted to.

I think my point is still valid. Take money from the oil subsidies. They are simply too rich to deserve that high level of subsidized income or any other sort of additional tax breaks to boot.

It takes a mega-shit ton of fossil fuels to make e85. Much more than it saves. We aren't doing anyone any favors by financially propping it up, least of all the Earth. I am all-for alternative fuel sources, but only when they actually conserve something. e85 doesn't fit that description. It's a scam.