Tag Archives: political economy

Food or Fuel?

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That’s the choice being forced on Americans by the push for “clean” fuel for our cars, even as the Left and the Progressive-Democratic Party push for elimination of gasoline-burning cars. Dave Loos, Illinois Corn Growers Association’s Director of Biofuels and Research, actually is proud of that diversion of food to fuel.

Illinois has 13 ethanol plants that can produce 1.6 to 1.7 billion gallons of ethanol annually.

A bushel of corn produces 2.8 gallons of ethanol. That’s roughly 590 million bushels of corn diverted from food in Illinois alone. Illinois corn farmers produced 2.13 billion bushels of corn in 2019. The equivalent (because it’s not only Illinois corn in those plants) of more than 27% of Illinois’ corn production is diverted away from food production in Illinois’ plants.

Food or fuel? Food—corn—diverted from Americans’ tables and from ranchers’ animal feed (and so diversion of meat from Americans’ tables) is being sacrificed to produce ethanol for vehicles that are intended to not exist in any great number in a few short years.

And this doesn’t address the environmental and economic damage done by the Renewable Fuel Standard—the Federal government’s ethanol mandate. From Environmental outcomes of the US Renewable Fuel Standard, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last winter:

[T]he RFS increased corn prices by 30% and the prices of other crops by 20%, which, in turn, expanded US corn cultivation by 2.8 Mha (8.7%) and total cropland by 2.1 Mha (2.4%) in the years following policy enactment (2008 to 2016). These changes increased annual nationwide fertilizer use by 3 to 8%, increased water quality degradants by 3 to 5%, and caused enough domestic land use change emissions such that the carbon intensity of corn ethanol produced under the RFS is no less than gasoline and likely at least 24% higher.

That’s an example of the irrationality of Left and of their politicians.

Lies of the Progressive-Democratic Party Politicians

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Senator Joe Manchin (D, WV) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) and President Joe Biden (D) tout the just passed (I ass-u-me; I’m writing this on Sunday morning) Build Reduced Back Act as not raising taxes on Americans with incomes less than $400k per year. Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D, AZ) agrees with that by her relative silence on the matter.

However, their very own Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation demonstrates the lie of that claim.

Just the News aggregated those data:

Federal taxes will increase by $1.9 billion on those earning between $50,000 and $75,000 and by $10.8 billion on those earning between $100,000 and $200,000 in 2023.
Overall average tax rates would increase from 20.3% to 20.6% in 2023 alone, according to the analysis.

A three-tenths of a percentage point increase might seem like chump change to those politicians, but they need to explain that increase to the large fraction—majority?—of Americans who already live paycheck to paycheck and now will have that “chump change” taken out of their pockets in addition to the taxes they already pay, along with the rising costs of the food, energy, and housing with which they’re already confronted.

Jobs

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Some statistics indicate a strong and growing jobs situation in our economy. Other statistics…not so much.

A couple of the latter, for instance.

The labor force participation rate has dropped for the second month in a row in the face of burgeoning inflation and wage growth that isn’t keeping up, so that real wages—what your money actually can buy in the grocery store and gas station and for your home in the form of electricity—are shrinking drastically.

According to BLS—the Bureau of Labor Statistics—the labor force participation rate, the per cent of Americans able to work and who actually are working or looking for work, stood at 62.1% in July. That’s down from June’s 62.2%, which itself was down from May’s 62.3%, and all of which are down from the nearby peak of March’s 62.4%. Folks seem to be giving up on finding work that will pay them enough to keep up with the Biden administration’s inflation, which stood at 9.1% year-on-year in June, up from May’s 8.6%.

The other statistic is this one [scroll to MULTIPLE JOBHOLDERS, near the bottom of the table, and keep in mind that the data presented are in the thousands], which seems reflective of the actual state of our economy and stands in opposition to the…optimistic…talk coming out of the White House. Of those folks participating in the labor force,

part-time jobs and multiple jobholders increased by 384,000 and 92,000, respectively….

This is the cost of President Joe Biden’s (D) war on our oil-, natural gas-, and coal-energy industry, given that energy is at the core of everything we do, and that oil and natural gas also are key to our materials industries, from fertilizer (see food price inflation) to automobile, including battery car, production to clothing, and on and on. This also is the cost of Biden’s explosion of regulation, which drives up the cost of simply operating a business to produce any of that stuff, and his insistence that the key to driving down inflation is to throw money at it (see his current $739 billion Build Reduced Back bill debated and passed in the Senate over the weekend).

On Governor Newsom’s Plan to Produce Insulin

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Regarding that idea, a letter writer in The Wall Street Journal‘s Tuesday Letters section offered this after suggesting that Newsom’s effort would have the salutary outcome of demonstrating the foolishness of such a move:

Targeted subsidies for at-risk populations cost a fraction of the investment needed to bring “affordable” medications to the people….

That’s true enough, could Government actually do that and, further, keep it limited to the truly at-risk. However, actual competition in the market is free, and that brings down costs for everyone. Additionally, that competition allows far better and more accurate identification of those remaining few at-risk who still can’t afford their meds and would be legitimate targets of largesse. That also would facilitate more effective use of sources of largesse, beginning in order with family and friends first, followed by church and local charity, local community, county, then state governments, with the Feds last on the list, rather than the default source.

Sue, Settle, and Biden’s Demand for Producers to Produce

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There was a time when a million acres of land were available in California for oil and gas leasing and hydraulic fracturing (fracking).

Then California’s Attorney General, Governor, and “other state agencies” sued, claiming that the Bureau of Land Management’s environmental impact analysis was inadequate. BLM then settled. Under the terms of BLM’s sue-and-settle agreement,

until the Bureau conducts a supplemental environmental review of the project, new oil and gas leases will not be granted in central California….

Three guesses when that review will be begun, and you get a pass on the first two.

This is the duplicity with which President Joe Biden (D) inveighs against oil and natural gas producers for not producing more.