Re: 35 cent tax on each gallon of gas{& ethanol} sold.
Posted by snipz on Feb 20, 2004 at 22:35
(66.126.67.181)Re: 35 cent tax on each gallon of gas sold. (paul)
Yep, the government likes its taxes, and its friends like their subsidies.
The Guv also don't want to cut the ADM (Archer Daniels Midland) ethanol subsidy. Ten percent ethanol in the gasoline gives less mileage.(Burn a teaspoon of Everclear. Burn a teaspoon of gasoline, on, say, the same sheet of plywood, a couple of feet apart. Which gets hotter? Which supplies more evident energy?) Don't forget the cost of growing, fermenting, and distilling corn is, in terms of petrochemicals used, more expensive than using straight petroleum.
Yes, ethanol burns cleaner, but when, sport, was the last time you watched a combine havesting corn? Did you know that farm equipment, which is mostly diesel-powered, is exempt from clean-air regulations?
Did you know that a gallon of diesel fuel has a third more the energy capacity of a gallon of gasoline? The kitchen-science demonstration above will show that ethanol is even feebler. Any competent high-school chemistry teacher can show you the numbers, or where to find them.
But the tax breaks for producing ethanol are a lot nicer than for producing gasoline, or diesel. It burns cleaner, see, even though the production process uses more petrochemicals than it replaces.Yeah, it's inefficient, but it does pay well...