Completely OT: Inflation

[Mike Schwartz (PC Support)]

> The ethanol story sounds good, until you factor in the energy
> required to grow the grains from which it is derived, and the
> energy required to transport it to the sites where it is
> produced, and then the energy required to ferment and distill
> it.  Recent studies have shown it to be a net energy loss -
> though it does have some economic benefits for those in the
> grain belt.
> 
> Bob

     This is an excellent economic case in point.  Ethanol does cost more
per gallon than gasoline, and the energy costs to produce it are one reason.
It's not totally clean, either.  They burn corn stalks to heat the stills,
and that adds something to air pollution, despite the fact that they scrub
the smoke.

       All that producing a gallon of ethanol really accomplishes is
reducing our import of foreign oil at additional cost to us, and at this
point I'd have to start getting into oil cartels and so forth, so I'll break
off with by quoting my economics professor that "99% of the reasons people
do things boil down to economics.  It's the other 1% of the reasons you have
to watch out for."  

    I should mention that he never did convince some of the gals who came
from family farms that there wasn't any economic reason why the family farms
"had to" survive...

Mike