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Comment by tmaly | Hacker News Reader

Given the current cost of corn, how about doing the same for the ethanol subsidy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa_caucuses

1. Presidents only need to go through the Iowa caucuses once (baring exceptional circumstances where they get primaried)

2. The Iowa Caucus has a fairly low correlation with nomination success

3. 99% of congress will never need to give a shit about the Iowa caucuses

It would be better to end corn subsidies altogether which have wide-reaching effects on the health of Americans.

Ending our farm subsidies entirely(SNAP benefits excluded)would remove a lot of nasty incentives in our system that help keep us unhealthy

It is puzzling that lower income is associated with obesity. Perhaps reforming SNAP to exclude more sugary and processed foods might be good policy.

If we stopped subsidizing their manufacture I think we would see that gradually improve.

I’m not really in favor of making exceptions to the types of food that poor people are or aren’t allowed to buy. Removing corn subsidies would do a lot to change the pricing dynamics of food in the US. Sugary and heavily processed foods would increase in price due to the rising price of HFCS, meats would increase in price due to the rising price of feed for livestock. It may also make other, healthier crops more attractive to farmers to grow which would help decrease the cost of healthier options.

It’s not the only thing that is making America very fat, but it is certainly a large component to it and there’s basically no reason for the subsidy to exist.

the US is very interested in keeping food cheap and corn subsidies are a big part of it. We also want to make sure we maintain the capacity to produce a LOT of calories very efficiently. This is helpful for national security as well, if imports are disrupted, we will have a food variety issue, not a starvation issue.

You’re piling on a lot of ifs of which there are alternative contingencies other than artificially keeping the price of corn goods cheap. I’d argue that the negative effects of cheap corn has made our country less healthy which in turn is a national security issue. Anyone that’s been in the military and even modestly keeps up with current policy will see how the military is having to adapt to a significantly less healthy pool of recruits.

Government Cheese wasn’t to ensure that prices of dairy would stay low, it was to bail out dairy farmers after the price of it dropped to unsustainably low levels. It’s not even a very good product to stockpile. The market would correct itself.

I know a lot would have to go wrong for it to matter. But having the ability to crank out huge amounts of corn, dairy and cheese if other food sources become scarce is a good ace in the hole to have if push comes to shove. Look at how the supply chain crunch affected our ability to produce certain goods. It wasn't so bad overall but we don't want to deal with that for calories.

maybe you do not understand how unleaded gasoline works? We add ethanol to gasoline get unleaded to gasoline so we can avoid adding lead to it to prevent knocking of engines.

But why subsidize it? Especially if we're cutting subsidies to the rest of the fuel.

This isn't really true. You can buy unleaded gasoline that is very high octane with no alcohol.

We add alcohol because it is subsidized, so it is cheap.

Correction: we add ethanol to subsidize the corn industry. It is not cheaper to do so, it is mandated by law.

I know there are various statutes including a presidential EO recently directing the EPA to require the addition of ethanol.

Does the actual regulation issued by the EPA require the addition of corn-derived ethanol? Or is just ethanol?

Unleaded non-oxy has existed forever and way predates ethanol.

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