Get The Load Off Our Backs!

Subsidies.

It seems like Uncle Sam has a habit of giving breaks to others on one hand and screwing up the rest on the other hand.

Just recently, a report came out on NBC Dateline describing how the government, in its effort to boost the use of ethanol additives for gasoline, subsidizes the corn industry. The report stated that it actually takes more energy to produce ethanol than it is to have the same amount of gasoline. Now ain't that a woozy?

I am not against additives in gasoline. For all I care, my car can run on additives alone AS LONG AS it is cost effective doing so. Such cost effectiveness should not come only in terms of the fuel being cheaper. How it is produced should also require less energy. Uncle Sam sells us the fuel cheaply and all of us look like we just won the sweepstakes. However, Uncle Sam sticks us with a big tax increase because we now have to increase subsidies to the corn and the ethanol industry. What goes around comes around. The Laws of Thermodynamics at work here.

We should just drop these subsidies, drop the high tarrifs on foreign produce and get competitive in the global market. I bet we can cheaply import a lot of products like corn instead of paying locally for higher corn prices.

Oh, and the reason why corn prices sometimes go down is that the government subsidizes it. Remember to equate "subsidy" with "just increase my taxes again, thank you!".

And what about the steel industry? Yessiree, bub! We're subsidizing it, too! Our local steel industries use antiquated technology that they can't compete with foreign steel manufacturers interms of output and quality. So what does the government do? Uncle Sam cuddles the local industry with subsidies at the expense of taxpayer's dollars. We're actually paying for our own industries' inefficiencies.

It's so pathetic that our local industries can't justly compete with the foreign markets. We are blindsided by the fact that we think that our economy is strong when in fact it is built upon a rickety system of subsidies and blatant protectionism.

If only our government will open up the markets to the world, perhaps we can truthfully see where the US economy lies in the global commerce. Perhaps then we can be more patriotic in promoting our local products and justly compete in the global market without thinking twice that we're shooting ourselves in the foot.