One More (Pretty Big) "Whoops" On Ethanol

Forget about what corn-based ethanol is doing to food prices, the basic physics of ethanol as a fuel should be enough to expose our ethanol mandate as the stupidity that it is. Fortunately, you can always count on some functionary branch of the government to provide a real-world test case for the bad policies that emanate from the halls of the Great Sausage Factory. Sure enough, today's example comes from the US Postal Service. They bought a bunch of flex-fuel trucks. Turns out their ethanol vehicles burn more fuel and cost more. So, it is costing more to not achieve the stated goals (of reducing emissions). I don't know the difference in the chemical properties between corn-based ethanol and sugar-based (or cellulosic) ethanol, but this evidence would seem to damn ethanol full stop, regardless of what it is made of or where we get it.

Maybe this will get certain academic economists to cease obsessing about 'negative externalities' and focus on another fundamental economic concept, the 'deadweight loss'.