Doesn Ethanol Usage Create Jobs and Provide Cash for Midwestern Communities?
Of course it does. But how are jobs created? If we mandated that everyone had to consume a pound of potatoes or a pineapple each week, it would also create jobs and revitalize communities. So why don’t we do this? We don’t do this because the jobs are created by flowing money out of one region of the country into another. If job creation had no impact on jobs in other regions, we could just enact one mandate after another, forcing us to buy various products until everyone was happily employed. But the economy doesn’t work that way. The jobs that are created in Iowa are a result of money flowing out of the rest of the country. Paul Rogers, a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, gives the following account in which he asked Iowa governor Tom Vilsack why the rest of the country should be forced to use ethanol: “Because it helps farmers from my state expand their markets, Vilsack explained. ‘So I guess you’d support a new federal law to require everybody in Des Moines to buy a computer,
