That may be part of it, but as you said, "...a big difference from run every day equipment and once a week or three times a year."
But another comparison is interesting. There's a huge difference between running ethanol blends in areas such as Woodinville, Washington where the normal climate change throughout the whole year barely exceeds a week-to-week difference where I live. We go from winter lows of well below zero and near 0% humidity to summer highs exceeding 100 degrees with well over 90% humidity. During certain times of the year temperatures can be 40 degrees on Tuesday and 85 degrees on Thursday, with a corresponding tripling of humidity levels. Under those conditions most any fuel is degraded rapidly, and ethanol blends will be virtually destroyed in just a few days.
But let's put that aside... it make no sense to pay more for less... Tell me what else you purchase that way? Brazil does not use corn for ethanol production... they don't burn their food crop... they use sugar cane. Ethanol from sugar cane costs only a third what ethanol from corn does... Sugar cane produces a higher grade of ethanol, at a higher volume, faster, cheaper, with less equipment and manpower.
Oh, I know it is cheaper there, they don't pay squat down there and use a lot of human labor where in the US it is more mechanized (it is more human labor intensive there, not less...). You ain't getting a lot of roly poly USA fat people out in some fields with machetes/hoes/shoves/tools of mass production here for twenty five cent an hour....not happening at this time....
I wasn't talking about that so much as just the possibility that maybe they have small engines down there that can run without issue on high ethanol laced fuels. I just don't know one way or the other. I have read extensively about their vehicles there..but nothing about small engines. It just would be interesting to know if stihlvarna and all the others made engines that *could* run very well on ethanol blended fuels. On their websites they say "do NOT use fuel higher than 10% blend" yada yada, but down in Brazil it is common to have all the way to 100% ethanol at the pump from what I have read..so how do they operate their small engines???
OK, paying more for less...take a gander down the breakfast cereal aisle, read the fine print on ingredients, look at weights and measures, etc. and contemplate how much a bushel people are paying for flakes.... you can pretty much apply that to almost all heavily processed and packaged foods.
And that's one of many reasons I am against the food debit card scam as opposed to how they used to even out farm prices and help out poor folks. They used to buy up surplus in bumper years and stockpile it. This moderated prices and helped keep farmers from going broke, plus we had a really decent food cushion stockpiled, plus poor people got real food. They would go around in trucks and drop the food off, I know this because I helped and volunteered to distribute. Poor folks got cases of real food, enough to feed them, but not a lot of colorful packaging. Nothing fancy, just basic simple food. You had to cook it. A dollar bought a LOT more real food that way, and not near as much packaging/advertising/white collar exec profits.
Now they get food debit cards, and we have zero, nada, zilch in the way of a national emergency food stockpile, we go season to season now (that's just freekin scary) and people using those cards and the rest who pay for them are helping encourage and enable the three hundred dollar bushel of grain brand "food product" sold in stores now. Nuts. Steps backwards, less food for way more money. The product with the extra yard long list of chemical additives you have a hard time pronouncing, the "food" tied heavily to the wall street/chicago/wherever speculator scam commodities markets.
That's an example of paying WAY WAY more for less that is ultra common today.
Housing..I remember when the ten year note was the most common, and people tried to keep payments under 25% gross pay....another example. Now it is a 30 year note, and people wind up paying multiples of what they used to pay for a roof and walls. Cars...used to be 12 month financing on a new anything..now, what..60 months?
Some stuff is cheaper, you get a lot more for less, personal electronics comes to mind. but most everything else today costs a lot more than it used to for the equivalent.
Hmm, talking about fuel...when I started driving a gallon of lowball regular was five gallons to the dollar, or even cheaper (I bought some once at 12.9, topped my falcon off for two bucks...). If I recall adequately, a common entry level wage was around 90 cents an hour for a burger flipping type job, so that was 4-5 gallons of fuel an hour "pay". That was the lowest paid you could get I think. Now minimum rage pay is what, around eight bucks? That's only 2 gallons and change. Another example of paying more for less that is exceedingly common, and something that hurts poorer folks and people in the middle class more and rural people more than it used to.
Nope, back then the middle class was expanding and people were getting more every year, then around the lbj/noxon years it changed radically and it has been going downhill ever since, with the middle class gradually disappearing. that's the trend now and it is beyond obvious.
We went from being a producing nation with a well diverse and robust economy and the largest fastest growing middle class to a nation that is basically bankrupt now. We are so far in the hole you need floodlights and binoculars to see the top edge. All they are doing is kicking the can down the road, as the expression goes, the party is over. They offshored the wealth producing jobs for massive short term gains for the top 1%, exchanged the notion of "produced wealth" for credit, faking people out they are the same thing, when they are not.
It just ain't gonna work, it never would work, all sorts of contrarian economists and analysts pointed this out back then. (including me)
You just cannot printing press your way to wealth...it don't work. It never has and never will. And two class societies inevitably result in "social distress".
