This blog is a little wake up call for many of you. We are getting screwed with the price of sugar in the USA. This blog will give you some facts.
Many of you have heard that USA dairy farmers are having a hard time with the low price of milk, but did you ever think that sugar is much worse? Here are the basic facts. The price at Walmart for a 4 pound bag of sugar is $0.64 per pound, but did you know that the international price for that same sugar is only $0.12 per pound. With a little 4th grade math, we find that we pay 5.3 times as much as most of the rest of the world. Can you think of anything that we are being screwed on worse than that? I don't think so. When President Trump proposed putting a 25% tax on aluminum there was an outcry from beer drinkers that it could make a can of beer cost about one cent more. Where is the same cry for sugar from Pepsi drinkers?
Here is another one. You might think that dishonest lobbyist for dairy and cotton farmers have too much influence in Washington DC, but you didn't know that there is more money in Washington DC supporting the sugar farmers than "all" other farmers combined! When you look at the fact that we are having to pay more than 5 times the world price for sugar, I think that you can see why this is. The other thing is that this special treatment of sugar farmers has been going on for over a hundred years. I am not going to get into it here, but look at corn farmers who profit from Ethanol and the corn syrup substitute for sugar. What we need is more free markets for everyone, not special protection for rich farmers. We are talking about multimillion dollar farmers, not the old family farm that we remember.
As a homebrewer, it is the fermentation of sugar that provides the alcohol. Think how cheap Vodka or Gin is to make any place else in the world. All you need to do is to dissolve sugar in water and dump in some yeast and then distill out the ethanol. It is that easy and cheap if we could buy sugar at the international price.
I can't figure out why there is so much talk about our stupid government policies, but there is a total silence about us getting screwed with our high price for sugar. I have farmer friends in Iowa and North Dakota who are gaming us with special high prices for their products. They complain that they are losing money. Their problem is that they paid far too much for their farm land. The land should only be worth what it can produce and if we paid the same price for sugar that the rest of the world does the price of land would be much less. Sounds like what happened to the cost of college when the government gave out free money to students doesn't it?
I am sick of this type of things and so should you. Who are you going to vote for and are they going to do anything about it?
PS---I blogged about this point before, but it is worth repeating. We are not talking about a tax or a duty here. What we have is a "mandate" where the government limits the importation of cheap sugar and then silently allowing the prices to go up for you and me. It is like getting screwed by way of the back door. Why isn't this all out in the open so that people know what is going on? Ask your representative in Washington DC what they are doing about the price of sugar?
PS--I checked to see how much alcohol you can make from a pound of sugar and it turns out that it takes 5 pounds of sugar to make a gallon of pure alcohol. That means a fifth of 100 proof Vodka will require about 6 cents worth of sugar at international prices. At our USA price of 65 cents, it will cost 45 cents. The federal tax on alcohol is $13.50 per 100 proof gallon. It takes 2.5 pounds of sugar to make a gallon of 100 proof Vodka. At international prices that gallon will cost 30 cents for sugar and here in the USA that sugar will cost $1.63. The biggest cost of Whiskey is not the corn or sugar, it is the federal tax.
Many of you have heard that USA dairy farmers are having a hard time with the low price of milk, but did you ever think that sugar is much worse? Here are the basic facts. The price at Walmart for a 4 pound bag of sugar is $0.64 per pound, but did you know that the international price for that same sugar is only $0.12 per pound. With a little 4th grade math, we find that we pay 5.3 times as much as most of the rest of the world. Can you think of anything that we are being screwed on worse than that? I don't think so. When President Trump proposed putting a 25% tax on aluminum there was an outcry from beer drinkers that it could make a can of beer cost about one cent more. Where is the same cry for sugar from Pepsi drinkers?
Here is another one. You might think that dishonest lobbyist for dairy and cotton farmers have too much influence in Washington DC, but you didn't know that there is more money in Washington DC supporting the sugar farmers than "all" other farmers combined! When you look at the fact that we are having to pay more than 5 times the world price for sugar, I think that you can see why this is. The other thing is that this special treatment of sugar farmers has been going on for over a hundred years. I am not going to get into it here, but look at corn farmers who profit from Ethanol and the corn syrup substitute for sugar. What we need is more free markets for everyone, not special protection for rich farmers. We are talking about multimillion dollar farmers, not the old family farm that we remember.
As a homebrewer, it is the fermentation of sugar that provides the alcohol. Think how cheap Vodka or Gin is to make any place else in the world. All you need to do is to dissolve sugar in water and dump in some yeast and then distill out the ethanol. It is that easy and cheap if we could buy sugar at the international price.
I can't figure out why there is so much talk about our stupid government policies, but there is a total silence about us getting screwed with our high price for sugar. I have farmer friends in Iowa and North Dakota who are gaming us with special high prices for their products. They complain that they are losing money. Their problem is that they paid far too much for their farm land. The land should only be worth what it can produce and if we paid the same price for sugar that the rest of the world does the price of land would be much less. Sounds like what happened to the cost of college when the government gave out free money to students doesn't it?
I am sick of this type of things and so should you. Who are you going to vote for and are they going to do anything about it?
PS---I blogged about this point before, but it is worth repeating. We are not talking about a tax or a duty here. What we have is a "mandate" where the government limits the importation of cheap sugar and then silently allowing the prices to go up for you and me. It is like getting screwed by way of the back door. Why isn't this all out in the open so that people know what is going on? Ask your representative in Washington DC what they are doing about the price of sugar?
PS--I checked to see how much alcohol you can make from a pound of sugar and it turns out that it takes 5 pounds of sugar to make a gallon of pure alcohol. That means a fifth of 100 proof Vodka will require about 6 cents worth of sugar at international prices. At our USA price of 65 cents, it will cost 45 cents. The federal tax on alcohol is $13.50 per 100 proof gallon. It takes 2.5 pounds of sugar to make a gallon of 100 proof Vodka. At international prices that gallon will cost 30 cents for sugar and here in the USA that sugar will cost $1.63. The biggest cost of Whiskey is not the corn or sugar, it is the federal tax.
