Top things a Romney administration could do for economy without spending a lot of tax money

This is a positive thread about the top things a Romney administration could do to get the economy moving again, without the government paying a lot of money.

This can be done the first day. Do not listen to anyone who brings out the tired "it will take ten years to get any oil" argument. First, it will not take ten years, it will be more like three. But most importantly, the jobs start immediately after the permit is issued. It takes work to get the oil out of the ground, and we want that to be happening as much as we want the oil. This also includes the Keystone pipeline.

Dump it. Preferrebly, dump the whole idea that employers should provide health insurance at all. Employers can give their employees money, and emoployees can buy their own insurance. This will lower the cost of hiring workers, and by having individuals in charge of their own health care, will encourage shopping based upon price.

By lowering damages for frivilous lawsuits, prices for all goods and services can come down.

Allow ethanol fuel for vehicles to be made from any source of ethanol, not just corn.

Ethanol can be made more cheaply from other sources, so it would lower the cost of fuel at the pump if ethanol was made from cheaper sources than corn. Coal and natural gas can be used to produce ethanol. We already have E85 vehicles, and so 85% of the fuel for those can come from coal and natural gas, which is easier than converting our fueling infrastructure to support more natural gas vehicles.

With a small amount of funding/tax encouragement, we can develop standard designs for Thorium nuclear reactors, which are cheaper than nuclear, and we have plentiful supplies of thorium.

Private business are investing heavily in this area, and it would be a great increase in productivity for the economy to have self driving cars. There will also be a jobs boom inplementing the hardware and software infrastructure for this. There isn't a lot of funding necessary from the government, but federal and states could take the lead in encouraging the development, implementation and standards for communication between cars, and cars and infrastructure.

The same idea as self driving cars, but with our network of river and intercoastal waterway commercial craft of barges and ships. Barges and ships can be pilotless and communicating with each other to bring down shipping costs, relieving traffic on roads and rail, and bring down export costs, such as for exporting grain. This would only require government money for a communications infrastructure, such as the current FAA and air traffic control. The technology is available for self driving cars, but is currently too expensive for consumer cars. However, for shipping it is not too expensive, as the technology is a small part of a multimillion dollar ship. It could be implemented on ships faster.

In what way are you saying ethanol causes more fuel comsumption?

Very simple: It takes more GASOLINE w/Ethanol to go 100 miles than it does PURE GASOLINE.

I'll give you a very simple example: My 2003 GMC Envoy Denali get 22.5mpg on the highway using Gasoline w/10% ethanol. The same vehicle gets 25.5mpg on the highway using 100% gasoline w/NO ethanol.

So YES using Ethanol DOES IN FACT cause MORE fuel to be consumed.

Do you work for an ethanol producer by any chance? You seem to want to talk about ANYTHING but MPG, which was my main point.

I don't know why you wrote that I am avoiding MPG, when I have already discussed it and provided links. Here is another example, from the same website. 2012 Ford Escape AWD FFV

Model vehicle: 2012 Ford Escape AWD FFV

	Regular Gas	E85
Combined	20	14
Fuel Economics
Cost to drive 25 miles	$4.69	$5.61
Fuel to drive 25 miles	1.25 gal	1.79 gal
Cost to fill the tank	$59.06	$49.46
Miles on a tank	315	221

Notice the line "Fuel to drive 25 miles". In the case of regular gas, which is now E10, and I will try to adjust for that, we would use 1.125 gallons of gas, of which .5 gallons would be imported, and .125 gallons of ethanol. In the case of E85, it would use .27 gallons of gasoline, and 1.52 gallons of ethanol.

So, yes, the gasoline usage would go down by using E85, 1.125 - .27 = .855 gallons of gasoline saved per 25 miles.

The "Cost to drive 25 miles" is just as important. Right now, it costs more to drive on E85, but this is using corn. If we could lower the price of ethanol by 25% by using coal, here is what the economics might look like, although it is difficult to estimate.

$5.61 * .85 = $4.7685 This is just a very rough estimate of the price of the ethanol content of E85, but it assumes gasoline and ethanol are equally priced. If the cost of ethanol dropped 25% by using coal instead of corn, that portion of the E85 price would drop to $3.58. Add back the gasoline and get a total of $4.42, or slightly less than gasoline ($4.69).

So, by my calculations, we could replace imported oil, be energy independent, provide Americans jobs, and we could keep the price of fuel about the same by changing the law to allow ethanol from any source, not just corn. Corn would be entirely replaced, and we could export it.

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