The ethanol industry creates jobs. Sure enough. Pump $4 billion a year in subsidies into the corn states, and they will build ethanol plants and run them. There will be new jobs. Now if the corn states would send $4 billion to the South that would create some jobs down there. And if the South sent $4 billion to New England ...

This is getting a bit silly, and so is the claim that ethanol subsidies create jobs. They create them in the corn states and destroy them in the rest of the country. If that were not the case, we could just tax every region and send the money to the next region and permanently solve the unemployment problem.

Some industries are more capital intensive, e.g. oil refineries, and some are more labor intensive, e.g. restaurants. If money is taken from capital intensive industries and given to labor intensive ones, there should be a net increase in jobs—at least for a while. Now, here's the key question: Is an ethanol factory more like an oil refinery (capital intensive) or a restaurant (labor intensive)?