The hoopla has settled down regarding the cash for clunkers program after a fresh injection of cash from our “friends” on the Hill.
But to what end has this come to? Just thinking out loud here, who really benefited from this 3 billion dollars? Is it:
1. Your Mother, the Earth?
Nope, producing new cars uses more energy and natural resources than keeping an existing vehicle running in top form, even if it does not get government approved mileage figures.
2. The Middle Class?
While I can’t say for sure, my thinking is that a middle class family, who has watched their retirement and other investments being halved in the economic downturn, are not in the market for a new car, and if they were, chances are they may not have an extra car or truck around that gets less than the 18 mpg you would need to qualify for the program.
3. The Lower Class?
Fail again for Washington, lower class families, who may have the needed vehicles to qualify for the program, may not have the credit needed to buy a new car, or the means to make the monthly payments.
4. Independent Business?
With the rules imposed by the program, each of the vehicles that qualify are removed from service permanently, by having their engines destroyed, and then being crushed. So if you do business in used parts, you repair older cars and trucks, or re-manufacture parts for older vehicles, your base for usable cores has been ravaged.
5. Government?
Here is the big winner in this scam, by taking an estimated 250,000 older vehicles off the road there are that many fewer vehicles that less than flush folks may be able to purchase to use. What happens then? If you are the government you can move those folks into public transportation, which limits their ability to live and work where they want to, keeping them in primarily urban areas where their movement is easier to control and monitor. And lets not forget the the lapdogs of the administration, the UAW. By creating an artificial demand, (with your tax dollars) there is an opportunity here to show a quarter of growth on the books, which can be trumpeted as proof that bailing out GM and Chrysler was yet another genius stroke by beloved leader and his cronies.
Conclusion:
Those who benefit from this program appear to be those who really don’t need it. If you can qualify to buy a new car, that $3500-$4500 may go towards a nice down payment, but taking your rarely used extra pick-up off the road can hardly be called an ecological win for the country. People now have less choices than before, and 250,000 usable vehicles are gone forever. Here is a link to an article which seems to indicate that interest in the “cash for clunkers” is starting to wane already. Yet more proof that Washington isn’t really qualified to run much of anything more complex than a lemonade stand, and even then they would more than likely have to legislate their competition into oblivion to push their substandard product onto people.
Face the facts, government produces nothing of value, cannot “create or save jobs”, or do anything that is not corrupt and flawed beyond redemption.
A personal aside:
I am not what would be defined as middle class, maybe lower middle class is closer. I drive a mid-nineties 4 door sedan that gets 30+ mpg on my daily commute. My bike gets 40 mpg, and even my old crappy s-10 gets 20+mpg on the road. So even if I wanted a new car I would be unable to qualify for this program. Not that i would buy a new car anyway, I get a perverse pleasure from keeping the oldies running like new, and it has nothing to do with being “green”. It does have everything to do with not giving the government one more dollar in any kind of taxes that I can avoid.
