On Politics, We Can Always See the Whites of Their Eyes.
Video: The (Vaguely Disturbing) Death of a Clunker
by: Bill Dupray posted: 2009-08-01 11:04:00
Viewed 822 times. 5 Comments.
The Cash for Clunkers program is stupid for a lot of reasons. Not only is it just another tax-payer bailout of the unions automakers, who can sell more cars at artificially depressed prices so they can keep the doors open. It also screws with the free-market (big surprise there) by pulling forward demand that isn't there now, only to kill demand over the next 1-2 years. Killing off the clunkers also hurts the used car market, the spare parts market, and the auto repair business. If there aren't any old cars to buy or fix, those guys are all out of a job.
But one of the most asinine parts of the plan is that they take old cars, many of which were being used as functional day-to-day transportation the day before, and destroy them. A perfectly good and useful machine destroyed for political reasons.
In a normal world, you take your trade-in to the dealer, he buys it from you, and then he resells it at the auto auction. It is the most efficient allocation of resources for the product. In this case, the government buys your trade-in and, instead of using it for its full value, it destroys the vehicle.
Don't get me wrong, I won't stay awake at night worrying about inanimate objects, but there seems to be something unsettling about this state sanctioned "autocide."
From The Truth About Cars. Does this Volvo look like it should be destroyed?
Check out the comments on that post. It is a car site, so folks aren't as nakedly partisan as they are on political sites, but they don't really like this program. Here is one.
This Jeep also gets two behind the ear (though it does look at lot more clunkerish). Apparently what they do is pour something into the engine and then red-line it until it blows.
I know people will say that some of these cars were maintenance disasters to own and if the blue book is less that what someone will pay you for it, then there is no point in keeping it. But the Cash for Clunkers program requires that a working vehicle be destroyed. What about giving it to charity, or to your teenager, or to whomever deems the thing more useful than a $4,500 credit on a new car.
Tags: Obama, Capitalism,
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Comments 5
ALERT: DO NOT GO TO THAT WEBSITE. Pass this around.
the gov wll sieze all the files off of your computer if you go to the cash for clunkers website.
See story here.
You're wrong. That disclaimer is for the DEALERS who are logging in to get money from the gov't. While it is a scary TOS agreement, it is not for everyone -- just those who are acting as agents of this government program.
Stop paying so much attention to the ravings of Glenn Beck.
Bill -- you hit it on the head. It's grossly inefficient and it reminds me of Hog Reduction. I have been thinking of buying a new car, myself; the Jeep just turned 100K, but still runs great and looks just fine, if not the newest flashy (stylishly boxy) model. Somehow the thought of my perfectly good Jeep going to the boneyard just didn't sit right with me.
This kind of thing is ripe for exploitation on the black market, too -- like a rolling version of rent-controlled housing. Has it occurred to anyone in the WH that these buyers can turn right around and sell the spiffy new hybrid at a discount, and pocket the cash? Definitely worth a couple of days of work (one doing the dealership dance and one putting it on Ebay or Craigs List) for three or four grand. Gee, might that be why these things went like hotcakes?
Incidentally, this billion dollars shifted the gas mileage by five mpg for less than 0.1% of the cars registered in the USA. So by my math, it would cost...fifty billion to raise the average gas mileage in America by one mpg. That also assumes that there are enough people with old cars that qualify that can also afford brand new cars, but let's assume that for a minute. That's about 1.2M cars. I'm pretty sure that you could take the top 500 earners in the Screen Actors Guild, get them to pledge to fly commercial (hey, first class is fine with me) and accomplish the same thing -- without spending a dime.
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Enough of this idiotic government bulls***.