Allahpundit at Hot Air links! Thanks AP.
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.
Comments
Someone who posts to a car site may not be partisan, but they will be attached to cars and dislike the idea of a car being destroyed.
I suspect that the whole thing was designed to help China get their hands on low-cost scrap iron. What better source than to pull it off our streets.
Of course this program won't get the worst clunkers off the road because the people who have the worst clunkers can't afford to buy a new car, even with an extra $4500. Many of the 'clunkers' that are being destroyed are much nicer than my car, which is worth about $700. Without a job, I can't even afford to spend a few hundred dollars to upgrade to a better car. Why couldn't the program offer to give the 'clunkers' to people who bring their even worse cars in trade? Then at least it wouldn't be quite as annoying. I'm sure the environment would be better off if I were driving that Volvo they destroyed than if I kept driving my old Ford that has a couple bad catalytic converters and doesn't get spark to all 8 cylinders on rainy days. Looks like I'm stuck with my old Ford, since much of the supply of decent used cars is being destroyed.
They use some kind of sodium based chemical to actually seize the MOST VALUED single part of a used car. Especially since many of these "clunkers" are not!
I can just picture Obama, and his Czars and Al Gore rubbing their squirrley little hands together and drooling at all these "guzzlers" biting the dust.
I have never seen such a waste of $1,000,000,000.
With my life long love the the automobile, those two videos are very very disturbing to watch. Especially WITH sound.
This is nothing less than autothanasia!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0IcIxhd8ks
More autothanasia.
Disturbing.
This is truly disturbing. What about the waste of resources that goes into destroying a functional vehicle? Many of these old cars were easy to maintain for a very long time. Taking them out of operation probably buys nothing in the end.
so if you have two or more clunkers at your house you cannot trade both of them for one car. The program is for one per
person.
Jimhenry
Blogger
www.cashforclunkersfacts.info
I agree with Timothy Logsdon there are many of us that can only afford to go from one clunker to another and I for one would have been delighted to have that little Volvo. How stupid can our government get and how much must other countries be laughing their butts off at us. I feel bad for the cars, no decent running car should ever be destroyed like that.
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