We knew (at least those of us not idiots) that it was criminally insane from an economic standpoint, but it also turns out that it was an environmental disaster.
3 thoughts on “Cash For Clunkers”
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We knew (at least those of us not idiots) that it was criminally insane from an economic standpoint, but it also turns out that it was an environmental disaster.
Comments are closed.
Reason doesn’t work on their reality. That is the big problem that must be corrected. Somewhere down the road we’re getting a president for life because that’s obviously the only way to fix the problems for good and get rid of all those embarrassing people that would point such environmental and economic problems out.
Hrmmm.
Gee, what a shock. Taking used cars out of the marker drove up the price of used cars, thus hurting the poor most of all.
For the direct economic “benefit”, the University of Delaware calculated that the net loss to the economy from the program was 1.4 billion. This does not include secondary effects such as the used car dealerships hurt.
And now we learn, equally unshockingly, that scrapping hundreds of thousands of old cars created waste and pollution, and so did manufacturing their replacements.
Cash for Clunkers turned out to be the real clunker (to the surprise of no one who has ever heard of supply and demand).
How utterly non-ironic that Cash for Clunkers was passed by an economic ignoramus clunker of a president with a love for taking other people’s cash.
There was also that cash assistance for “first time home buyers.” It helped home buyers meet the threshold for the downpayment, but it seemed that it help jack up the price of homes so that the buyer ended up carrying more debt, with the seller (often the bank in a distress sale) pocketing the money.