For the government to give it must first take. People cashing in clunkers don’t mind stealing from their neighbor, they just let the government do the robbing for them.
I don’t see it that way. The people who are able to take advantage of the program have already paid plenty in taxes. Those tax monies have either been grossly wasted by the government in a myriad of ways, or given to some ‘poor’ person who won’t get off their fat ass and go to work, or corruptly used by legislators and government executives for paybacks to their crony supporters. I have no objection to the middle class Americans who made this a great country getting something tangible in their hands for a change. Their ‘neighbors’ you mention would have had to pay the tax anyway, which would have been pissed down a rathole. Better that it go to my neighbor than a bureaucrat or some ghetto lowlife or some bloodsucking, corrupt entity like ACORN or NARAL. I think that the attitude of “they’re stealing from their neighbors” is just falling for the ‘divide and conquer’ agenda the Marxist regime running this country is advancing.
That said, it’s a bad program for a lot of reasons long term, but let’s not let the Marxists trick us into turning on our own kind over it. We need to focus our well-deserved ire on them, not our neighbors or the guy trying to get to work and feed and shelter his family.