[TigersEye]

Cash for Clunkers ...

• Trashed cars with half their service life left. A waste of the necessary pollutants created in their manufacture.
• Took cars out of the used car market raising used car prices. Hurts the poor.
• Traded 18 mpg cars for 28 mpg cars. Negligible pollution reduction.
• Created an artificial bubble in new car sales that promptly crashed.
• Cost the taxpayers more than it saved the car buyers. Net loss to the economy.

Another failed policy of the 0ba-Mao administration!

[BenKenobi]

“There is no way to verify how many cars would have sold without the program. It’s just impossible to know.”

Sure there is. They keep statistics on this going back quite a ways. 200k per month in the US are eventually replaced, regardless of the subsidy or not. With the subsidy you have about 280k per month. An increase, but again, the marginal cost on the increase over and above normal sales, is very cost-inefficient.

[maryz]

•Cost the taxpayers more than it saved the car buyers.

Anyone know how much buyers actually saved? I'm assuming that, since turned-in cars had to be destroyed, the buyers got cash-for-clunkers instead of trade-in value (obviously nil); presumably that was more than trade-in value would have been, but the actual value was only c-for-c minus potential trade-in.