Legislators and regulators need to observe a fundamental Golden Rule: Do not implement new laws if you have not considered or cannot control important unintended consequences. Posted on 08/08/2012 5:37:53 AM PDT by Kaslin
Legislators and regulators need to observe a fundamental Golden Rule: Do not implement new laws if you have not considered or cannot control important unintended consequences.
A perfect example is the Obama Administration’s plan to increase new car mileage standards, from the currently legislated requirement of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016 to 54.5 mpg by 2025, as an average across each automaker’s complete line of cars and light trucks.
Carmakers reluctantly agreed to the new requirements, to avoid even more onerous standards, or different standards in different states. But the deal does nothing to alter the harsh realities of such a requirement.
First, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) analyses indicate that the mileage standards will add $3,000 to $4,800 to the average price of new vehicles for models from now until 2025. Moreover, this price increase does not include the $2,000 to $6,000 in total interest charges that many borrowers would have to pay over the life of a 36-60 month loan.
The consequence: 6 million to 11 million low-income drivers will be unable to afford new vehicles during this 13-year period, according to the National Auto Dealers Association (NADA). These drivers will essentially be eliminated from the new vehicle market, because they cannot afford even the least expensive new cars without a loan – and many cannot meet minimal lending standards to get that loan.
These drivers will be forced into the used car market. However, far fewer used cars are available today, because the $3-billion “cash for clunkers” program destroyed 690,000 perfectly drivable cars and trucks that otherwise would have ended up in used car lots. In addition, the poor economy is causing many families to hold onto their older cars longer than ever before.
Exacerbating the situation, the average price of used cars and trucks shot from $8,150 in December 2008 to $11,850 three years later, say the NADA and Wall Street Journal. With interest rates of 5-10% (depending on the bank, its lending standards and a borrower’s financial profile), even used cars are unaffordable for many poor families, if they can find one.
All this forces many poor families to buy “hoopties,” pieces of junk that cost much more to operate than a decent low-mileage used car. These higher operating costs can cripple families in borderline poverty situations.
The compounded financial impact is a “regressive” tax and a war on the poor.
Another, far worse consequence of the skyrocketing mileage requirements is that many cars will need to be made smaller, lighter, and with thinner metal and more plastic, to achieve the new “corporate average fleet economy” (CAFÉ) standards.
These vehicles – even with seatbelts, air bags and expensive vehicle modifications – will not be as safe as they would be if mileage weren’t a major consideration. They will have less “armor” to protect drivers and passengers, and less space between vehicle occupants and whatever car, truck, bus, wall, tree or embankment their car might hit.
The NHTSA, Brookings Institution, Harvard School of Public Health, National Academy of Sciences and USA Today discovered a shocking reality. Even past and current mileage standards have resulted in thousands of additional fatalities, and tens of thousands of serious injuries, every year – above what would have happened if the government had not imposed those standards.
They also learned that drivers in lightweight cars were up to twelve times more likely to die in a crash – and far more likely to suffer serious injury and permanent disabilities.
Increasing mileage requirements by a whopping 19 mpg above current rules will make nearly all cars even less safe than they are today.
For obvious reasons, most legislators, regulators and environmental activists have not wanted to discuss these issues. But they need to do so, before existing mileage requirements are made even more stringent.
These affordability and safety problems may be unintended. However, no government officials – elected or unelected – can claim they are unaware of them.
Finally, the asserted goals of CAFÉ standards may once have been somewhat persuasive. The standards were necessary, it was argued, to preserve US oil reserves that were rapidly being depleted, reduce oil imports from unstable parts of the world, and prevent dangerous global warming. However, the rationales used to justify these onerous, unfair, injurious and lethal mileage standards are no longer persuasive.
New seismic, drilling and production technologies have dramatically increased our nation’s oil and natural gas reserves. Opening some of the publicly owned lands that are currently off limits would increase reserves even more. Using government and industry data, the Institute for Energy Research has calculated that the USA, Canada and Mexico alone have 1.7 trillion barrels of recoverable oil reserves – enough to meet current US needs for another 250 years – and another 175 years of natural gas.
As to global warming, even the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is now backing away from previous claims about alarming changes in global temperatures, sea levels, polar ice caps and major storms, due to greenhouse gas emissions.
All of us should conserve energy and be responsible stewards of the Earth and its bounties, which God has given us. However, to ignore the unpleasant realities of existing and proposed mileage mandates is unethical, immoral and unjust.
We must not emphasize fuel savings at the cost of excluding poor families from the automobile market – and putting people at greater risk of serious injury or death.
Of course Zero can make that happen.
All downhill. Zero gallons a mile.
What’s being overlooked here is that you can’t legislate technology advances and innovation. That happens as a part of Capitalism & the free market economic model.
If the geniuses in Washington really believe that all they have to do is pass a law to fix a problem, why don’t they dictate that medicine develop a cure for cancer by 2015?
Don’t the care about us?
Sheesh...
Light trucks were previously exempt from these rules, but the Obama Administration now includes them in the targeted 54.5 mpg CAFE average.
This is not going to impact just cars, but SUVs and work trucks.
Perhaps the worst “unintended consequence” of CAFE can be seen by examining the aftermath of the first round of standards begun in the late 70’s.
The automakers did succeed in increasing the fuel economy of cars by roughly 50%. This means that the cost per mile driven went down significantly.
Over time, these more efficient vehicles enabled the exodus from city centers to suburbs and beyond. Commuting an hour or more to work became the norm instead of the exception.
CAFE accelerated urban sprawl and created the shopping mall.
It is estimated that we drive some 35% more today than we did pre-CAFE.
Those of us already outside city centers probably cannot drive much more than we already do, but is it not possible that the future government mandated efficiency will engender further exit from our cities, and thus increase the amount of fuel we use?
In which alternative universe can the conservation of a commodity be increased by making it cheaper to use?
These kinds of policies always make me wonder: do progressives hate poor people?
Don’t you love Central Planning.
Pray for America
Saw a lot of sparse streets with old cars, buses, odd carts, bikes & carriage contraptions. The only newish looking things were these little putt-putt things that looked like the "antique cars" you drive at the amusement park.
Here's my fave (I'm guessing it's from Asia somwhere?
Along the way you can make vroomvroom noises and a scrreeeeech noise when you stop or go around corners.
Just a few weeks a guy said that very thing to me.
I stopped to help him start his car. He had just bought it 3 days before, and it was dead on side of the road.
He said because of the Cash for Clunkers all he could afford was a pile of junk.
He said he was trying to keep working and not go on welfare but it was getting too expensive for him to work. There wasn't anything left to live on.
There was one black voter that had no intention of voting for Zippo again.
I agree with all but one word:
“Unintended”.
Nothing by this administration is unintended. It’s all going according to plan.
By 2025, we’ll all be dying in fiery crashes that today, would “buff out” with a little wax.
But they drove with pride.
I just bought a 2002 Audi TT, AWD. Of course it’s a convertible. I spent $11K on it and can’t imagine any new car for under $30K I would like as much.
If you have basic mechanical skills, a used car can be a great option.
Because of CAFE, they will have to sell the small cars at almost no profit...and tack on a huge prmium to the larger vehicles.
I have long thought that the higher CAFE had the INTENDED consequence of making it harder for Joe Siz Pack to own a pickup truck. With a truck, you can do crazy things, like start a small (non-union/non crony capitalism) business....and in general have way too much independence.
Just a guess but I think that the average American simply flouts the law. They'll keep their old cars on the road. Disconnecting advanced systems (emissions, electronic ignition, etc) as they fail. A whole black/grey-market industry will spring-up to keep older cars on the road. Gypsy garages, too.
Then the "ball" will be in the government's court. Do the ignore the violators? They probably will if they are confined to favored minority groups living in no-go areas where regulations are already being flouted. Or do they get agressive with rolling inspections? If that happens then you're going to see sparks of violence.
Yes, regulation makes the big boys too big to fail.
How about getting the inefficient Ethanol out of the fuel chain first. You’d see vehicle mileage increase accordingly.
C for C destroyed an incredible amount of perfectly good used cars. A total sin.
How much pollution and resources were consumed to create the new vehicles to replace these perfectly good used vehicles?
The idiotic fools in government destroy everything they touch.
I'm 50 years old, 6-5" tall and weigh 215-lbs. I have the usual lumbar problems from athletics and a work-a-day life. I physically do not fit into these roller skates that they are building now. If CAFE mandates nothing but Prius' & Smart Cars, I'm quite literally in a world of hurt.
Unintended consequences? The cost of aluminum is going to soar due to increased demand in the auto industry. So the price of everything else made of aluminum will soar, too. Expect increases in the cost of air travel (aluminum in planes), canned beverages and aluminum foil.
Realistically, now. Who could possibly have anticipated increases in the cost of corn when half the supply goes into our gas tanks?
Reading past the headline often pays rewards.
Progressives have “solved poverty” by making it illegal.
Prohibiting affordable transportation is just one of many ways they’ve implemented a practical ban on functional poverty. Poor and need a car? sorry, all the viable “clunkers” were destroyed (at a cost of $24,000 per car), gas taxes raise per-gallon prices 33%, cumulative mileage & safety minimums double base prices, and financing what is available jacks resale prices. But there’s mass transit that goes from where you aren’t to where you’re not going!
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