Clunker progressivism

Washington Post ^ | November 6, 2013 | By George Will

[Brad from Tennessee]

Barack Obama’s presidency has become a feast of failures whose proliferation protects their author from close scrutiny of any one of them. Now, however, we can revisit one of the first and see it as a harbinger of progressivism’s downward stumble to HealthCare.gov.

“Cash for Clunkers” was born with Obama’s administration as a component of his stimulus. Its fate is a window into both why the recovery has been extraordinarily weak and what happens when progressives’ clever plans collide with recalcitrant reality.

Consumers could trade in older vehicles and receive vouchers toward the purchase of a new, more fuel- efficient car. The vouchers were worth $3,500 or $4,500, depending on the difference in fuel economy between the trade-in and the new purchase. The program’s purposes were economic stimulation and environmental improvement.

Now a study by Ted Gayer and Emily Parker, published by the Brookings Institution, a mildly liberal think tank, concludes: “The $2.85 billion in vouchers provided by the program had a small and short-lived impact on gross domestic product, essentially shifting roughly a few billion dollars forward from the subsequent two quarters following the program.”

Most of the 677,842 sales were simply taken from the near future. That many older vehicles were traded in — and, as required by law, destroyed. . .

[pepsionice]

In the year 2104, I can see some history book for college students with an entire page devoted to Cash-for-Clunkers. People will wonder how you could be that stupid and naive.

[Skepolitic]

Not just stupid and naive, but insane.

[beachn4fun]

Just another example of how OUR money is wasted.

WHY? are we paying for someone else’s junk when we need money for other things?

Our government has gone spend and tax crazy

[Fresh Wind]

Vast numbers of perfectly good usable vehicles were destroyed. To anyone who has struggled to keep an old beater on the road, as I have, to see the videos of what they did to destroy these vehicles is absolutely infuriating.

Those vehicles could have found their way to lower income people to be used to take them to jobs, but King FUBO has made sure that those jobs were replaced by welfare checks and EBT cards, so they wouldn’t need to drive anyway.

[Brad from Tennessee]

[Vast numbers of perfectly good usable vehicles were destroyed.]

A friend of mine owns a couple of new car dealerships as well as a used car wholesale operation. The prices of good used vehicles were already high because the recession had shifted demand from new cars to used. After Cash-for-Clunkers these prices went higher. There was also a big price jump in the used parts market.

The environmental value of this scheme is probably a net negative. This is because a new car must be manufactured—entailing everything from mining and smelting steel to producing various plastics and other components then shipping it all to the plant—to replace every used car taken off the road.