More Thoughts On "Cash For Clunkers"

Sleeping On It Hasn't Changed My Opinion...


I had some more ideas on the unintended consequences of the latest Congressional vote buying taxpayer money giveaway disguised as an "auto stimulus and climate change prevention program. (let's call it ASACCPP for short)"

Look at this chart:



and think about it with me for a minute while I explain some more details on how it's supposed to work.

Suppose that you have a car that's less than 25 years old, gets less than 18 mpg (when it was new), and is on the mysterious government approval list.

You wander down to your local dealer, buy or lease a NEW, previously untitled vehicle and drive off the lot having paid a reduced price based on whatever rebates the manufacturer is offering...

AND EITHER $3,500 OR $4,500 OF Government bonus under the CARS program.

And notice that on the above chart in the "Large Truck" category i.e. a Suburban or Tahoe, you only have to improve the mileage by 1 MPG to get the $3,500 and 2 MPG to claim $4,500.

Interesting?

I thought we were talking about huge mileage and pollution changes to warrant the Government handing out your and my money in giant chunks to support total strangers buying a chassis and a set of new wheels.

Then in order to make sure that the EVIL gas guzzling polluting machine is forever off the streets of the planet, the dealer has to pour some gook (actually sodium silicate) into the engine and rev it up and run it until it siezes up and explodes. Now the car/truck/SUV is worthless except for parts, and most of the older ones are simply being sold as scrap and/or crushed.

Anyone but me see any problem with this kind of Government market/product availability tampering?

Suppose that you're just some regular Joe Smuck working an average 40 hour job, and suppose you can't afford or don't need to take advantage of the ASACCPP program, and suppose that next year or the year after...AFTER this program is "supposed" to finally be over with (assuming it doesn't end now but instead goes the extra year or two Congress is debating) you end up needing a USED vehicle...

because you don't want a new one with the associated instant devaluation that goes with driving it off the dealer lot, or you still can't afford a new vehicle of the kind you need for your family or business.

What do you think the used car market is gonna look like then?

See, you're a carpenter and you can't afford a new $17,000 Ford F-150. What you want is a $7,000 five year old USED F-150 with a heavy chassis and a big engine because you pull a tool trailer on the weekdays and a bass boat on the weekends.

(Here's my point...stay with me here...)

Don't you imagine the pool of used 2006 model year trucks is going to look substantially different in 2011 than it looks this Summer?

And don't you suspect that due to the scarcity of your dream truck, that the price you pay is going to be substantially greater because CarMax and the "buy here pay here" used car dealer down by the grocery store only has TWO rather than Twenty on their colorful streamer and balloon filled sales lots?

Or suppose that instead of a newer used truck you just want to buy a low mileage replacement engine and put a paint job on your old hauler.

Since they're blowing up perfectly good engines, how many complete engines are you going to find sitting around at the local junkyard or on E-bay?

Can you say "Virtually None"???

And like whole working trucks, the few whole working engines will be more expensive by then...and I bet you dollars to doughnuts that somewhere in the fine print of this CARS program is a stipulation that the manufacturers stop selling new replacement motors like the one you need and further...

the next thing you'll know you won't be able to buy critical parts for your existing motor because the Government will have forced the manufacturers to stop making them too.

And you think that this program will ever actually go away?

I guarandamntee you it most definitely will for everyone but "working families" and "the disenfranchised", so expect to see thousands of tax dollars paid out as a never ending stream of new "rebates" and "subsidies" and "programs" and "investments" continue flowing into peoples' pockets that didn't earn it but instead are deemed by officials to "NEED" the money.

Heck, the government is already giving away housing, food, insurance, health care, and recently "emergency" cell phones to various freeloaders, deadbeats, illegals and street people...how long before they start just outright giving away new cars to the same ACORN constituency?

(And before you start bitching and writing me nasty comments and e-mails let me say I'm not referring everybody or anybody in particular here, but you know the government and I know human nature and we can bet that the level of fraud and waste in every single program I mention is/has been already proven to be incredible.)

So now we have additional billions of dollars spent in an entirely new area of Nanny Government intrusion, and for WHAT????

Somebody PLEASE, please tell me I'm wrong here so I can sleep at night...

It's all a lie...it's all done under the guise of saving only something like the equivalent amount of gas in an ENTIRE year that we burn as a nation over a long weekend, WHILE reducing the total CO2 output of the old "Clunkers" turned in by something like 0.01% over that same period of time (I admit that those are approximate figures because I'm too lazy to Google them but I remember the numbers are tiny in reality.)

It's all Bullshit...it's all about buying votes through wealth distribution in the end. I tell you people, this thing is going to blow up and come back to bite most if not virtually all of us in the long run.

You know that I could go on and on about other things that will probably happen, but I have to stop writing now before my head explodes and I pound the keys off my keyboard.

dammit...