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I would like to add to this report by Maddow that it is also the case that Cash for Clunkers is also being used by the Republicans as the reason to not pass health care reform. How does that work?
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or Paperback
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Short Attention Span, is what.
The news report sound bites have two components. The second one – “because it works better than expected” – is of course discarded. The firs – “Cash for Clunkers runs out of money” – is the one that they grabbed on to. Associate it with the meme that government plans only run out of money because they are incompetent and mis-manage things, and you have the cross-over to their arguments against the medical health care programs.
Personally I would love to see health care managed as well as the USPS and the Cash for Clunkers program.
Is Bush’s law about not negotiating prescription prices fixed or will Obama’s team be able to get rid of it?
The only to think that Cash For Clunkers is a failure is to think the purpose of the program was to have a program. If the intent was to get a bunch of guzzling, polluting cars off the road and give the auto industry a badly-needed sales jolt, then, success!
I don’t think they do think it is a failure. I think they need to portray it as a failure so the base can be told the correct thing to think.
When I first heard that Cash For Clunkers ran out of money, I thought that it would definitely get renewed, because “What brain-dead politician would oppose this?” I guess I was wrong.
The problem with the CfC program was not that it worked too good, but that it was too popular and set the bar too low. Cars that worked fine as designed and built (my emphasis) qualified as clunkers. The program was meant to be too broad, and was applied too broadly.
The program serves as an example of what happens when bureaucratic efficiency trumps real world concerns. The Medi-Cal program (California’s version of Medicaid) serves as another example. For Medi-Cal has regulations which require uneconomical actions on the part of health care providers.
In a sense the CfC did work too well, but only because it was set up loosely and poorly. And as a government operation the factors that constrain private enterprise such as the need to make money and satisfy business owners weren’t there.
Getting old worn out cars off the road is a good thing. How the CfC went about doing it was not such a good thing. For most people have a talent for taking advantage of suckers.
Cash for clunkers effectively is distorting the low end used car market, pressuring it toward the 4K mark (far more than I have ever paid for a used car). It ‘benefits’ only they buyers of new cars, and the requirement that the cars be destroyed (not just scrapped) keeps parts away from those people who could rally use them.
Profoundly elitist ‘solution’
Actually, it is not necessarily true that it keeps parts away from those who need them, or if it does, that this is bad.
The engines are destroyed. The rest of the car goes to a salvage yard. I don’t know what happens at the salvage yard, but I’d like to actually know that before assuming it.
On the other hand, the whole point of the program (well, one of the key points) is to shift our civilian fleet to newer, better mialage cars.
This could be considered elitist because poor people can’t afford to pay for this shift. But, we are actually putting billions of dollars into paying for (part of) that shift. Everybody I know who is taking advantage of this or who could of had the timing been different owned a clunker because they could not afford to not own a clunker and are now (hopefuly) making that change in a subsidized way.
People at the lowest end who can’t make the change even with this subsidy are still screwed, they were screwed before, and they will continue to be screwed. However, they are most definitely screwed in this screwy economy, so the effect of stimulus is a good thing even for the utterly screwed,
The fact that it is only costing a few billion dollars and has single handedly change important measurable stats is very, very impressive. I think they should look at more programs like this.
Like may be an equivalent for laptops!!! Yes!!! Cash for Clunkers Laptop Version!!!!
(Only American Made laptops though.)
The engines are destroyed Used engines are very useful. What a poisonous, freakin waste. You can get years more out of a car if you replace an engine.
Actually much more is destroyed, btw.
And it ONLY benefits potential NEW car buyers (or buyers who financially shouldn’t be new car buyers but are tempted by the offer).
It doesn’t help anyone else on the food chain (unlike conventional trades which help provide needed economical transportation to many people. That’s REAL recycling.
Jay: That is exactly the point. The point of this program is NOT to keep older, lower mileage and more polluting vehicles on the road by maintaining a store of used, old, lower mileage parts.
The program may not be perfect, but the point of using it only for new cars is encourage production and further employment because of it. I’m still undecided as to whether I agree with the only new cars part of it, but there is actually a reason behind it, and it had accomplished what it meant to do.