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Originally Posted by Bladecutter
Why exactly is a shifting of the wealth a bad thing?
Wealth is not a privledge or a right, it is the reward for getting educated and working hard, either you, or someone in your family before you.
Lower income people have an easier time getting into college (esp. minorities) due to scholarships because of economic need, not to mention quotas and lowered admissions standards. Add to this that these people emerge from their education without the burden of loans that most middle-class kids have to carry through the first decade of their careers. And, you can even forget about education altogether - the top 5 wealthiest people in the US did not get a college degree.
You make it sound as if it's wrong to acquire wealth. If it's such a bad thing, why are you in favor of spreading it around? You don't need the government to do it, just give away a portion of your paycheck every two weeks, nothing wrong with that. But, don't try to take away a portion of my paycheck - that, you have no right to do!
I won't go into a piece by piece analysis of your post, but I will concentrate on the overall theme.
First off, you are correct, that the only people truly being helped by this program are the fairly well off middle class. They have good enough credit in order to be given a car loan right now, and have enough income that they can afford a new car payment, after the deduction of the $4500 from the new cars MSRP.
A poorer person or family most likely can not afford to replace their POS truck that they bought several years ago when gas prices were low, and the wealthy have vehicles that most likely do not meet the definition of a clunker.
So the middle class gets the most benefit.
Oh my! Someone is trying to help the middle class! Lets string up the current administration for helping the common man!
You are making a lot of assumptions here since NO data about the CARS program has been released.
Why is it that when something like this program gets released, there are factions who can't really take advantage of it, get their panties all bunched up? You obviously don't need the help as much as a middle class family, if you're not driving a POS truck that gets crap for gas mileage, and is on its last legs reliability wise.
Again, assumptions. In fact, I own a car that is the poster child of the CARS program. I would get the max $4500 for it in trade. But, I do not believe in handouts, or assuming unecessary debt, which is what I would have to do were I to trade it for a new vehicle. My wife and I combined put less than 10k mi./yr. on our vehicles, so I am not gobbling up vast quantities of oil, or spewing tons of carbon out the tailpipe.
Honestly, I'm all in favor of just about any program that will get SUV's off of the public roads. They waste fuel when they are driven as single person transportation. They waste resources for all the oil that goes into creating tires and oil for all the parts that need them. They are rarely ever used in 4 wheel drive mode by the average owner during the life of the vehicle. So why were people buying them in the first place?
If you want the SUVs off the road, why not legislate against them, if the automakers didn't make them, they wouldn't be available. And, if you do your research, you'd see that the advent of the SUV by automakers was to avoid government mandated crash safety and mileage requirements (because they were technically trucks and so exempt from requirements for autos), so it was the government, in well meaning, but shortsighted legislation which created this issue to begin with. And, while you're at it, why not eliminate the Boxster and other sports cars since they too are not the best gas mileage or crash safety rated vehicles out there?
Then we look at the vehicles that people are trading in their '95 Ford Explorer in on. A Nissan Altima, a Toyota Prius, a Honda Civic. All three of those cars are considerably better on fuel economy, have good to excellent reliability records, hold their value better over the long run, and put out fewer emissions than that Ford Explorer.
I would much rather have the highways filled with those three brand new cars than it filled with smoke belching, badly aligned, fuel wasting, unsafely maintained SUV's being driven by inattentive fools who are too busy texting on their phone, or are having a conversation with their husband/wife about who's responsible for their idiot daughter/son's ignorant behavior that got their self expelled from school, and then have that person blow a light, and t-bone me in my Boxster.
Unbelievable! So, according to you, swapping cars through this program will immediately cause everyone's attention level and driving skill to improve, their kids will become better behaved, and we'll never see another cell phone conversation while driving. If only that were true, I'd actually be in favor of the program myself!
If the SUV t-bones me, I'm probably not living through the accident.
If a Honda Civic hits me instead, I probably will.
That means that my family won't have to bury me.
That kind of means a lot to me, to be right frank about it.
There are lots of families out there that a program like this one helps immediately. Not everyone can afford to buy a new home, to get that tax credit. Not everyone owns a home in order to write off the interest they pay on their mortgage. Not everyone has 3 kids to write off on their taxes. Not everyone has a capital gains loss that they can write off on their taxes every year. Not everyone can afford to invest in a 401k program that allows them to lower their gross wages, and fall into a lower tax bracket, and get a good match from their employer for that 401k, which means that they actually make more money in the long run.
Boo-Hoo... so we're supposed to make everything right by taking from the rich and giving to the poor? Then, don't they become the rich? This is all so confusing!
So let the common man who could use a break get an extra discount on their car.
Their lives get improved a slight bit as they get to enjoy the new car smell for a month or so.
Also, one person I was talking to in the Walmart parking lot a couple weeks ago took advantage of the cash for clunkers program the day before I ran into them. They traded in an old SUV that was costing them several hundred dollars a month for a new Kia Spectra.
The Kia started off as a $15k car.
Take off $4500 for the program.
Take off another $5500 for the fact that the car had hail damage from a bad storm we had a week before they bought it.
They just bought a brand new car with a full 10 year warrantee for ~$5000.
So now they went from spending several hundred dollars a month on a POS truck, to not having to spend anything on their new car, because they were able to pay the $5000 with cash they had actually saved up.
That sounds like it was beneficial to them.
I like that.
BC.
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