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Originally Posted by Banana S
gstoli, you've been drinking the kool-aid too much.
Cash for Clunkers is not about reducing foreign oil consumption.
If it were, there would be a second "step" in the process that would allow less-affluent consumers to trade in their true "clunkers" for the cars that were traded in by the more affluent. The guy in Cleveland driving around in a 12-mpg 1976 Caprice that hasn't seen a tune-up since the Reagan years would be happy to get a grand for it in trade on a 17-mpg traded-in "cash for clunkers" car.
Instead, Cleveland guy is still stuck driving the 1976 Caprice, and polluting more to boot. Meanwhile, the engine in the 17-mpg vehicle is rendered permanently inoperable.
Brilliant idea, Obama administration.
Cash for Clunkers is simply "feel good" legislation that is supposed to make the sheeple think that their government is "taking action!" Fortunately, from the online chatter I've seen, most people aren't buying it, and see it for what it really is.
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I'll second this. Even if you approve of the idea of the program (which I don't), it kills me to see plenty of perfectly viable cars (for the less affluent) wind up as scrap.
Not to mention, if I were going to help someone out by offering them $4500 for their car, which was only worth, say, $2000, I would want to sell it for at least $1000 and cut my loss from $4500 to $3500. Multiply this by the number of cars we, as the taxpayer, are effectively buying, and it amounts to a significant sum. How about the car that got traded that was really worth $4000? Another decent car going to the scrap pile for no reason.
I'm also surprised that the environmentalists haven't ********************ed about this yet from the standpoint of the materials and resources used to make these new cars.