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Old 08-10-2009, 08:28 AM   #30
Bladecutter
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Arvada, CO
Posts: 229
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lil bastard
Sorry, IMHO, this was an ill-concieved program rushed into being simply as a first 100-days stunt by the White House. It is socialism, shifting the wealth.
Why exactly is a shifting of the wealth a bad thing?

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!

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.

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?

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.

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.

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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'98 Silver Boxster, '08 Ducati 848, '89 Honda Hawk GT, '89 Honda Pacific Coast
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