Cash for Clunkers a prelude to Government Health Care

[Andy]

First, this is another one of those really brainless systems where people allow the government to take money from their back pocket, to give it to their front. Yay I got $4,500 dollars, that they looted from my paycheck! Undoubtedly taxes will go up very soon, yet that won't stop ignorant people from supporting it.

Yet even the implementation was horrible.
http://wbztv.com/local/cash.for.clunkers.2.1105400.html

The Web site began to have problems early on. Dealers say 15 minutes after it went online Saturday, it crashed.

After an entire 15 minutes, the government site crashes. Let's hope they can do just as good a job with health care.

Dealers have complained non-stop about the insane regulations and governmental hoops they have to jump through to get the rebate.

“There is absolute frustration across the board,” Alex Kurkin, a lawyer based in Miami who represents several car dealerships, tells The Lede today. “As of this morning, they’re not really confident about any deals, and no one can give them advice about what they should be telling their customers.”

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/dealers-race-to-get-their-clunkers-crushed/?hp

Can't wait for the health care nightmare.

Further, it doesn't even do what it was intended to do, while at the same time destroying wealth.

Nick Clites, who is in charge of used cars for the dealership, was prepping a 1988 BMW 535IS, with 214,000 miles on the odometer, for its death. He drained the oil, then donned a silky blue protective suit, goggles and gloves and poured a sodium silicate solution into the engine. He revved the car, and within a few seconds, the solution hardened into a glass-like substance, the engine seized up and the car was dead.

With the goal being to get people out of low mpg cars, and into high mpg cars, the BMW 535IS is rated at 26 MPG. That's low mileage?

Better still, from an economics stand point, this is absolutely nuts. In the middle of a recession, our government is actually paying people to destroy wealth. Perfectly good cars are being destroyed. That's brilliant.

New-car shoppers appear to have already snapped up all the $1 billion that Congress appropriated for the “cash for clunkers” program, leading the Transportation Department to tell auto dealers Thursday night to stop offering the rebates.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/business/31clunkers.html

Not only brilliant, but it's also broke. In under 6 days, all the money was gone. Boy I can't wait till they do this with health care! What else can they bankrupt us on?

"Cash for Clunkers" came to a screeching halt Thursday, after only six days on the road.

I'm shocked. Aren't you?

What is even more ironic is that the people who could be most harmed by this program or the often cited poor people that Liberals claim to care about. After all, by removing perfectly fine older cars from the road, it will make it more difficult for low-income people to find affordable transportation. But snobbish liberals never care about that.

The Environmental Protection Agency said 78 vehicles no longer qualify as trade-ins under the program, while another 86 vehicles have been added to the list of those that qualify.

http://www.columbusdispatch.com/liv...ries/2009/07/29/clunkerconfusion.html?sid=101

Huh, sounds like socialized medicine where suddenly you are too old to benefit from this surgery, or suddenly finding out your prescription medication is no longer considered cost-effective. Don't you love government programs?

In some cases, the "refreshed" ratings show the potential trade-ins with a higher mileage rating than previously indicated by the EPA, and make them ineligible for the Cash for Clunkers program.

Thursday a Clunker; Friday It's Not

Edmunds.com learned of the EPA's mileage rating changes over the weekend from consumers who had checked their trade-ins' combined mileage rating as recently as last Thursday to make sure the vehicle qualified. They then discovered while shopping for a new vehicle over the weekend that they no longer qualified because of the EPA's mileage ratings refresh.

We can always trust government though. They'll never bait and switch on us. Especially with cost....

After "cash for clunkers" proved so popular that it threatened to run out of cash within its first week, the House pushed aside the other items on its agenda today to save it, passing a bill that allots another $2 billion to keep the program running.

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news...give-cash-for-clunkers-another-2-billion.html

I can't wait till they find GovCare so popular they deiced to keep it running longer than a week as well. Maybe add another $2 Trillion for it.

You really want these idiots controlling health care? They can't even run a program to for old-car trade ins, without it crashing the first 15 minutes, blowing through the entire budget in a week, and tripleing the original cost estimate!!

It didn't even really boost car sales either! Thousands choose not to buy a car for months before hand because they heard about this deal coming up. Further, thousands more choose to buy a car, that they would have bought anyway, early to take advantage of the deal. In short, the slow sales prior, and the forth coming slow sales after this program, will offset any gains in sales during it.

Not to mention, dealerships are getting burned in the process....

In Mr. Lee’s description:

1. We have not had one application accepted without it being rejected numerous times.

2. We have 9 people at 5 dealerships working full time on this, it should take one person.

3. We have over 100 waiting to be paid and have not been paid on one yet.

4. They changed the rules part way through.

5. It is a mess.

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/cash-for-clunkers-one-dealers-tale/

Hey look at that! A waiting list, and it's not even socialized health care! So they have nine people working on just submitting applications for this program. Sounds like a government run system to me. What do you think?

Whatever minor economic benefit, will be overshadowed by the coming inflation, or taxation to pay for it. And even beyond that, very few, if any new car sales could be said to have been directly due to the cash for clunkers program. Most would have bought a new car anyway.

Finely it's massive screw ups, blow outs, and going broke, are exactly what I expect from a government program. Who ever came up with paying people to destroy wealth in a recession should be shot anyway.