Cash For Clunkers

Now some people might say that this is a successful gummint program because it's been so popular and ran out of money in a week. Well, it is not a successful gummint program and I'll give you three reasons why.

1. All it is doing is time shifting auto purchases. The people who are buying cars now, are the same people who would eventually be buying cars in the future but now won't. So the auto sales numbers look good now but this is just at the sacrifice of future car sales.

2. In the name of "clunkers" perfectly good cars are being destroyed. I posted a video of a perfectly good Volvo engine being destroyed. This is a car that could have replaced an actual clunker, yannow, like one of those really rundown wrecks that "the poor" drive that we really need to take off the road. This is a wanton destruction of capital but then this program was created by rat bastard commies and no one knows how to destroy capital and wealth better than rat bastard commies. See Zimbabwe, Cuba, and the old USSR. Coming soon, Venezuela.

3. The people replacing the "clunkers" are not buying American. Thanks to Paul for the link.

Aug. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Four of the top five models sold so far under the U.S. “cash for clunkers” program, aimed at boosting the auto industry, are made by foreign automakers, according to Transportation Department data.

So we're stimulating sales of foreign automobiles. How neat is that? So what is the top selling American car?

Ford Motor Co.’s Focus was the top seller, followed by Toyota Motor Corp.’s Corolla, Honda Motor Co.’s Civic and Toyota’s Prius and Camry, data from the department showed today.

Holy crap! Ford, the only Anerican company not to take a bailout from the gummint is the top seller!

Initial clunkers legislation sponsored by Representative Betty Sutton, an Ohio Democrat, would have barred discounts for new vehicles manufactured overseas and offered higher payments for cars and trucks produced in the U.S. than for those made in Canada and Mexico. The “Buy American” provision was dropped from the final legislation because of opposition from foreign automakers and free-trade advocates who said it would conflict with U.S. obligations to the World Trade Organization.

As a free trader, I would have been against that legislation. I'm against the cash for clunkers bill because it is a waste of money and is taking perfectly good cars off the road.

Turns out reason three does not bother me after all. I just think it is a delicious irony that the federal gummint is stimulating the sales of foreign cars. What do you think of that all of you UAW workers?

Vehicles made by the three largest U.S. automakers -- General Motors Co., Ford and Chrysler Group LLC -- were fewer than half of sales under the program through Aug. 1, according to Transportation Department data obtained yesterday. The companies accounted for 47 percent of the clunkers transactions.

Looks like the American people know where to go for quality. Granted, some of the foreign cars were built in the US.

The data didn’t break out where the cars sold were manufactured. Some vehicles sold by foreign companies are manufactured in the U.S.

“A lot of these cars are made in America by American workers in plants that are right here in America,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said today in an interview on Bloomberg Television.

Honda’s Civic is built in Greensburg, Indiana, and Alliston, Ontario. Those plants make more than 95 percent of the Civics for North America.

The BMW Z3 I bought back in 2001 was built in South Carolina.

So let's review. The US gummint is now gonna throw another $2 billion to get people to buy cars they would have bought eventually anyhow. Then they're gonna destroy the perfectly good "clunkers" like that Volvo, that people trade in. The largest beneficiaries of this boondoggle are foreign automakers.

Liberals would be cute if they weren't so stupid.

Posted by denny at August 5, 2009 01:18 PM