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Cash for Clunkers Coda

What a shock : analysts at Edmunds.com report the cost to taxpayers of this fraud of a waste of borrowed federal dollars...

The Cash for Clunkers program gave car buyers rebates of up to $4,500 if they traded in less fuel-efficient vehicles for new vehicles that met certain fuel economy requirements. A total of $3 billion was allotted for those rebates.

The average rebate was $4,000. But the overwhelming majority of sales would have taken place anyway at some time in the last half of 2009, according to Edmunds.com. That means the government ended up spending about $24,000 each for those 125,000 additional vehicle sales.

Link.


I guess that is on par with the truth about the colossally wasteful spending orgy...err, "stimulus"...when it comes to the taxpayer cost for jobs "created or saved". In a recap of analysis by ProPublica.com :

Assuming the number of created or saved jobs reported by each contract recipient was accurate—which, as we’ve reported before, is still an open question—that breaks down to $533,000 for each job. That’s more than five times the projection of the president’s own Council of Economic Advisers , which estimated in May that every $92,136 in government spending would create one job for one year.


As I heard this morning on the radio, pointing out the dangerous farce that is the ongoing fiscally-reckless leftist chicanery of our ruling DC masters : "Just a spoon full of socialism will make capitalism get better."

I would ask "will they never learn?", but hard statist ideology is not in the business of dealing with reality, it is all about endlessly trying to manipulate it...while charging their gluttonous tab to the rest of us.

Comments

Delaware Watch said…
"The average rebate was $4,000. But the overwhelming majority of sales would have taken place anyway at some time in the last half of 2009, according to Edmunds.com."

Ah, because they say so, that makes it true.
October 29, 2009 at 12:42 PM
Anonymous said…
Then i am not part of the majority cause i certainly wouldnt have done it.
October 29, 2009 at 3:37 PM
Tyler Nixon said…
Oh of course, because they disagree with Dana they are immediately questioned as to their truthfulness.

http://www.edmunds.com/help/about/profile.html

Looks to me like they know what they are talking about, and certainly have no political axe to grind, by a long shot.

They are not just 'saying so' (as if your own comments on the program have ever approached anything resembling rational numerical or economic analysis.)

I am sure you would say the same about "Blue Book" values or NADA guides, right : "Ah, because they say so, that makes it true."

Good luck with that, if it's the best response you can muster, if a response at all.
October 29, 2009 at 3:44 PM
Pedro Delgado said…
There where so many restrictions with this clunker deal i didn't even bother to take advantage seems like a big fraud deal to me.
October 30, 2009 at 3:34 PM
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