This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
Economic Sugar Rush
Aug
21
2009
Cash for Clunkers is the economic equivalent of eating sugar when you’re tired.
Sure, the car sales numbers for July and August will be great, but then what happens when the program is canceled on Monday? That’s the problem with government stimulus – it’s a temporary measure. What happens in September, October, November, and December, when all the people who wanted cars this year bought them with the Cash for Clunkers program and there’s no one left to buy cars?
Coming down off the sugar high…
The country needs the economic equivalent of a long-lasting energy bar.
Another point – there are numerous charities that take used cars from you and sell/give them to needy people. You get a tax deduction, and someone who needs a car gets a car. Won’t the charities be hurting for donations this year? I bet they have to restructure their operations because of the reduction in old cars.
Not only will the charities be hurting, but the needy people – the ones who can’t afford a new car – have just witnessed their transportation options being taken away. There were thousands of cars that were perfectly fine and could have helped families with getting to school or jobs, but the government just took all those cars and destroyed them for no good reason.
Okay, there were two reasons the government was doing this Cash for Clunkers thing: stimulate the economy by getting people to buy cars and improve the average gas mileage of the cars in America.
The first point worked, although the lasting effects have yet to be determined.
The second point is why the cars were destroyed. Okay, actually it was just the engines, but effectively that takes out the whole car. That was to prevent cars with low gas mileage from being driven, and that is supposed to combat global warming (and that is another topic for another blog post). Given how little effect that cars have in the global climate, and the fact that gas-fueled cars were just replaced with gas-fueled cars, how much effect will this really have on the environment?
My main question: is that really worth destroying the cars and making life more difficult for poor families? Would it really have hurt that much to distribute the cars to the needy? If you’re a politician who is not convinced of my point, just think of the photo-op and good press that would have got you: here is Senator So-And-So, seen giving a car to a father whose car was repossessed and he needs a car to drive to work so he can afford to feed his children.
Of course, maybe it’s just my innate sense of not being able to throw away things, especially things that are still working. Note to wife: socks with holes in the toe are still considered “working”. Maybe destroy the cars with the worst gas mileage and give away the clunkers with decent gas mileage. Surely some sort of compromise could have been effected.
Last note about Cash for Clunkers – I heard a radio news item that referred to the program as being popular. The evidence they gave for the popularity was that it ran out of money quickly. However, they way they said it put a different image in my mind.
I thought that the money could have disappeared quickly due to embezzlement, political favors, or any number of items not related to the purpose of the program. Just because the government spent the money quickly does not mean that it all went to the right people.
For he has oppressed and forsaken the poor;He has seized a house which he has not built.
Job 20:19
This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 10:39 pm and has been carefully placed in the Current Events category.
August 22nd, 2009 at 2:54 pm
I too am getting tired of government programs that are designed to appease the general population but whose net effect is to hurt poor people. Cash for clunkers – as you’ve mentioned, helps those who can buy a new car, but not those who can buy only used. Minimum wage – makes it harder for businesses to hire more people at the bottom of the wage pyramid. Yes, those that get hired make more, but fewer poor get hired. Pushing ethanol, which raised corn prices, which made lots of food more expensive – since food is a bigger percentage of poor people’s budget, this push ended up affecting poor people the most. Lotteries may increase schools’ budgets, but increased funding does not clearly correspond to better education. What is clear is that a disproportional number of poor play the lottery, making it effectively a tax on poor people. Making all kinds of loans for education available based on need. All that does is allow tuition increases to, year after year, far surpass inflation indices. The net effect is probably to raise presidents’ or head football coaches’ salaries; it certainly doesn’t help the poor, ultimately. How arrogant do you have to be to think that you can solve all the country’s problems with the little programs you think up? What in any country’s history gives politicians a hope that government intervention in economic affairs generally turns out efficient in the long-term?
While I’m rambling, here’s a related myth that needs to be busted. I’ve seen articles which report that certain wealth redistribution programs have or have not helped tax-payers. This is misleading, because, as long as all parties involved are tax-payers, shifting wealth doesn’t hurt or help the group as a whole. New tax breaks for one subset of tax-payers helps that group, but that just means another group will have to pick up the tab for the balance. The only government program that helps tax-payers is one whose budget is reduced.
Usually, there should be some of kind of balance of ideals among politicians, so we don’t end up with a government program for every societal problem. It seems like that balance is gone, and everyone assumes government is the answer, instead of – at least occasionally – the source of the problem.
On an unrelated note, “indices” in this program is underlined in red, indicating it’s not a word. More money for schools should fix that.