Debating Cash for Clunkers
The right is getting grief for its opposition to the “Cash for Clunkers” program. Here’s John Stewart poking fun at the weakest criticism of the program.
Andrew Sullivan cites this as an example of “the right-wing’s completely disproportionate reaction to what are really mildly left-of-center proposals by the President and Congress.” He writes:
There’s a groundswell of grousing on the right about the cash-for-clunkers program, because the feds were caught off-guard by its popularity. The argument is that if the government can’t run cash-for-clunkers, how can it run healthcare?
To which one might respond: but cash-for-clunkers is one example of the government actually doing something right, helpful and popular. It’s the kind of pragmatic experimentation that FDR tried repeatedly. So you have a practical, targeted measure that seems to have helped abate a deeper recession in the auto industry, and the right is obsessed with the ideological abstraction of “government.”
Here’s the thing: “the right” is an utter disaster at the moment. You’ve got frightening numbers of people who think President Obama is an illegal alien who faked his Hawaiian birth certificate; adherents who get much of their information from a cable news network where many of the so-called journalists are shameless propagandists; a talk radio lineup of bombastic, juvenile opportunists whose hyperbole, intellectual dishonesty and general approach to public discourse does a disservice to their listeners and their country; a contingent of voters that cares most about national security, yet bizarrely thinks that an erratic former Alaska governor without any foreign policy experience is their preferred candidate; a conservative movement whose institutions are too often designed to cynically exploit the rank-and-file; and regional leaders too many of whom are unable to grasp that it’s unacceptable to send around e-mail forwards that traffic in pernicious racial stereotypes. Among other things.
So yeah, of course there are some nut jobs on the right offering poor arguments against Cash for Clunkers. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t sound arguments against Cash for Clunkers, or that the program is helpful, or practical, or targeted at anyone except financially interested parties in the automobile industry, or that any opposition to the program is merely ideological.
Want serious arguments? I give you Radley Balko:
You mean the government is offering people free money . . . and they’re taking it? And they’re measuring the program’s success by how many people . . . are willing to take free money? Shocker that it’s been so succesfull, huh?
There’s also the laughable idea that the government is ordering the destruction of tens of thousands of used automobiles it paid people thousands of dollars to exchange . . . for new cars that may get no more than an added four miles per gallon. And all in the name of saving energy. I’m no television comedy writer, but if they wanted to, the creative minds at TDS could certainly have gotten some mileage (sorry) out of the idea that the government’s energy savings equation looks something like this:
(all of the energy that went into making the old car) + (the energy it will take to destroy it) + (all of the energy it took to make the new car) + ($3,500) < an extra four miles per gallon!
And Rich Lowry:
The fundamental mistake is to think that the government can magically induce economic activity with no countervailing downside. The Clunkers program is really just shifting around sales, creating the illusion of a demand for cars conjured out of nowhere. To the extent the program has enticed people to speed up or delay their purchases to take advantage of the rebate, it has borrowed demand from earlier this year or the future for a burst of sales in the summer of 2009.
The car-buying guide Edmunds.com reports that as many as 100,000 buyers delayed their purchases, waiting for the Clunkers program. And some of the roughly 60,000 trade-ins that take place in any month anyway were rushed to gobble up the rebate. “We have crammed three or four months of normal activity into just a few days,” Edmunds.com CEO Jeremy Anwyl writes in the Wall Street Journal.
And Derek Thompson too.
As regular readers know, I think it is important to rebut absurd rhetoric and expose intellectually dishonest blowhards for what they are, but I also think that any assessment of a policy’s merits should be formed in response to the best arguments for and against it, not the noisiest or even the most prevalent critique on offer. Just because the right includes a lot of people making very bad arguments right now doesn’t make the people they’re arguing against right. It’s a lesson I learned when I saw the behavior of bombastic, juvenile folks on the left translate into support for President Bush’s bid to invade Iraq.
Let us recall Jane’s law: “The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant. The devotees of the party out of power are insane.” A corollary is that those insane people end up inadvertently helping the smug and arrogant to advance their agenda, however foolish. We should resist that outcome as best we can — and one way to do so is to grapple with the right’s more sane writers rather than its most hackish cable news talking heads.
I’m sorry, but why exactly should a concern about argumentative quality be taken seriously when it has its origins in a post that refers to “the tea-bagging right.”
— Victor Morton · Aug 4, 09:36 PM · #
Oh … not to mention a post (this is the one Conor directly links to) that cites not a single example of someone making that precise argument (“The argument is that if the government can’t run cash-for-clunkers, how can it run healthcare?”) without internal elaboration or detail. After all, a Hayekian belief about government incompetence vis the market about meeting needs IS both Lowry’s and Balko’s argument against both Cash-for-Clunkers and Government-Health-Care.
— Victor Morton · Aug 4, 09:41 PM · #
It is a frankly enormous advantage, I think, for contemporary liberals, that we have the ability to both say “government can do good” and “government can do bad”. Whereas contemporary conservatism has become so utterly zealous in its insistence that government can’t do anything of value, and so resistant to allowing exceptions being admitted to by conservatives, that the right just has a vanishingly small rhetorical space in which to operate when they argue. The Grover Norquists of the party have painted you all into a corner. And we see here in this very space the kind of dog-whistle that any suggestion of government competence has become for certain members of the orthodoxy.
I don’t know a single liberal or leftist, not one, who doesn’t admit that government is bad at some things and that there are many jobs which government should not attempt. I know and can link to many conservatives who are adamant that government is literally incapable of performing correctly. But even beyond those hard-liners, I find the average conservative to be far, far quicker to assume government incompetence than the average liberal is to assume government ability, and the average conservative much less willing to admit to a reading of a situation that is contrary to his or her ideological inclinations. I think over time this becomes a powerful disadvantage, both rhetorically and practically. Practically, because there are many basic protections and services that demonstrate government working fantastically well. (And I’d be happy to list some for you all.)
Incidentally, Balko is being a bit obtuse. We don’t measure success in whether people are taking the free money. We measure success based on whether the free money is being spent in a way that stimulates the economy. You can debate the wisdom of Keynesian economics, but that’s a far bigger discussion than Balko seems wiling to make.
— Freddie · Aug 4, 10:30 PM · #
I find the average conservative to be far, far quicker to assume government incompetence than the average liberal is to assume government ability
I suspect that if the particular area of government is defense spending, you’ll find an instant role reversal.
the average conservative much less willing to admit to a reading of a situation that is contrary to his or her ideological inclinations
News flash — a vociferous liberal has observed that the average liberal is smarter and wiser than the average conservative. How could anyone fail to be convinced by that?
— kenB · Aug 4, 10:50 PM · #
News flash — a vociferous liberal has observed that the average liberal is smarter and wiser than the average conservative. How could anyone fail to be convinced by that?
I said neither, actually. See? My words are right there, in black and white.
— Freddie · Aug 4, 10:54 PM · #
So sorry, I’ll try again without extrapolation:
News flash — a vociferous liberal has observed that the average conservative is much less willing than the average liberal to admit to a reading of a situation that is contrary to his or her ideological inclinations. How could anyone fail to be convinced by that?
— kenB · Aug 4, 10:58 PM · #
Don’t be coy. Actually comment on the issue at hand: which is more likely? A liberal to admit (and take pains to admit) examples of government failure? Or a conservative to admit examples of government success?
I don’t know how anyone who is genuinely politically engaged could possibly claim the latter is more likely.
— Freddie · Aug 4, 11:04 PM · #
Which is more likely: that government will fail or succeed? How many more government programs are failures than are successes? When given the choice between more government and less, which will the liberal pick?
I don’t know how anyone who is genuinely politically engaged could possibly claim that liberals will pick the latter.
— jd · Aug 4, 11:17 PM · #
Actually comment on the issue at hand:
I thought the issue at hand was the wisdom of the Cash for Clunkers program. Which to me seems pretty misguided. Probably to you as well, since you changed the subject to generalized, unproveable observations about libs and cons.
As for your question, I already pointed out that the (stereo)typical conservative is happy to say that government is a success when it comes to national defense, whereas this is the one area where liberals bring a healthy skepticism to the discussion.
But I don’t think that one can sensibly talk about the “average” conservative or liberal, nor can one reliably and neutrally measure the amount of ideological rigidity. It’s not a credit to you that you believe your question is actually meaningful as opposed to just a conduit for one’s bias, and even less that you think the answer is obvious.
— kenB · Aug 4, 11:21 PM · #
Which is more likely: that government will fail or succeed?
Depends on what you mean. A commenter at the League in recent months was pointing out to me that he had been doing research involving looking at death records and obituaries from the 19th century. He was stunned by the number of people crushed by falling debris from poorly constructed houses; the number of people who died from drinking non-potable water; the number of people who were killed by eating tainted food. None of those things are statistically relevant causes of death in the United States today, because local, state and federal governments regulate them. And they do a fantastic job. You and I and everyone else reading this thread walk into public building unperturbed, confident that the roof won’t come crashing down on our heads. We have that peace of mind because in this country we have strict regulations, and vigorous enforcement, of building codes both at the time of construction and for the life of the building. We can ingest drugs and food with a great deal of confidence that they won’t kill us because we have a regulatory apparatus that ensures that we can do so. We have certain standards of purity, cleanliness and healthiness that we ensure our water supplies will reach because we bother to force the issue, and we both to check. Only people who have lived within the blanket of protections that, from a historical perspective, is an almost miraculous blessing, could think to question whether it works.
Consider the example of thalidomide. Thousands of women in Canada and elsewhere took thalidomide, and their fetuses and babies were afflicted with horrendous and debilitating birth defects because of it. Women in the United States, who didn’t or couldn’t cross the borders to circumvent the FDA, did not. And why? Because the US had a more rigorous and thorough regulatory regime than Canada did. And it saved the lives or quality of life of thousands of babies. That’s a perfect example of regulation working, and a perfect example of how “market based” substitutes for regulation don’t work. Lawsuits after the fact could not bring back the babies who had died as a result of thalidomide, or restore the quality of life to those who were born with crippling disabilities because of it. The market didn’t prevent the drug company responsible from bringing out a product that wreaked havoc on thousands of lives, despite the fact that a private company developed it and a private company sold it. Only people who have had the blessing of taking drugs or consuming food without much reasonable cause to worry can imagine that it would be better not to have the regulatory apparatus that makes that possible.
If you are on the computer over wireless or listening to the radio or talking on your cell phone, you are taking advantage of the government regulating the electromagnetic frequencies that make such things possible. American public universities are the envy of the world, and produce thousands of well educated students annually. They exist because it was thought in the public interest to have the capacity to put the less wealthy or connected through college, and so we made the effort and paid the expense to make such a thing a reality. The highways you and I drive on are under an incredible amount of strain and pounding from capacities of vehicular traffic that far exceed what they were intended to carry, and yet our roads deliver millions of people to their destinations in what is by any historical perspective a remarkably fast and easy ride. The percentage of plane crashes that are attributable to flight tower error are historically minuscule, because it was decided that the safe transport of people and cargo through the airways was too important to be left to the vicissitudes of the market, and because it was decided that safety trumped convenience or timeliness or any other factor. We frequent doctors and other medical personnel who are, with the vanishingly infrequent exceptions of out and out, in possession of a certain level of expertise, skill and education, because we have established a legal standard in order to keep us all safe. We saw a need, and we set out to make a meaningful threshold for competency, and we achieved it and now enforce. We do so not only for doctors but for lawyers and nurses and bus drivers and a whole host of other professions for which we say there must be certain standards met in order to protect the public good. We enforce standards of cleanliness and health on restaurants and food sellers, because history and contemporary life teaches us that the market, whatever its wonders, does not actually compel those who provide us with food to always protect our health. Should I continue? I can go on.
It’s not a credit to you that you believe your question is actually meaningful as opposed to just a conduit for one’s bias, and even less that you think the answer is obvious.
It’s an empirical question, and the empirical truth of the matter is that if you sample several hundred liberal blog posts and several hundred conservative blog posts, you will find vastly more instances of liberals admitting to government failure than conservatives admitting to government competence. It’s not to your credit that you don’t stop dancing long enough to say whether you dispute whether this is true.
— Freddie · Aug 4, 11:51 PM · #
Freddie, that’s the problem. As soon as I posted my question, I remembered who I was talking to, a true believer. There is no way in hell that you will ever be convinced that government is a necessary evil. You will always believe in “good government.” No matter how many examples from your above answer might have actually happened sooner without government intervention won’t matter to you. Just the mere fact that you have so many examples to point to, compared to any other country in history, doesn’t make you see that it was economic freedom that made this country what it is, NOT government control. (There is one other major factor, but you won’t have ANY of that). As “Andrew” has on the top of his blog, “To see what is in front of one’s nose is a constant struggle.”
If it were government intervention and control, why is the United States the “big dog” instead of Russia, or Europe, or Mexico or Haiti? How did Hong Kong go from a typical Asian shanty town in the late 40s to a titan of industry in 50 years, without any natural resources, and really without as much democracy as India?
And maybe I didn’t make my original point as well as I should have. By sheer force of numbers liberals are forced to admit more government failures than conservatives will admit government success: the former probably outnumber the latter by 10 to 1.
— jd · Aug 5, 12:22 AM · #
Freddie, I’ve answered you twice now, in different ways. There doesn’t seem to be much point in pursuing this discussion further. My fault for reacto-commenting.
— kenB · Aug 5, 12:25 AM · #
In addition to noting how Freddie just pwned your asses off, I’d like to point this out from Radley:
Total math fail. And nonsensical – the energy it cost to make your old car and your new one have already been spent. Nothing is lost or gained there by you changing from one to the other. Not buying a car won’t unmake it.
And “only four mpg” is pretty stupid, too, since it matters what mpg you start at. The gains are pretty significant indeed to move from a 15 mpg vehicle to a 19 mpg one – more than going from 22 to 26, in fact. About double, maybe.
— Chet · Aug 5, 12:26 AM · #
Since you just make up whatever numbers you need to support your arguments, jd, I kind of wonder what makes you not a “true believer.” I mean, if you’ll take entirely fictitious data as authoritative – data you know must be fictitious, because you made it up yourself – what on Earth could possibly convince you that you’re wrong?
You’re an absurd troll.
— Chet · Aug 5, 12:38 AM · #
Conor wrote:
Care to cite some of these poor arguments? And please stick to your usual suspects—people we’ve heard of.
Andrew wrote:
There are all kinds of practical downsides to the cash for clunkers program. There are millions of people who make a living in one way or another in the used car market. Those clunkers were some dealer’s next deal and some auto parts guy’s next windfall, to say nothing of some buyer’s next cheap transportation. And the savior of the world crunches them in a giant shredder in a neighborhood he wouldn’t be caught dead in. Government intervention has consequences that people like Andrew—to say nothing of the wonks in the Obama administration—wouldn’t recognize.
There are so many things in Andrew’s little paragraph that are debatable.
— jd · Aug 5, 12:39 AM · #
Chet accuses me of being a troll.
Somehow by lying to him about the actual numbers of government failures I have gone up in his estimation, because yesterday he suggested I was a xenophobic racist.
But don’t worry, Chet. My opinion of you remains the same.
— jd · Aug 5, 12:48 AM · #
Yesterday? I think you’re thinking of someone else. (At any rate, xenophobic racist and true-believer conservative are hardly mutually exclusive. Indeed, they’re probably synonymous.)
— Chet · Aug 5, 12:53 AM · #
This is pretty much the most retarded thing I’ve read all day.
— Chet · Aug 5, 12:56 AM · #
Re: Which is more likely: that government will fail or succeed?
How many businesses fail vs how many succeed? If something that simplistic is your standard we should run away screaming from any hint of a Free Market.
— JonF · Aug 5, 12:58 AM · #
I guess it wasn’t yesterday. I had my facts all wrong. It was three days ago that you called me a racist.
— jd · Aug 5, 01:00 AM · #
Freddie,
It’s one thing to debate in the abstract, and I’m willing to grant for the sake of argument that you have a point: Let’s assume that it’s a lot harder for conservatives to admit that, in the abstract, there are things that government is good at than it is for liberals to admit that there are things government is awful at. Now, the wisdom of either default position would depend to some extent on an empirical analysis – namely, what proportion of proposals for government action are, in any given system, likely to do good as opposed to harm. But that’s not what I’d like to debate here, because I think there’s a far more interesting question, and that’s the question of who’s more flexible as a matter of practical politics? Could you name a dozen government programs that currently exist (1) that have as their stated aim goals with which you agree but (2) that you think should be better left to the private sector? Because that’s where the rubber meets the road, isn’t it? Often in policy, the question isn’t whether the government should start doing this but whether the government should continuing doing something that it’s already doing. And in my experience, the instinctive response of my left-of-center friends to that question is a look of sheer puzzlement.
One other point: You note many positive results of regulation, but I think your analysis is incomplete. I don’t have time to offer a detailed response, but there are at least two problems with it: First, several of your examples involve public goods that none but the most die-hard libertarian would challenge; to this extent, they suggest that your portrait of right-of-center folks is actually a straw man: Rather than a belief that there’s nothing government does well, one might characterize it as a presumption of skepticism toward action by the government, a presumption that can be overcome in specific instances, like some of those you mention above. Second, you only look at the plus side of the ledger in compiling your list and fall prey to the fallacy of ignoring the invisible man: Yes, many people have undeniably been saved by the FDA’s regulation of pharmaceuticals, but how many have died because a drug that could have saved them never became available or became available too late because of the (overly?) rigorous approval process. Yes, many people have avoided injury due to modern building codes, but to what extent does this explain the fact that housing now consumes around 30% of the average family’s income. Yes, government funding of roads have enhanced mobility and made travel safer, but it has also made possible sprawl and the despoliation of the countryside. And on the list goes. You treat each of these achievements as unqualified goods. They are goods, but not unqualified ones, and all that many of us on the right ask is that when you take credit, as a liberal, for regulation, you be sure not only to take the bad with the good but to make it known that you are taking the bad with the good.
— Richard · Aug 5, 01:42 AM · #
I dunno, how many? Oh, you don’t know either? Well, can we assume therefore that it is far, far less than the number of people who would have died as a result of unforeseen side-effects from drugs rushed to market without adequate testing? I rather think we can, actually.
They may not be unqualified goods, no. But they’re are certainly, demonstratively, and objectively net goods.
— Chet · Aug 5, 01:49 AM · #
It will take quite a bit of objective analysis to determine if the program has been successful, even clarifying the definition of “success”, since there are several stated goals. Actually, it will be a good case study, once we know all the details. The least we can hope for is that it doesn’t do any harm. It seems now that the net effect will be more government debt with very little benefit to the economy, except short-term to the auto industry, likely to be offset by the fact that other goods will not be bought for awhile, like a new tv or a refrigerator — but we’ll know soon enough.It remains to be seen if the environmental effect is a wash or not, of if it can even be determined.
— mike farmer · Aug 5, 02:05 AM · #
<i>Well, can we assume therefore that it is far, far less than the number of people who would have died as a result of unforeseen side-effects from drugs rushed to market without adequate testing? I rather think we can, actually.<i>
Well, Chet, you can say any damn thing you like, though we’re all granted a limited number of keystrokes as we shuffle around this mortal coil, and they’re better off unwasted on straw men and question begging. You cannot assert that any specific regulation, much less our current regulatory regime taken in total, is “certainly, demonstratively, and objectively [a] net good” until you – you know – demonstrate that it is. And to do so, you must take into account both sides of the ledger for any given regulatory scheme. How do you know that the current level of FDA regulation is “adequate” without being overly burdensome and actively harmful? Or is the second half of this equation something you feel that you can ignore? If so, you’re no less blinded by ideology than the nuttiest right-winger.
— Richard · Aug 5, 04:19 AM · #
Am I supposed to do your homework? What reason is there to believe that’s true?
— Chet · Aug 5, 04:22 AM · #
Hi, Conor. I’ve posted a response to you on my blog. It’s the typical left-wing whining. :-)
— Ampersand · Aug 5, 04:36 AM · #
Sigh. I’m not asking anybody to do any homework – mine or anybody else’s. All I’m saying is that the benefits of any specific regulation or any regulatory framework must be measured against its costs. This oughtn’t be that controversial. And if it’s correct, then Freddie’s completed only half his task in showing that government is indeed effective when he rattles off all the positive benefits of the regulations he’s come to know and love.
But since you asked, this 2004 article from CNN (or Fortune) illustrates the difficulty of striking the right balance. It doesn’t prove that the FDA is stifling innovation at the expense of people’s lives, but that wasn’t the point of my post.
— Richard · Aug 5, 04:36 AM · #
Sure. But you seem to be saying that unless we can measure it against metaphysical, counterfactual costs – how many would have died under this alternative regulatory scheme? How many would have died under that one? – that essentially no reliable data can be produced for, we have to be suspicious of government.
It’s the somewhat suspicious convenience of conservativism, you never have to prove your opponents wrong, you never have to present alternative solutions to the problem, you never have to do any of the heavy lifting of governance and public policy. You just have to stand athwart history and shout “stop.” You just have to sit there and not be convinced.
— Chet · Aug 5, 05:57 AM · #
You’re right, Richard, I’ve completed only half the task. I’m sure I could not name a dozen government programs that currently exist that I would eliminate. In my defense I would say that there are a whole host of functions which government does not currently perform which I would argue vociferously against government becoming involved in.
— Freddie · Aug 5, 12:04 PM · #
If this thing is such a success I have two questions:
1. Why not get some serious money involved and extend it to everything consumers need? After all, one of the silliest things about this is that we’re debating $1 billion vs. $787 billion in stimulus. This is almost as dumb as Obama ordering Congress to find $100 million in savings. Incredible.
2. Why won’t the Obama administration release the data on clunkers?
That’s a defense? Why don’t you make yourself useful and start arguing against them now, because we will no doubt need some serious arguments against those very stupid government programs in the future.
Just curious, Freddie. You aren’t, by some odd chance, being paid not to farm?
— jd · Aug 5, 12:39 PM · #
Why don’t you make yourself useful and start arguing against them now, because we will no doubt need some serious arguments against those very stupid government programs in the future.
Which one, in particular?
— Freddie · Aug 5, 01:44 PM · #
Things for which government is essential:
That’s the necessary part of ‘necessary evil.’ The evil is provided by the scheming, ambitious, self-righteous, well-meaning, ignorant, prideful, and petty people in the government, along with their best laid plans.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Aug 5, 02:25 PM · #
Oops, left a few out. Inertia, sclerosis, myopia, maladaptation and butterfly effects are also significant sources of evil.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Aug 5, 02:35 PM · #
1. Rich Lowery’s argument is not a good one because it assumes that all sales at all times are equal in importance and impact. Anyone who’s ever run a business would tell you otherwise.
2. Government is not a necessary evil. It’s just necessary. Until conservatives can again accept that, they cannot be trusted with political power.
Mike
— MBunge · Aug 5, 03:07 PM · #
And there aren’t “scheming, ambitious, self-righteous, well-meaning, ignorant, prideful and petty people” in private industry, Kristoffer?
Oh, wait, I forgot, this is Conservative Bizarro World, where The Free Market ™ is our Lord and Savior, free of sin and vice, while Big Government ™ is a Satanic instrument of doom.
— Travis Mason-Bushman · Aug 5, 03:11 PM · #
And there aren’t “scheming, ambitious, self-righteous, well-meaning, ignorant, prideful and petty people” in private industry, Kristoffer?
What. The. Fuck.
Freddie, can you explain to Travis why his response is stupid? He’s one of yours, I think.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Aug 5, 03:16 PM · #
jd:
“This is almost as dumb as Obama ordering Congress to find $100 million in savings.”
Another right wing straw man…Obama didn’t order Congress to find $100 million in savings, he ordered his Cabinet to find $100 million in saving in their departmental budgets. These are not cuts in the big line items in the budgets, these are cuts in basic office budgets…things like supply purchases, training retreats, office rents, etc. This was the equivalent of a mayor, forced to make major cuts in a city’s budget, telling department heads that they had to make equivalent cuts in their office budgets. Symbolic, but important in showing that everyone is sharing the the pain.
— R.M.Hamilton · Aug 5, 03:19 PM · #
Good grief this article and comment thread are depressing. Conor’s basic point is sound – that there are legitimate criticisms of the Cash for Clunkers program, and that right-wingers are failing to make them. Then he relays are few to us that are supposed to be legit, and they SUCK.
Balko’s “formula” is inane, because as others have pointed out, the energy used to create the old car is spent, the energy used to destroy the old car is small, and the energy used to build new cars is just part of modern life. Has Balko looked at the carbon footprint of building a new car, and compared it against the carbon footprint of driving a clunker for 4+ years?
I don’t think so. And Balko’s “4 miles per gallon” number is pulled out of thin air and false. The average difference is more like 9.
Lowry’s criticism, that giving the auto industry sales when they need it the most (now) is somehow worse than spreading them out over time, makes no sense. I am pretty sure the auto industry disagrees. Companies and dealerships would prefer to stay in business, I think.
And then the comments! Personal insults and meta-bitching about whether or not government can be competent among people who will never ever agree or convince each other of anything.
Conor, and readers, how about some criticisms of the CFC program that are thoughtful? How about a measured policy discussion? My biggest problem with the program is that the mileage requirements are not strict enough. Given how popular it is, Obama could easily have been much bolder and pulled much bigger MPG differentials out of the trades. I see no point in paying someone $3500 to trade in a 1996 Silverado for 2009 Silverado. The trades should have focused exclusively on hybrids and diesels and small cars.
— Mark · Aug 5, 06:28 PM · #
Mark wins the thread.
— Erik Vanderhoff · Aug 5, 09:06 PM · #
A 3mpg improvement saves, if my back of the envelop math is correct, about 120 gallons of fuel per year (assuming 15000miles/year). So if the program hits it’s target of 300,000 “extra” vehicles sold (out of 1 million taking advantage of the program), that’s almost 40 million gallons of fuel saved per year. And that doesn’t include the gains from the people who would have purchased anyway, but bought a few extra MPG to get the rebate. So let’s say conservatively 50 million gallons per yer. $3 billion seems like a pretty solid investment for that kind of savings. I think about 5%, if fuel is $3/gallon (also conservative in the long term).
— Joel Martin · Aug 6, 04:35 PM · #