An analysis was recently done about the cash for clunkers program by edmonds.com. A total of 690,000 new cars were sold under the program last summer, but only 125,000 of those vehicles would not have been sold had the cash for clunkers program not been available. The average rebate was $4,000 but the majority of the sales would have taken place some time in 2009. That means the government spent about $24,000 each for the additional 125,000 cars that sold. You didn't have to spend $4,000 on the other 565,000 cars because they would have sold anyway! We spent $4,000 on a half a million people that were trading their car and getting a new one without the rebate! The only thing the program really did was it caused some people to wait, and others to speed up their time frame for trading up. Believe it or not the auto industry agrees with the study, but that it still helped the economy (huh). The only thing this did was boost numbers for one quarter by squeezing the yearly sales into a single quarter. This is all the government can do. They can waste billions of dollars of tax money to squeeze a year's worth of sells into three moths so that for a few days they get an artificial higher number for output.
The White House has fired back saying edomonds is wrong. "This is the latest of several critical analysis of the cash for clunkers program from edmonds .com which appeared designed to grab headlines and get coverage on cable t.v." What a stupid analysis!. Of course they're going to grab headlines and get on cable t.v. because they're pointing out the truth! And the truth matches what any rational person would come up with themselves. The White House also said that people were drawn into dealerships because of the program and endued up purchasing cars even if their trade in didn't qualify them for the program. Edmonds said there is no hard evidence of consumers buying cars after they discovered that their car didn't qualify for the rebate.
Why you gotsta hate on da Obamination?
ReplyDeleteLUV OBAMAAAAAAZ!