Saturday, August 8, 2009

One additional idiotic fact about "Cash for Clunkers"

According to Edmunds, the fifth most purchased new vehicle under the "Cash for Clunkers" program is the ultra-fuel-efficient Ford F-150 half ton pickup truck.

But there are also a bunch of older Ford F-150's that qualify as "clunkers." In fact, under the rules you can turn in your 2002 Ford F-150, 4.6 litre, 8 cylinder, rear-wheel drive "gas guzzler" in exchange for a 2009 Ford F-150, 4.6 litre, 8 cylinder, rear-wheel drive "fuel efficient" model.

4 comments:

  1. They ran out of money for this program because it worked.

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  2. Whether it "worked" or not is in the eye of the beholder. When you offer upper-middle-class people the opportunity to get $4,500 off a new car, then sure they will show up in big numbers. But where does that $4,500 come from? Did the stork bring it? No - we're going to pay for it later, with interest to China. And in the meantime, perfectly good cars are being destroyed. Foreign cars are being sold in big numbers. People are trading in old cars for pickups and SUV's. Sorry if I'm not doing cartwheels.

    And my question back to you is ... will you celebrate the "success" of nationalized healthcare when it becomes so popular that it runs out of money?

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  3. It worked because people abused it. It worked for the people who DIDN'T need it to work for them. The people that are badly in need of new vehicles and cannot afford to upgrade are once again the ones on the outside looking in on this program, but they're taxes will be paying for the business owner who wanted to upgrade his fleet of 1998 Dodge Ram trucks to the 2009 version, or the doctor who was excited to find a trade for his Hummer that was getting terrible mpg and no dealer would accept as a trade. There are dealers out there selling off a new vehicle to someone under the clunkers program and then accepting it back soon after as a "trade" to a less fuel efficient vehicle someone would have rather had. The program was full of holes, but that's to be expected from a Democrat plan. This was a disaster in the making as anyone with an IQ above 15 could have seen. Unfortunately, the majority of the country showed themselves to be below such an IQ number when the Democrats took control of congress and a man who, if his term ended today, would forever be known as the worst President in history was put into office.

    As is so often stated: "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer." That applies to cash for clunkers 100%.

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  4. Its not my favorite program, but I think it is important to keep new car stocks moving, as that means companies can keep people on the assembly lines, which keeps people in the machine shops, keeps people in the advertising offices, keeps people doing safety test, keeps people performing warranty work and new car service at dealerships, and so on, for any one that preforms a job related to new automobiles.

    As far as "foreign cars being sold in big numbers" I would rather own a Toyota that was built by Americans in Mississippi or a BMW that was built in the Carolinas, than a Chevrolet that was built in Canada, to me it really doesn't matter where it was designed or what nationality the engineers are, thats only a small part of building a car...

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