One more postmortem on the Cash for Clunkers program… The American taxpayer paid $24,000 per car. According to Bill Adams, spokesman for the Department of Transportation the program was “wildly successful.” It is scary what government officials deem as “wildly successful.”
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.
The Cash for Clunkers program is very simple. Well, at least compared to health care. The simple lesson to be learned here is that if the government cannot manage a program like this effectively, how is government run-health care going to work in the long run?
Thanks in part to Cash for Clunkers third quarter GDP growth was 3.5%. Growth was a modest 1.9% without the Cash for Clunkers program. GDP should be lower in the fourth quarter without the government propping it up.
Having 24 back on TV has been fantastic. There’s nothing like a little Jack Bauer Power Hour to get the blood pumping. Leftist psycho Janeane Garofalo has joined the cast. Just last week she had an interview that’s so mind numbingly shallow it’s worth reading for entertainment value.
The reason a person is a conservative republican is because something is wrong with them. Again, that’s science – that’s neuroscience. You cannot be well adjusted, open-minded, pluralistic, enlightened and be a republican. It’s counter-intuitive. And they revel in their anti-intellectualism. They revel in their cruelty.
That doesn’t even scratch the surface. She drones on about Sarah Palin. It’s funny, I’d love to see the two of them debate any topic. The best Garofalo could do is throw out obscenities and bad jokes. Hat tip to Pamibe for pointing me to this interview.
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