Billy Crystal used to quip, "It is better to LOOK good than to feel good, my dahlink!"

It appears that when it comes to spending other people's money, the pols adhere to the maxim, "It is better to LOOK good than to actually ACCOMPLISH anything, my dahlink!"

So, this was another government give-away of our money to the auto industry, for the most part. How nice for them.

Ahh yes! The typical government program.
Always costs way more than initially calculated and only serves a few peoples special interest.

Then always promoted as a success by the government.

What about those dealers that "needed help" by not having their family dealerships and inventories confiscated from them a few months back?

This program should have been appropriately titled "Buy Your Neighbor a Car".

"There can be no doubt that CARS drummed up more business for car dealers at a time when they needed help the most."

Gee, and perhaps the government should use taxes to pay all the unemployed people to sit all day digging holes and filling them in again, at a time when these people clearly need help. That will really help the economy. /sarcasm

Standard Broken Window fallacy. Google it if you are not familiar with it.

Much like the guy who loses money on every sale, but intends to make it up on volume, Keynesians think that if they inflate the Broken Window to a large enough money, a multiplier kicks in, and YAHTZEE!, recession solved.

Maybe. Doubtful, still unproven, and always expensive. But maybe.

Amy,

It appears that your software is cutting off the last few letters on the right side of your blog posts (and their replies). It is occurring in both FireFox and IE, so it doesn't appear to be a compatibility issue. It also wasn't occurring yesterday.

-Julie

Julie,

Not seeing that problem here (using IE 7). Will test on Firefox when I get home, but I'm not sure the issue is on Ms. Alkon's side. I've heard of weirdness happening when users with identical browsers get different results, though.

"It is unfortunate that Edmunds.com has had nothing but negative things to say about a wildly successful program that sold nearly 250,000 cars in its first four days alone," said Bill Adams,..."

It is unfortunate that Bill Adams has a job - even one spinning lies so that his masters don't fire him.

The per-car cost of Cash For Clunkers is the wrong analysis.

The direct effect of the $4,500 trade-in subsidy was to speed up the replacement of cars already owned. Most of the effect shifted auto sales into the current quarter from the next quarter. So, auto sales dropped in the following quarter.

Certainly, almost all of the CFClunker sales would have happened on their own in the next five years. There is no "momentum" effect and no stimulus effect, because those sales were merely shifted in time.

There were three major effects.
(1) Money was handed out to the public.
(2) Part of the auto fleet was moved from (say) 20 mpg to 25 mpg efficiency. This was to reduce carbon emissions, as announced.
(3)The trade-in cars were destroyed. Poor people who could only afford $500 - $1,000 for a car will find these vehicles are now less available.

Assume each CFClunker car is driven 20,000 miles yearly, and its efficiency is used on average 2 years earlier. 25 mpg saves 400 gallons in 40,000 miles. So, the government paid $4,500 to save 400 gallons of gas, at $11.25/gal.

This is only a good deal if the government is in favor of reducing carbon emissions by making gasoline cost more than $11.25/gal, and keeping poor people from owning a cheap car.

The government was happy to give money to 700,000 likely voters while taking credit for improving the economy by 700,000 car sales, and reducing carbon emissions by spreading cleaner automobile technology. The government ignored any bad side effects, as usual. The worst side-effect was to take $3 billion out of current investment and give it to people who should have been buying their cars with their own resources.

By the way, Global Warming Caused by Humans is a Scam.

Note also that when a useable car is destroyed, *energy* is wasted. Making cars is energy-intensive: steelmaking, stamping, forging, transportation of components and finished products, etc.

So the claimed energy savings via better mileage need to be offset by the wasted energy embedded in the trashed vehicles.

The $3 billion sunsetted, one-time cash-for-clunkers program is about 3/8ths as bad as 2009 rural telephone subsidies--except rural telephone subsidies are every year. So another $8 billion next year will be spent on rural telephone feeloaders.
Why do so-called "libertarian" blogs obsess with cash-for-clunkers, but never mention rural telephone subsidies?
Could it be they are unknowing useful idiots?
Stupified catamites?

From the Benton Foundation

A subsidy fund designed to help phone carriers offer service in rural areas has mushroomed to an all-time high - 12.9% of interstate telecommunications revenue, up from 9.5% in the beginning of the year, the Federal Communications Commission announced Monday. That means that consumers' phone bills will increase slightly on July 1, the start of the third quarter. The FCC's announcement forecasts a change that carriers will need to make to customers' phone bills effective on that date. The subsidy fund is supported by a tax on the long-distance and regular phone-service bills paid by wireless, Internet and traditional phone customers. The amount is a separate line item dubbed "universal service," and it usually adds up to few dollars per month. AT&T estimates that the increased customer payments from the first quarter to the third quarter of 2009 amount to roughly half a billion dollars. Industry insiders say the universal-service-tax percentage is increasing because the number of traditional landline subscribers is falling dramatically as people switch to all wireless or Internet-based phone services, where contribution rates are lower. Fewer phone bills overall means a higher-percentage subsidy tax for each one.

The universal-service fund pays out about $8 billion annually to phone companies that offer service in hard-to-reach areas.

"The $3 billion sunsetted, one-time cash-for-clunkers program is about 3/8ths as bad as 2009 rural telephone subsidies--except rural telephone subsidies are every year."

What is this like your fifth moniker this month? (psst - rural telephone subsidies was a dead give away).

To Waa-Waa,

Yes, rural subsidies are a bad idea and a waste of money. People should get to enjoy the benefits and bear the costs of the professions that they choose and the areas they live in.

But, I'm mystified. Your criticism seems to be: You useful idiots complain about some expenses and injustices, but not about the ones I'm interested in.

Are you saying:
- You (AMG) are intellectually dishonest because you complain about Obama's wasteful spending without first complaining about all of the other wasteful spending in history? Or,
- Obama's wasteful spending is not objectionable, because there is other wasteful spending supported by Republicans. They waste money, so Obama should be able to waste it also. Fair is fair.

The current "stimulus" and bailouts under Obama waste at least $1 trillion, more than 100 times more than rural telephone subsidies (using your figures). Yes, Bush participated, making both Bush and Obama wrong. Obama collaborated with Bush to support the TARP program, and Obama has supported all of the bailouts and designed most of them.

Cash for Clunkers is a wasteful, easy to understand government program, showing how little analysis was used before distributing the money. It is a good example of the approach and waste of government, now pushed to ridiculous heights by Obama.

I am fine with rural subsidies. The people in rural areas grow your food. If they paid the actual cost of running wire 100 miles or more to their house, you'd pay one heck of a lot more for food. Which is ok for you, but some people couldn't afford to pay more. And there's not really any difference in the gov't (yes, the taxpayers) paying for rurals to have phones and the gov't paying for you to have an 8 lane highway. Infrastructure costs I am fine with.

Buying my neighbor a new car, I am not.

To momof4,

I don't see the difference, in your argument, between phones and cars. You say farmers should get subsidized phone service to reduce the cost of food. So, why not also give them subsidized cars, and subsidized everything? That would supposedly also reduce the cost of food.

Many people live in rural areas who don't farm. Why should they get the subsidy?

I would rather that the cost of food fully include the true costs of producing it, including living in rural areas and buying the phone service that those people want. Then, we could discuss the proper subsidy to the people who can't afford food, rather than trying to lower the price of food through multiple government rules and bureaucracies.

You are a friend of the farmer. Obama is a friend of unions. Why should either of you decide to give money, taken from others, to the people you deem worthy?

Andrew, this is easy. Given your other posts, I'm surprised at you.

Rural electrification and phone service does not benefit individuals by name, but communities. It's actually comparable to building roads, not the car giveaway, because it provides infrastructure, not finished product.

"I don't see the difference, in your argument, between phones and cars"

As I said, infrastructure. Which actually IS the Fed Gov't's business. I am against farm subsidies, BTY. That cost should be in food.

So I see that I-hole has moved his sock to the other hand again.

The amusing thing about all of this is how people in Washington are now assuming that all of Detroit's problems have been fixed. As others have pointed out, all CARS did was shift sales forward in time (ask the dealers how sales have been since the program ended). And oh by the way, the manufacturer who benefited the most from CARS was Toyota. GM's current management is absolutely delusional about the trillions of dollars that they thing they're going to get from an IPO next year, even as they're having to spend government money to bail out not only themselves but now Delphi (a spun-off ex-GM operation) too. And, as the WSJ has documented this week, Chrysler's plan going forward is that they will discontinue domestic production of most of their car models and switch to selling re-badged Fiats. At least Nero kept fiddling until Rome had completely burned down.

Yes, momof4, then urban welfare reduces the cost of labor, meaning services and goods are cheaper. We can go miles and miles with this feeble-brained argument.
How about public health---pandemics are obviously the federal government's business, and a healthier population prevents pandemics, so therefore national health insurance is a given?
Moreover, rural subsidies are largely there so people can enjoy the rural lifestyle (at government expense) not so rural development takes hold--not that we should encourage rural development.
Ironically, rural America, despite the hundreds of billions siphoned out of cities every year for its benefit, may be doomed anyway.
Who can live in the hinterlands, when gasoline hits $6 a gallon?
Of course, with useful idiots like momof4, I guess they will just get even more subsidies.
Yes, we believe in free markets, except when we don't.
We believe in the 2nd amendment (giving citizens the right to form militias, but not the federal government), except when we don't.
We believe in gravity, except when we don't.
We are American libertarians.

Really, Amy, can't we block him? I mean, if he'd ever had a semi-decent thought to share, that'd be one thing.....

Last word, asshole. Infrastructure. Like the road you drive on but haven't paid for all by your lonesome, and the roads you will never drive on.

COuntry people may die out when gas hits $6 a gallon, but city people are poised to be wiped out by the next pandemic. They're stacked up against other germ-hosts like salted herring in a box.

I suggest a bad-words processing filter.

For example, a post might contain:
"You all are a$$holes"

And would be changed automatically to:
"You all are bunnies (I'm an a$$holes).

I think that would help enforce civility. I do that when reading posts, anyway.

Amy likes bad words. He calls himself a butthole, I was merely using his name.

Why would you assume an insult is directed at you? Do we need a self-esteem therapy session? Any does one on one now! :)