The Clunker program has been described as both an environmental improvement program and an economic stimulus program. Today's Washington Post had a small graphic from a study that tries to quantify the benfit - or lack thereof. Note that the professors involved are from Stanford and Berkley - not exactly hotbeds of Republican support. Make your own decision:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...080802658.html

 

it is also hurting the used car market. i got our van over three years ago. it is a 2000 olds van. now i see 2000 olds vans selling for more than i paid for mine 3 years ago and with more miles and the same features. when you take several million cars off the market the price of the rest have to go up on the rest. i would not be surprised that there are other factors involved also but this program is sure a major part of the reason.

 

Interesting information; however, they make claims and use no evidence to support it. They say "according to our calculations, at best, the program will save about 7 million metric tons of CO2..." Unfortunately, they never tell you how they arrived at that figure. That is weak statistics at best, not to say that I am a fan of Cash for Clunkers.

 

The Cash of Clunkers program is total BS.

How is it helping the ecomony? You have people that cannot afford a new car, even with all the discounts and what not. Plus think about people are worried about losing thier jobs, so if you were in that sisutation, would you buy a new car?

Also, helping the big 3? How is buying a Nissan, Kia, Honda, Hyundai, Toyota, MB, Volvo, etc helping the big 3?

This is just a simlair program to all the others that bush had, helping the rich get ahead. The only difference is that this is helping more working class people, but not many more.

You are taking perfectly good running cars off the road and killing them. People are trading in a 99 Explorer for a 09 Explorer getting the same or 1 MPG better. STUPID!!!!

My next project car will have a bumper sticker that reads "Keep your hands off my car, IT's NOT A CLUNKER

 

I look forward to the RepoMen shows on the Discovery channel showing Mad Dog (or whatever his name is) repossesing cars that people bought through the Cash for Clunkers program. That will be awsome!

 

How about the the same guy who could not afford the payments on a house but bought it anyway because the down payment was so low, then he looses the house because he can't make the payments. Now this same guy buys a loaded honda for 30,000 bucks because with the clunker bill he can make the down payment. Same guy who lost house now looses car. Tell me who wins?

 

The Democrats by buying votes.

Who looses. We do. The tax payers.

 

Ouch! McDiss with Cheese!

I agree.

 

Quoted for truth

 

X3. Just need enough people to realize it.

 

there are many people now realizing it that did not before. people are realy getting mad with what all is going on. we need to take our country back from washington. so continue talking about it at the water cooler and make the rest of the people aware of this stuff. make phone calls and write letters to your congress men and women.

 

If he lost his house, he's sleeping in the car, so they'll be repoing his house, again

 

Cash For Clunkers...

I guess I must be on the wrong page…

·A vehicle at 15 mpg and 12,000 miles per year uses 800 gallons a year of gasoline.
·A vehicle at 25 mpg and 12,000 miles per year uses 480 gallons a year.
·So, the average clunker transaction will reduce US gasoline consumption by 320 gallons per year.
· They claim 700,000 vehicles – so that’s 224 million gallons / year.
·That equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil.
·5 million barrels of oil is about ¼ of one day’s US consumption.
·And, 5 million barrels of oil costs about $350 million dollars at $75/bbl.

·So, we all contributed to the spending of $3 billion to save $350 million.
How good a deal was that???

 

Boy Jamsbo that makes me feel a lot better. Wonder what program (not counting healthcare) they will think up next, Oh almost forgot the appliance program, guess they will never run out of bad ideas.

 

That is interesting math Jamesbo. It really makes you think...

 

This kind of stuff is too depressing. I know it isn't healthy but I almost feel like sticking my fingers in my ears and screaming LA LA LA LA LA LA! then tuning in on a re-run of Leave it to Beaver.

 

Too bad Leave it to Beaver is not on TV anymore... (at least on non-paid TV anyways.) If some of these old shows with REAL humor would still be on, I would get some much-needed laughter (medicine).

 

And to think it was done with borrowed money.

 

They gotta spend up that 787 billion so expect a few more wacky ideas before it's all said and done.

 

Well Cash for Clunkers sure helped the Japanese economy. I read somewhere that Jap cars were selling at 7 to 1 to American cars.

 

Cash for Clunkers has two major problems. It is not green, and it is not economically sound.
The pecking order of being green is:
1. reduce
2. reuse
3. recycle
Cash for clunkers did not:
reduce - in fact it promoted more consumption
reuse - how can you reuse a car that has been crushed
Recycled - OK, the metal and other parts will be recycled.
To be economically sound, we take raw material, add value, and create a product with a higher value (make $).
Cash for clunkers takes an asset with value and destroys it into raw material (lose $).

 

I saw the same thing. This dumb program should have been only if you buy from the "big three". Would have been better than just handing them $$...

68CONV455 - very well put. This was not green at all.
Us car guys are the "green" ones compared to what the govt did...

 

I am glad this friggin cars program is over.I was perturbed with the whole thing from the start.I have seen videos of such nice vehicles in line to be distroyed it's disgusting.

 

It's sad really I read this and I agree with jamesbo (x4 or 5) I am not happy with what is going on as of late.I am thinking we should all be concerned.It seems to me that since around november of last year things have gotten worse we should be doing better and recovering but dumb ideas and decisions keep happening, when will it end

 

The present goverment is trying to shift our focus from the economy to healthe care so we won't relize whats going on. China now owns a large majority of the loans we (the goverment) has taken out to support the banking industry. What happens when the notes become due? This worries me. This country needs a healthe economy before we tackle anything else. We do not need any more distractions. The banking industry is going back to doing "business as usual"

 

So in truth if you think about it china owns us for the most part and that is BAD.The health care deal is a joke they have no idea what they are getting into compare it to getting into a cage with angry dogs the people in this country are getting fed up, and that is bad for the gov.AS for the banking industry are you refering to filling there pockets and doing like that one guy that just got fired for the house on the beach that bank owned.

 

Huhh

 

The reference is to the fact that people of this country are getting peeved off and that could lead to protests, riots, or even worst case senerio a civil war.the whole thing is getting way out of hand and bad decisions are costing all of us in more ways than one.

 

Ok gotcha. A civil war would never happen again but anyone is welcome to organise protests , what's the worst that could happen. Oh yeah kent State I forgot that one. Anyhow this is getting way too political

 

RIGHT ON !

 

 

Here's a little more information on the Clunker Program



If you traded in a clunker worth $3500, you get $4500 off for an apparent "savings" of $1000.


However, you have to pay taxes on the $4500 come April 15th (something that no auto dealer will tell you). If you are in the 30% tax bracket, you will pay $1350 on that $4500.


So, rather than save $1000, you actually pay an extra $350 to the feds. In addition, you traded in a car that was most likely paid for. Now you have 4 or 5 years of payments on a car that you did not need, that was costing you less to run than the payments that you will now be making.


But wait, it gets even better: you also got ripped off by the dealer.
For example, every dealer here in LA was selling the Ford Focus with all the goodies including A/C, auto transmission, power windows, etc for $12,500 the month before the "cash for clunkers" program started.


When "cash for clunkers" came along, they stopped discounting them and instead sold them at the list price of $15,500. So, you paid $3000 more than you would have the month before. (Honda, Toyota, and Kia played the same list price game that Ford and Chevy did).


So lets do the final tally here:


You traded in a car worth: $3500
You got a discount of: $4500
---------
Net so far +$1000
But you have to pay: $1350 in taxes on the $4500
--------
Net so far: -$350
And you paid: $3000 more than the car was selling for the month before
----------
Net -$3350


We could also add in the additional taxes (sales tax, state tax, etc.) on the extra $3000 that you paid for the car, along with the 5 years of interest on the car loan but lets just stop here.


So who actually made out on the deal? The feds collected taxes on the car along with taxes on the $4500 they "gave" you. The car dealers made an extra $3000 or more on every car they sold along with the kickbacks from the manufacturers and the loan companies. The manufacturers got to dump lots of cars they could not give away the month before. And the poor stupid consumer got saddled with even more debt that they cannot afford.


Congress known as the band of merry men convinced Joe consumer that he was getting $4500 in "free" money from the "government" when in fact Joe was giving away his $3500 car and paying an additional $3350 for the privilege.

 

I personally classify this as a legal scam.

Moral of the story - pay attention to the 'brain teasers' in math class so you do not fall victim to losing your hard-earned cash...
I might not be able to times 12 and 14 in my head but I can surely figure out the real-life scenarios (given a pen and paper...)
Survival of the smartest, I guess...

 

I don't care how you look at it that is sad and disturbing to think your own government is taking advantage of the people.I ask this what ever happened to THE GOVERNMENT RUN BY THE PEOPLE FOR THE PEOPLE.It would seem somehow it has reversed,scary very much so

 

Good info above. Here is another, real bottom line, however. How much energy does it take to "deconstruct" the clunker and recycle it? How much energy goes into manufacturing a new car? I don't have an answer in btu, but "huge" comes to mind. BTW, there is a "huge" difference between looses and loses. Grrr.

 

i did not know they were considering the $4500 as income. if this is true many people got @#$%ed real bad.

 

Pat that is good info. The bad thing is that a number of people taking part in the C4C program probably didn't think of that before they signed on the dotted line. It is just like the dummies that took out ARMs on their 1/2 million dollar homes hoping to flip them in a year or two. It seems what people lack most is common sense.

 

Yep the money you may have gotten from the clunkers program is considered income , but even the 3-5000 that I have seen recently that dealers offer as cash back is considered income. So there is not much different there. To be fair you also need to factor in the # of cars that dealers sold thereby being able to order more cars and allowing the manufacturers build a few more cars. This gives some people a little more employment or hired back easing the stress on employment insurance benefit program. I did not agree with the trashing of all the vehicles traded in as this hurt the used car buisness and those looking for a good used car because they can't afford a new one. Some people will have to just keep running their old car which pollutes more than most cars that were destroyed.

 

cash for clunkers=corporate welfare

 

Kinda like 700 billion to the banks and AIG