Unsolicited Advice Alert: You did not ask my opinion about what follows. Here it is anyway.If you need a new vehicle and if you can afford a new vehicle, the Cash for Clunkers program is a decent piece of economic stimulus.
The numbers are simple. You'll get $3500 - $4500 credit for getting rid of (and thus permanently disabling) a gas-guzzler and replacing it with a vehicle that gets at least ten miles per gallon better fuel economy.
In addition to that new car smell, you'll save something on the order of $800 a year on fuel costs and contribute to a culture less dependent on oil, with all the benefits that accrue to that shift.
Upstream from you, people keep working and adding value to the economy (and, maybe, hang onto their health coverage).
Downstream from you, people keep working and the mandatory scrapping of your old vehicle produces reclaimed steel that can be repurposed for far less than producing new metal from the ground up.
This is exactly the kind of systemic benefit the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is designed to produce—which is why the money comes from the $787 stimulus package passed by the congress and signed by the president in February.
Don't listen to the knuckleheads. They're not trying to help you.
[photo by ThreadedThoughts]
This may shock you but I'm not really against this program. At least somebody gets tangible value out of all the cash that's going somewhere.
ReplyDeleteOnly part that's annoying to me is the big brother, we know the best kind of car you should have mentality behind it. I'm not against better mileage cars, i'm against not having the freedom to choose what I want. There's a good amount of libertarian in me.
You could buy a clunker off the street for $1000, trade it in for a brand new Nissan Versa (which is only $10,000 for the base model), with the $4500 rebate you just got a brand new car for around $5,000 bucks.
ReplyDeleteyes, Surfy Surfy!, AND perhaps joined in contributing half a percentage point to the GDP if Bloomberg news is right: http://adjix.com/ij2c
ReplyDeleteLen, over time, it seems to me, many people replace that whole "big brother" frame with something more like a "common good" frame that encourages citizens to think somewhat more about community and shared responsibility and opportunity and somewhat less about entitlement. It's not everyone; but many.
ReplyDeleteOn a parallel note, no one is going to tell you what kind of car you must drive nor force you to take stimulus money to buy something you don't want. It's a great country.