I dropped off my Tundra at the Toyota dealership this morning to have a broken plastic clamp replaced along the side of the driver's seat. One of the employees gave me a ride to my office and in the course of small talk mentioned they'd been working until midnight or 1 a.m. some nights just to keep pace with people turning in their cars as part of the "Cash for Clunkers" program.
The employee, no doubt coached by management, was preoccupied with how much this program will "help the economy." However, despite this display of ignorance -- you can't stimulate an economy by stealing one person's spending money and giving it to someone else to spend -- he did note something rather interesting: customers are beginning to have a hard time finding replacement parts for their cars because these "clunkers" are simply being crushed and disposed of once they're turned in.
In other words, the federal government is artificially increasing the scarcity of used cars and car parts, thereby driving up prices, instead of allowing the market to determine when their usefulness has expired. As usual, folks on the lower end of the economic spectrum disproportionately bear the burden of this program as the quantity of affordable used cars decreases.
In what is nothing more than a wealth transfer from taxpayers to the car manufacturers, the "Cash for Clunkers" program is a huge success in the eyes of the corporatist state and its connected beneficiaries. The poor, on the other hand? Well, they'll just have to be satisfied listening to mouthpieces for the state tell them how much the government cares about them.
You are dead right
And the charade ends Monday, too.
They are out of money, but no dealers are getting any money.
Let's give them our health care system, ya think?
Posted by: jb | August 20, 2009 at 07:10 PM