Some questions about clunkers (Aug. 24)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
The Cash for Clunkers program is ending, and there is no clear agreement on whether it was a success or failure. It might depend on whether you are an auto dealer still owed money by the government, or whether you are a new-car owner whose purchase was made possible by the clunkers program.
And, of course, you have to look at the program not only as economic stimulus, but also as an experiment in environmental improvement.
Success or failure, though, it got results. Nearly 500,000 new vehicles were sold — all of them more efficient and less polluting than the vehicles that were turned in.
Most of those cars would not have been sold if there had been no Cash for Clunkers.
The scheme cost $3 billion, not a small amount, but let’s take a look it in light of other bailout programs.
First, people actually have something to show for the money, and so, presumably, does the environment, unless all this business about global warming is a bunch of hooey, and it really doesn’t matter whether vehicles are more efficient.
The government hurled many more billions than that at Chrysler and General Motors, only to watch them go bankrupt. What if those billions had been put into the hands of car buyers? Would that have allowed the automotive industry to heal itself, and further benefited the environment?
A lot more billions were shoveled into the furnaces of banks and investment companies, and it’s a little hard at this point to see what the benefits might be, unless you are a New York banker.
But what if some of that money had been sent to local banks, where it could be used to subsidize low-interest loans to businesses for making improvements in energy use and to homeowners for making weatherization changes to their houses?
We’ll never know the answers to that question, but it is interesting nonetheless.
