Cash for everything
So, there’s this program called cash for clunkers. Maybe you’ve heard about it? Seems the .gov is going to give everyone who trades in an old car for a new one $4,500 and a magical pony. Program was popular, which of course means the .gov will screw it up. And it did. Seems they owe car dealers about $3B and those dealers want their money. Up next is, and I am not making this up, cash for refrigerators. Same concept: get cash if you trade in your old appliance for a newer, more efficient one. Why, it’s almost like people want to get some of their money back. So, we should just pay people to buy stuff. And that’s really a government policy. Amazing. You know what else gives people their money back? Tax cuts.
Also, in a bit of a twist, cash for clunkers seemed to help Toyota, Honda and Ford. And not Chrysler and GM. Notice the pattern? For those who did not, the bailed out companies sales dropped. Those who did not embrace governmental control of the means of production had sales increases. Beautiful.
September 2nd, 2009 at 9:41 am
Please read this analysis:
http://www.autoblog.com/2009/09/01/autoline-on-autoblog-with-john-mcelroy/
He points out that the FedGov messed with how they reported the sales results. Ford actually had the top cars, but the FedGov split their cars by engine package, making non-Ford cars appear to sell more.
Oh, and people bought trucks and SUV’s too.
September 2nd, 2009 at 12:07 pm
They also pulled people off of other important infrastructure needs, like processing commercial pilots license renewals, to process all the cash for clunkers claims.
My dad was pretty irritated when they explained to him why they were taking so long to get him his new license.
September 2nd, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Even if the government got it right, it would already be economically dumb, since it’s a classical example of the broken window fallacy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_window_fallacy
September 2nd, 2009 at 5:05 pm
“You know what else gives people their money back? Tax cuts.”
But of course that’s not the point, is it? The point is to have the .gov influencing your decisions. The next and most obvious step of course is to take your personal decision-making out of the loop, just to make sure the “right” decisions are made.
Once you’ve thrown out the concept of rights as belonging to the individual (and this is largely a done deal in the current government) there is no justifiable reason to limit government’s influence over you. If the belief is that the “common good” is not served by your having free choices, then the justifications needed for a totalitarian state are already in place. Anything goes, and probably will.
September 2nd, 2009 at 11:29 pm
I’m happy to see that “GM and Chrysler are dead to me” is a spreading sentiment. Who would have thought it was a lucky break for Ford to go bankrupt a couple of years earlier (when private funding was still possible to get)?