Final Report Card: Cash For Clunkers Cost American Taxpayers A WHOPPING $24,000 Per Car!

Obama is doing a crappy job. We need someone like Sarah Palin in the White House.

LOL, you got jokes!

I like your sense of humour

Yeah, don't you just love clueless quitters in 5" Christian Louboutins?

The government wasting taxpayer money?!? No way!! The government always makes things more inefficient and more expensive. And now they want to control our healthcare. Brillant.

Would you rather health car being controlled by the greedy corporations?
The GOV'T doesn't have to answer to wall st. I'd rather the Gov't provide and option instead of the raping that we're getting from the health insurance companies. To each his own I guess.

Well the insurance companies say the can't be competitive with the government, what does that say about our healtcare.

In response:

Lexsucks: Greedy corporations or greedy and corrupt politicians? At least the corporations, at the end of the day, have to earn a profit. Politicians can be terrible, but they only have to earn a vote. I have been completely satisfied with my UNH coverage over the last several years. And speaking of raping, with Social Security and Medicare nearing financial implosion (from too many outflows and are too little inflows), why would we create ANOTHER huge government entitlement? The taxpayers will be the ones getting raped.

Theoptimisticpessmist: The "public option" aka government healthcare would force doctors and providers (look they do with Medicare) to provide services at below market levels.

1995e34: Government run health care is so efficient in other countries? I think you need to do some homework before making those statements. Do you not count month long wait lists for appointments and procedures as inefficient? Government health care programs have to ration services to be affordable. That is completely inefficient. Try to take an economics class.

To all of you proponents of government run healthcare, remember what the politicians (read Dems) were saying about Cash for Clunkers. We were told it would stimulate the economy. Instead we got artificially high sales over the last few months. October sales will go back to being dismal. We added more red to our exploding national deficit. And taxpayers paid $24,000 per clunker? Talk about government failure and inefficiency.

1UAW, you might want to stick to installing doors on the assembly line instead of discussing economics with the big boys (aka people with educations).

According to the WSJ (that is a financial newspaper), the program neither helped the economy nor the environment. The WSJ cited the Hudson Institute, saying at best the program cut oil consumption by 0.2% per year (less than a single day's gasoline use). Is that really worth $24,000 per taxpayer? I don't think so.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703628304574453280766443704.html

"Wow, shocked at some of the total Marxist posting here.

If you don't like the free market in the USA, move to another country!!!!"

- Free to rob the American Public blind. Free Markets left to their own devices can cause greed. How do you think that we got into this mess in the first place? Free Markets. Wow!

1995e34, if you want an example of how a market system drives cost down, just look at elective surgeries (plastic surgery, laser hair removal, etc.). Every year the prices come down and the technology gets better.

Wait times in Canada and Western Europe for elective surgery is far higher. For example, cataract surgery has an 18 month waiting surgery. Hip surgery has an 18 month waiting list as well. These are procedures Americans can schedule and be done within a week. Isn't that efficient?

The U.S. doesn't need any more entitlement programs than it has already. Part of being an adult is providing for yourself and your family. The government can't and shouldn't do everything for you.

http://proquest.umi.com.ezproxy.lib.uconn.edu/pqdweb?did=1844831821&sid=1&Fmt=3&clientId=48996&RQT=309&VName=PQD

Yah, wht didn't they just make the CFC offer to those who had no intention of buying a car? /sarc

How the heck would they be able to determine who had a intention to buy a car or not?????at the end of the day the program was a sucess for dealers all over...it aloud them to move their 09's to make room for 2010 models...also it gave dealerships the oppurtunity to make some money

"aloud" lol

sigh, article repost...

From that chart,
Jan-Jun average monthly volume = 799,279 units
Jul-Sep average monthly volume = 999,443 units

200K units incremental per month x 3 months = 600K units incremental, no?

$3B/600K = $5k/vehicle

Thanks for pointing out the facts.

Could the loans to the automakers prior to c4c have been somehow factored in as well?

I think what is amazing is utter stupidity of the article. To any intelligent person, the results are there to see by looking at the actual sales number as pointed out by Sdcarguy.
The numbers derived by Sdcarguy are inline with the actual Govt figures.

I tend to like Edmunds, but this is really suspect.

How on earth are they determining that, without C4C, by December 2010, the SAR would be almost 11 million? No one forecasted it that high. Edmunds is basing their increasing SAR on dubious statistical models.

FACTS:
*Beginning of the year, SAR was 9.59

*Prior to C4C, SAR was still only 9.67, it had barely moved. thats a difference of just 80,000 units.

*C4C happened, SAR jumped dramtically, with only a small letdown in 8September (much smaller than the chicken littles worried about).

*The jumpstart to the auto industry now forecasts yearly sales by the end of December to be 10.61 (in line with what others are predicting).

**Therefore, WITH C4C sales, could be UP by about 1 MILLION CARS.

To rely on statistics to prove what the SAR MIGHT have been without C4C is bogus. Shame on Edmunds.

They are probably looking at trends of sales by month over many years (as you can see in their data November has lower sales than other months) but overall the data is a somewhat educated guess about how the future sales would have been. But in the end, their data is a guess.

What the hell does SARS have to do with this???

which is less than what we spend on toilet paper in iraq every day, probably. and it did some good!

the validity/accuracy of the $24k figure aside, the dollar amount, whatever it is, likely went to help pay for the salary of some car assemblers, some car dealer employees, and some employees of some part makers and distributors, for the last 6-9 months to allow them to continue to pay for their house and keep their family life some semblance of survival. I would also guess they bought food during the last 6-9 months so I think some supermarkets are happy with that as well.

Recently there have been plenty of articles about junk yards hiring additional people to deal with the extra amount of cars that came from the Clunkers program. Obviously it's probably not a huge amount, but anything is better than nothing, and the official tally of stimulus created jobs is about 30,000. So clunkers did alright for its budget.

I vote for B...Much Easier....The rest of the World might resist Plan A

Mindworm,

You are spot on your views on Agent 001.

Was anybody seriously surprised by this article? I saw a report last night at how people are buying certain kinds of Golf Carts cause they are classified by the IRS as small low speed vehicles and thus get tax credits up to 6k! Imagine you buy a golf cart for 9 or 10 grand and get 4 grand off! Now that is insane.

As far as this loss of cash per car, serves them right for trying such a ludicrous idea. Reimbursing auto loaners for lower interest rates for each car sold would have spurred more growth than giving someone a few extra dollars for their car.

Smoke...
Obama isn't going to change...He's a TOOL..Bought and Paid For by the same Bankster/Oligarchs that REALLY run this country.

There isn't a "Dimes worth of Difference" between the Democrats and Republicans...It's a false Paradigm given to create the illusion that the People have a voice in government.

TheDepressingTruth,

That is the depressing truth.