Cash for Clunkers Sputters to an End

by Ivan Osorio on August 20, 2009 · 2 comments

in Bailout Watch, Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Features, Mobility, Zeitgeist

The Transportation Department announced today that it will wind down the Cash for Clunkers program, which the Obama administration promoted as a way to both help the economy and clean up the environment, by Monday. It was supposed to spur car sales while replacing older cars with more fuel-efficient models.

As I noted here in an earlier post, “The car buying site Edmunds.com compared car sales under Cash for Clunkers with typical car sales over a similar period as that of the program’s existence, and found a net increase of only 50,000 cars — at a cost of $20,000 each.”

For more on Cash for Clunkers, see here.

Tagged as: cash for clunkers, Economy, Obama, pork barrel spending

{ 2 comments }

Jason August 20, 2009 at 12:36 pm: Correction – at least $60,000 each. They just added $2 billion to the program. The Edmunds report is based on the initial $1 billion price tag.$3 billion of our tax dollars for ~50,000 cars = $60,000 each.
Funny thing is that the government was claiming on August 5 that 180,000 cars had been traded under the clunkers program (http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE57470Q20090806). The Edmunds report noted that normally 200,000 are traded in anyway. So using very rough and imprecise numbers we could be looking at net drop of 20,000 in the normal market. All for the bargain basement price of $3 billion.
jasonbradyut August 21, 2009 at 9:05 am: Good…, as they say, all good things come to an end. Actually, this could be considered a BAD thing b/c it’s CRAZY, we are giving people money to live more vicariously and lavishly than before all this economical bust took place? What are we doing? Spoiling every single last American? Let’s learn to live in moderation, then we wouldn’t have so much debt…Well, the fish sticks from the head..so the head is the While House…right?