Comments on: McCain Is A Clunker, Can I Trade Him In?

By: Petrocelli

Petrocelli — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:26:13 +0000

To add to all your excellent points, the threshold for trading in Pickups is the most telling sign of this stimulus’ intent.

Who buys Pickups ? Not Wall Street or Beverly Hills types but mainly Tradespeople & Farmers. I’m sure they can see the benefit of a $4500 tax free rebate.

By: fatster

fatster — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 21:47:45 +0000

bmaz, I’d greatly appreciate it if you’d look at what I posted over on Gold Bars @ 17. Why are they doing this now?

By: Synoia

Synoia — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 21:17:54 +0000

McCain, the 2008 GOP presidential nominee who ran as a deficit hawk.

Never saw a defense appropriation he didn’t like.

By: Rayne

Rayne — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:49:18 +0000

Look, people who couldn’t afford to buy a car before July 2008 still can’t buy a car now. There’s little which can chance this dynamic save for an improved economy.

Perhaps part of the problem for people who haven’t been able to afford a car is that public transportation hasn’t been as effective and widespread as it should have been. We’re spending HUGE amounts of money on light rail and high speed rail and urban transit improvements right now, far more than the amount we’re spending on Cash for Clunkers.

And we’re spending the money on Cash for Clunkers and on mass transit as an economic stimulus, not just to spread new cars around; if we can keep more people employed, we can eventually increase aggregate demand enough to improve the lot of people at the lowest part of the economic spectrum.

And no, not every single rich dealership is going to come out on top with this Cash for Clunkers program. I know a dealer who is now out of business — one of the biggest in the county — who has already laid off his people, who has also started paring back other spending on services which many people in the community relied on. The guy may be a Repub with money, but his business supported roughly 300 employees and immediate service providers.

Here’s an example of the ripple effect: A close friend who babysits his grandkids now has to find a way to replace 30% of her income as their mother had worked in the dealership and now has no prospects for work in the area. How many other service providers will be similarly impacted?

And this babysitter is driving a 6-year-old van; there’s no new car in the offing to replace her clunker now that she’s had a 30% loss of income.

It goes all the way around the foodchain, oldtree. It’s not quite as simple as it looks on the surface.

By: oldtree

oldtree — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:17:18 +0000

Then let’s look at how many millions it could have helped with the smaller, less expensive costs involved in fixing otherwise efficient cars? The auto parts shops, the tires, the repair people, the states, the millions of people now able to provide for their families in times of unbelievable hardship. The money is going only to those that need it the least. If that is America, what are we really?
And I have to agree, it is the best stimulus that has been done to date. That is why it is so sad. We have no reforms meant to help anyone small enough to need them.

By: bmaz

bmaz — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 18:11:32 +0000

That is what I have heard too. Also Priuses are selling well under the program I hear. But mostly small, cheap and efficient cars just like was hoped for.

By: Jkat

Jkat — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 18:09:23 +0000

re: that car dealer who “doesn’t have the chemical”

sodium silicate.. aka “water glass” is available at any pharmacy four about a buck a quart … in the old days people used it to seal cracked blocks ..or temporary fixes on leaking radiators .. it mixes with water readily and solidifies on contact with the air …

By: fatster

fatster — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:56:08 +0000

Apparently, Gibbs just said in a press conference that the best-seller is the Ford Focus.

By: bmaz

bmaz — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:23:32 +0000

Actually, it has benefitted approximately 250,000 buyers so far, with an eye to getting the figure up to one million. It is not just a few thousand.

For what it is worth, I agree a more sustainable alternative to oil needs to be implemented; but we are simply not there yet. And there is a real need for hard stimulus in the economy. No, the CARS program will not benefit everybody, but it is probably the fastest and best stimulus bang for the buck the government has done to date. That counts for a lot right now. No one program will benefit everybody in society equally; there needs to be a lot of different modalities; but the CARS has been remarkably successful at a critical time.

By: oldtree

oldtree — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:11:00 +0000

I disagree or I would not have written it. Your premise is that the “Auto Dealerships” are shining and rosy right now, and that we have made a difference. I do not disagree. However, the problem is that it is helping only those that can afford it. People with more than they need to get to work now, people with jobs. I have a friend that loaned a very old family friend enough to buy an economic clunker so she could take a job 40 miles from home. This person had nothing without the help of someone. She would have had no job, and no prospects for getting one. She had no car.
If this money had been spent to fix used cars, we see a huge reduction in the manufacturing process that wastes energy, and puts profits in the hands of very, very few people. But no. It was given to those that have more than they need. If this makes sense on either a fiscal or humanitarian sense, please convince me.
Auto dealers knew in 2008 that their industry was toast. They made crappy cars that eat fuel like it would always be free. In our town, and it is a small one, there are 3 major dealers. Each has been sitting with hundreds of new and used cars sitting on their lots. The 50 people that work at each location benefit by the bailout. The people that can get a loan also benefit by suddenly being subsidized by the government. There are 5000 people here that might be able to get a job if they could travel 40 miles to a larger city. There is no rail, bus or other service to get them there in a timely manner. We have 5000 people that have just been abandoned to favor the thieves that run an industry that has both benefitted and caused one of the major environmental disasters facing our planet. I know you dig the car Bmaz, your stories are legend. I too have a soft spot for those old gas guzzlers. I prefer seeing them in a museum, considering.
The rich auto dealer, the rich consumer. They benefit. The rest of us lose big time. They argue about funding rail projects, and argue until the proposal has been weakened to the point of it being a rail line to nowhere. No funding for community transportation. Only cars. We have bills pending to help all the old roads out, so cars can travel endlessly on. The “Independent” ran a story today about the nature of peak oil and the reserves likely remaining to us. If anyone disagrees, let’s see the proof. 10 years perhaps.
Imagine, billions to trade in older cars to be replaced with newer cars, as the oil runs out. And this makes sense? Is it somehow politically abhorrent to help the people on the lower end of the ladder? Nothing, and I repeat, NOTHING, has yet been proposed for those losing their cars, their homes, their jobs, their lives to the new depression. But the rich have nothing to worry about. Their government is giving them a fat subsidy that could have gone 10,000 times farther toward helping both clean the planet, and put people that truly needed the money, the car, or the job, to work.
An auto dealer. The place where the next two salesmen have a fist fight to determine which gets the next client coming on the lot. (as you should know, this is commonplace) The place where the facts should have been provided to the consumer coming in for cash for clunkers. But, instead, where most people are reporting that 3 of 5 of these dealers are using tactics designed to cheat them on the purchase.
Perhaps I am the wrong sort of progressive thinker. This could have been great seed money for helping hundreds of thousands of people. Instead, it benefitted a few thousand. That is not the mark of success in today’s climate. It helped no one that truly needed it, except for people that sell cars. This, does not make sense to me. It may not be as bad as the bailout to the banks, or the military, or the foreign countries, or the insurance companies, but it is the same kind of reward for poor behavior.