Cash For Clunkers Was an EXPENSIVE FAILURE
Edmunds.com/The Lid ^ | 10/29/09 | The Lid
The Cash for Clunkers program was widely touted as a major success by the administration but like most things coming out of Washington that was was a fabrication. The Automotive research website Edmunds.com did a simple business analysis of the cash for clunkers program and discovered that American Tax Payers payed an average of $24,000 to sell each additional car in the clunkers program.
A total of 690,000 new vehicles were sold under the program, all but 125,000 would have been sold anyway. Divide the the total cost of $3 billion by those 125 thousand cars and you arrive at the $24,000 figure, and the conclusion that Cash for Clunkers is was nothing but an expensive government failure.
So, for people who were going to buy a car anyway, this was a taxpayer funded gift. I wonder how many people who either bought a new car under impulse from this program, and cannot afford the payments - or have lost their jobs after getting the car and are going to have it either re-possessed or declare bankrupcy? How many of these cars are going to be sold in the Used Car market, because people simply cannot afford the new car payments, in an Obama economy?
The part that has not been advertized, is that the recepients of this $4,500 gift is going to be taxed on their income later on this year.