Why Cash for Clunkers is not chump Change™
Democrats in Congress are anxious to add another $2 billion to the fiasco known as Cash for Clunkers. To understand how little $2 billion is to the federal government, as I’ve said before, divide $2 billion by $2.3 trillion and multiply the result by your gross salary (so not much; about the equivalent of $50 to the average American household). But, as Neil Cavuto put it, “if $2 billion is chump change, who, exactly, is the chump?”
In real dollars, here is what $2,000,000,000 means: there are about 133 million people who pay income tax in America. (Let’s assume the Cash for Clunkers money won’t come from the ever-shrinking corporate tax pool or the already spent medicare/FICA revenue). So $2 billion divided over 133 million taxpayers is roughly $15 per taxpayer. So for every person who gets a $4,500 federal giveaway for their used car, the federal government has to pick the pocket of 300 other Americans. To make matters worse, these cars all have to be destroyed for no reason other than to appease the Global Warming™ gods. And there are serious questions about whether buying a new car provides any net benefit to the environment over keeping an older car, even with a lower emission rating.
Ask yourself this: if a stranger asked you for $15 so he could buy a new car and destroy his perfectly decent one, rather than sell it, would you give to him the money or tell him to make use of what he already had? What if he asked you for $4,500? What about $2 billion?