Expensive clunkers

That was an interesting discussion on the public option. To “Oh Please,” I truly was looking for an answer. I keep hearing Nancy Pelosi and others say a public option would increase competition, but no one explains how. Despite the many comments on this blog, I still never got an explanation. Oh well.

Let’s move on to cash-for-clunkers. This story at usatoday.com shows the government spent $24,000 for each used car turned in, when you look at how many extra clunkers the program actually generated. If you recall, the government gave dealers $4,500 for each of them, which caused a temporary surge in car sales.

This information comes from edmunds.com, a car-buying site. The site says of the 690,000 cars sold during the span of the program, only 125,000 were actually due to the incentive. The rest were bought by people planning to buy a car anyway. Lucky them. You can figure this out by looking at sales trends for cars.

I suppose the government would say that at least those cars are now off the road. But only the government could spend $24,000 of taxpayer money for each car it buys at $4,500 and declare the program a success.