Sir Xsarus wrote:
I don't think there's any forcing dealerships to sell cars going on here, so your fears are resting on the shoulders of the dealership owners.
Yeah. The dealership hands out the rebate first and then gets reimbursed by the government. Aside from the increased business, they gain nothing on each deal, so there's no reason they'd change their sale requirements. No reason to either, since the demand is so high. They can presumably pick and choose who they sell to.
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I'm sort of surprised to find you opposed to this program, it's giving money pretty much directly back to people, without a ton of regulation. Wouldn't this be awesome?
It does have the virtue of being pretty much the only actual "stimulus" program we've seen out of the government so far. On that measure, it's a pretty decent program.
My only problem with it is that it's got a kind of split brain thing going on. As a stimulus program, "cash for clunkers" implies that we're helping people with old beat up cars get new ones they might not otherwise be able to afford. That's a good thing, right? But the mileage requirements tend to not actually focus this at true "clunkers" but rather fuel inefficient cars. The majority of cars turned in for the rebate so far are larger SUVs. So we're not helping the working class folks so much as the middle class folks who bought into big fuel guzzlers.
Which, if your goal is to eliminate gas guzzlers, is perfectly ok as well. It's just that the two things seem at odds with each other. If you bought a good economy car 10 years ago, and it's now worn out, you likely don't qualify. But if you splurged on a Ford Escalade, it qualifies as a "clunker" now. I suppose it's just a language issue, but it still bothers me a bit. I get the objective, but we're basically rewarding people who made bad choices.