Clunker Math
Think of it this way:
A clunker that travels 12,000 miles a year at 15 mpg uses 800 gallons of gas a year.
A vehicle that travels 12,000 miles a year at 25 mpg uses 480 gallons a year.
So, the average Cash for Clunkers transaction will reduce US gasoline
consumption by 320 gallons per year.
They claim 700,000 vehicles so that's 224 million gallons saved per year.
That equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil.
5 million barrels is about 5 hours worth of US consumption.
More importantly, 5 million barrels of oil at $70 per barrel costs about $350 million dollars
So, the government paid $3 billion of our tax dollars to save $350 million
We spent $8.57 for every dollar saved.
I'm pretty sure they will do a great job with health care, though.
> So, the government paid $3 billion of our tax dollars
ReplyDelete> to save $350 million
Per year. It doesn't create a direct return on investment, but it's more notable than $8.57 for each $1.
Jesus Christ, you are stupid.
ReplyDeleteThe purpose of cash for clunkers was to stimulate the economy; specifically, the auto industry; not to save money.
It's also worth noting that many (most) so-called clunkers:
ReplyDeleteA. Got closer to 25MPG.
B. Were perfectly usable vehicles.
C. Also contained perfectly usable parts.
This caused several other things to happen:
The price of used cars went up. This doesn't matter much to the wealthy people who were taking advantage of the cash for clunkers program to upgrade their "extra" third or 4th car. Those of us who can't afford a new car or don't like going in debt buying something that inherently decreases in value get the shaft.
Cash for clunkers also destroyed many perfectly good parts causing the price of replacements to go up and possibly resulting in some older cars replacement instead of repair. Liberal hippies love to talk about being green buy buying new "green" toys. They forget that the first of the 2 R's are Reduce and Reuse. They could keep driving their "clunkers" for a few more years and cause less pollution melting all that metal down and recycling it. They could also reuse some parts on the clunkers when they do get scrapped to keep other cars on the road longer--thus adding to the Reduce part.
As far as stimulating the auto industry, I'm sure the program was great to all those Japanese execs getting all that American money. It was not nearly as helpful to the blue-collar workers here in the US making peanuts.
Paul you totally missed the point. You must be a government-dependent boob. I hope Ben explained it well enough for you, but ideologues never see what they don't want to see.
ReplyDeleteThanks Ben, excellent explanation.