Recently the news has been full of jubilant reports about Cash for Clunkers. While this is certainly a welcome relief from the MJ funeral debacle, the nightly dose of communal celebration over the destruction of a perfectly good "clunker" is beginning to feel like a bad B movie. You know... the type of movie that actually makes you dumber as you watch it.
The news heralds "Cash for Clunkers" as a bold environmentally savvy way to boost the economy while producing a healthy environmental impact. They are wrong for many reasons.
1. The whole idea of stimulus is hard to swallow. Is the concept of going deeper into debt as families and as a country really they way to fix our economy? Can you spend your way out of a financial ruin? Try that in your household and I can predict what will happen. It sorta reminds me of a Miss Piggy cartoon I read when I was a kid... she used her Mastercard to pay off her Visa each month, and then reversed the order so that hypothetically she never had to pay. Problem: Everyone has a credit limit... even the richest country in the world.
2. The concept of spending billions on a non-renewable project is crazy. Invest the money in windmills or nuclear energy, or even on creating a nation wide electric car network as Shia Aggassi begs for. Why? Because investments have a yearly and ultimate return. Getting people to go further in debt, while taking to government further in debt, so that car manufactures can make some sales provides a small boost today, but Zero future dividend or payoff.
3. The environmental impact of taking "clunkers" that get less than 18 MPG off the road would make a small impact if they were all being replaced by cars that got 40 - 50 MPG or better yet, electric cars without carbon emissions. But the facts are that many of the new cars are only nominally better than the cars they were CLUNKERIZED.
I can only imagine the type of impact that several billion dollars would have made if invested in something like what Shia Aggassi proposes. Rather than putting more nominally fuel efficient oil based cars on the road, lets invest in a true solution, or at least a theory that could be a solution.
What do you think?
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/shai_agassi_on_electric_cars.html
