I have to say, seeing that Volvo (try) to destroy itself hurt a little. I think what's more surprising is that it wasn't worth more than $4500 on its own. Maybe there was something else wrong with it that made it worthless. But I'd wager that it was more the exception than the rule. The Caprice wagon, I'd guess, was more like the norm. It only managed to turn a couple hundred times before it seized??
1- I'm in favor of the program. Getting the junk off the roads is important. Temporarily stimulating auto purchases is important. (I don't know about you, but when I see the THOUSANDS of cars sitting there gathering dust at the manufacturer holding lots, I get the willies.) I would have preferred to see it be a little more "targeted" though. The bigger the differential between the MPG of the junker and the MPG of a new car, the bigger the credit. The lower the income, the bigger the credit.
2- Destroying the engine in this way does little to remove parts from the aftermarket/junkyard market. The only things that get ruined are the engine itself. Everything else is A-ok to pull and stock for repairs.
3- I'm not sure why "socialism" is suddenly the scare word. This country has had a lot of socialist programs for a long time. Heck, charity is voluntary socialism. We have socialized medicine for the old, the young, the poor and the vets. Why is socialism OK for the vets, but not other people? (I'm not trying to say it is bad to take care of our vets!) Other examples of socialism: building roads, common defense, tax credits/deductions for preferred spending, unemployment insurance. Socialism isn't some new thing, and it isn't necessarily bad. POORLY IMPLEMENTED socialism is. Every time we take a tax deduction for having more dependents or for having a mortgage payment, we are the beneficiaries of socialism. Someone else has to pay higher taxes to subsidize your spending. So I don't think "socialism" is what people are really worried about. We are worried about, I think, poorly implemented socialism. And some are simply using it to try to gain political advantage. Those people are irrelevant- we all know they take their piece of the socialism pie when it comes around. And they are the same ones that say its perfectly OK to use the power of the government to control people's behavior when its something they believe in. They aren't against socialism or government- they are simply against a different political party using the power of government for anything they don't like.
3b- What scares me about socialized medicine is not the moral hazard of "giving" the "undeserving" something they haven't paid for. What worries me is letting the idiots in Congress have anything to do with it. I believe the country will be better off with a good socialized medicine program that blends with the free market in medicine. But if it's anything like the ridiculously complicated prescription drug socialism that Bush pushed through a few years ago, I fear for our lives.
4- Yeah, the government currently owns a large chunk of the auto industry. What's different is that the didn't ask for it, nor did they take it for no reason. They used our tax dollars to engage in a lesser of two evils deal. Let 'em fail and wait for the market to pick up the pieces might seem like a good solution, and from a purely free-market perspective, it is the better solution. But the external costs of letting that happen were too great- how many ancillary industries would fail while we wait for the free market to clean up the mess? How many hundreds of thousands of jobs get lost in the process? This was, I would imagine, far cheaper than paying unemployment for all those folks who work at Delphi and ITW and the like. The other thing is that the government intends to sell off its interest in the companies. Presumably at a profit. Like the Chrysler loans in the 80's. Not sure why it's OMG AWFULZ because Obama's doing it, and perfectly fine when Reagan did it.
