WELFARE CASH FOR CLUNKERS & MARKET DISTORTIONS

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According to the Automotive News, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is rejecting four out of every five "Cash for Clunkers" "deals." Thus, a lot of vintage V8s from the 1980s and 1990s are sucking down the sodium silicate "execution lube" and then dying in the metal shredder for nothing. (Most of the rejections are for inadequate or improper documentation)

Some greedy, welfare-loving customers have signed "waivers" that may leave them on the hook for the anticipated welfare money or forced return of their new FWD rice-grinder if NHTSA doesn't pay up.

In response to the incessant complaining of the selfish, me-first welfare sops (mostly dole-mongering dealers looking for a quick government handout), NHTSA has "agreed to allow dealers to submit cash-for-clunkers transactions for vehicles ordered from factories instead of just those purchased at a dealership." NHTSA is also jacking up the number of taxpayer-funded bureaucrats reviewing the "C4C" Welfare-Vandalism transactions by 1,000 (At an estimated $15 per hour per worker, NHTSA would be blowing an additional $600,000.00 in borrowed money per week on sorting out this fiasco and processing the welfare/bailout vouchers)

This is another step toward a permanent, government-funded vintage vehicle vandalism & destruction program. As Ronald Reagan once said, "the closest thing to eternal life here on earth is a government program." With every modification, the "Car Allowance Rebate System [sic] becomes further entrenched as an "entitlement."

Another reason the lazy freeloading dealers love "C4C" welfare is that it apparently distracts their appliance-motoring, FWD wimpcar buying, welfare suckling customers from negotiating toward reasonable, market-based transaction prices. The Wall Street Journal's "Smart Money" reports:

[A]uto data aggregator Edmunds.com found that shoppers have been getting less of a discount since the start of the program. For example, the average discount on a new Ford Escape after the Clunkers program began has slipped to 5.2% off the MSRP, compared with 5.7% before the program got underway. Consumers are paying an average $261 more. A new Dodge Caliber sold for an average price of $17,368 before Clunkers, 11.7% off MSRP, compared with an average $19,181 after the program’s start, a discount of just 3.8%.

In other words, the CARS Welfare/Bailout/Vandalism program is not only bloating the deficit and trashing hundreds of thousands of serviceable used cars (including scores of potential collector and donor vehicles), it is driving up the cost of both new AND used vehicles.

In the 1970s, we'd call the results of that sort of market tampering "inflation."

Auto dealers stand to endure another well-deserved lampooning starting this weekend with the box office release of "The Goods." Looking much like an update or pale derivation of the over-the-top 1980s comedy "Used Cars," "The Goods" rips on our perceptions of the preening, crude, unethical, self-centered and greed-saturated auto retailing industry. So far, most movie critics have slammed "The Goods."

Rated R, for containing all of the sorts of unnecessary and corrosive elements that mar a majority of contemporary films, "The Goods" may turn out as big of a raunchy fiasco as "Cash for Clunkers."