| 4 comments ]

Is Somebody Lying About “Cash for Clunkers”?

That's the question that Steven D. Levitt, professor of economics at the University of Chicago, is asking.

Levitt points out that:


The “Cash for Clunkers” program gives roughly a $4,000 subsidy when a person trades in a clunker for a new car that gets better gas mileage.


Congress set aside $1 billion to fund the program. If all of that money was going to pay these subsidies, there would be enough money to pay for 250,000 clunkers.


The program went into place on July 24th. One week later, the program was said to be out of money.


In 2006, before the current ills of the automakers, the average number of new cars sold in a week in the United States was 125,000.


So if you believe the numbers, sales involving clunkers as trade-ins last week represented more than two times the weekly sales of newvehicles when the industry was healthy.


Levitt adds, "the numbers just don’t seem to add up. Something does not smell right to me."

4 comments

Anonymous said... @ August 03, 2009 7:09 PM

Can the democratic power structure do any thing that isn't currupt?

Anonymous said... @ August 03, 2009 7:11 PM

It's just another Obama administration screwball idea...Of course something isn't right...

Pam said... @ August 03, 2009 7:13 PM

Numbers? What numbers? We don't need no stinking numbers.

Anonymous said... @ August 04, 2009 12:10 AM

It's all a bunch of lies. If it's coming out of D.C. then it's crap!

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