My oversized COD.
Aug. 21st, 2009 05:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serynSupposedly the CARS program (also known as "Cash For Clunkers") is ending Monday.
Liberal news people have been touting the huge success of this program, reminding us that because of this program (cause not entirely proven, but I could stipulate to it for the duration of this portion of the discussion) almost $2B in cars were sold and that is about half a million cars. Because of this dramatic uptick in car sales, GM is re-hiring some of its laid off workers.
Of course, that presumes that people are still going to be buying cars without a 20% off coupon from the government, which I think is either unlikely or if true, then the CARS program was not the actual cause of the increased sales.
But! My big problem with this program is that it heartily rewards over-consumption. Yes, we want cars with shitty mileage off the roads, but I don't see why we should bribe people to do so. (Not to mention that it causes a dearth of parts available for other used cars. And that it adds a huge volume to already over-burdened landfills.) My car, which is a dozen years old, gets about 30-35MPG at highway speeds. I don't know what it gets "in town" because there seems to be a lot of overhead fuel consumption for small trips. But the sticker said 22MPG or so. That makes my 12 year old car superior MPG to the cars many people are buying via the CARS program.
Remember also that the original Prius got craptastic highway mileage, it was under 25MPG highway--- therefore rewarding people with that kind of car by giving them access to HOV lanes was counter-productive... those are the cars you want waiting in stop-and-go. And now that they have "hybrid" SUVs.... it's not even a useful designation. So, actually my old car has comparable average mileage to a hybrid.
But really, the government is giving people ~$4K for buying cars that get less than 18MPG originally. WTF! It should have been illegal to sell a car that gets that bad of gas mileage. And anyone who had one from before the law was passed should have been required to retrofit! Like you should not have been able to get license plates registering a car that gets 12MPG. The Army or whoever that needs armored vehicles doesn't do state-based registration anyway, but state-based National Guard units could get waivers. There should have been a program to help people with retrofit costs. But they should have done this in 1975. Certainly during the gas shortages before Reagan, the government should have enacted legislation. There should have been mandated increases in CAFE standards (where the fleet of cars sold by a manufacturer must average a certain mileage... so they could sell 3 guzzling SUVs if they sold 10 econocars) throughout the past 3 decades. If we had mandated it, cars could easily be averaging 50MPG since they sold cars like that in 1980. (New manual shift Honda CVCC in 1980 got 55MPG on the highway.)
So. I bought one of the most fuel efficient cars available anywhere when I bought mine. There were no government kickbacks rewarding me for doing the right thing. But now there is government handouts for people who said, "FUCK the environment, I want a car to be my oversized codpiece so everyone thinks I have a huge penis!"
Basically, since my car would qualify now for the CARS rebate standard, I'd like my free money. "Because you've been a good person who chose wisely for a dozen years before it even occurred to us that the environment mattered...." They could get that money by fining the people with the guzzling cars. Or they could have just added a gas tax that completely sodomized people who got 3MPG. Like $3/gallon in taxes. I buy about 60 gallons of gasoline per year, I can afford the extra $180. And if we'd used that tax money to subsidize public transit, then poor people wouldn't need to drive places. And it wouldn't cost more to repair roads than we take in in car-based taxes.
I don't mind, not really, not getting a handout for making the right choice. But I think it's wrong to reward anyone who deliberately chose wrongly.
Liberal news people have been touting the huge success of this program, reminding us that because of this program (cause not entirely proven, but I could stipulate to it for the duration of this portion of the discussion) almost $2B in cars were sold and that is about half a million cars. Because of this dramatic uptick in car sales, GM is re-hiring some of its laid off workers.
Of course, that presumes that people are still going to be buying cars without a 20% off coupon from the government, which I think is either unlikely or if true, then the CARS program was not the actual cause of the increased sales.
But! My big problem with this program is that it heartily rewards over-consumption. Yes, we want cars with shitty mileage off the roads, but I don't see why we should bribe people to do so. (Not to mention that it causes a dearth of parts available for other used cars. And that it adds a huge volume to already over-burdened landfills.) My car, which is a dozen years old, gets about 30-35MPG at highway speeds. I don't know what it gets "in town" because there seems to be a lot of overhead fuel consumption for small trips. But the sticker said 22MPG or so. That makes my 12 year old car superior MPG to the cars many people are buying via the CARS program.
Remember also that the original Prius got craptastic highway mileage, it was under 25MPG highway--- therefore rewarding people with that kind of car by giving them access to HOV lanes was counter-productive... those are the cars you want waiting in stop-and-go. And now that they have "hybrid" SUVs.... it's not even a useful designation. So, actually my old car has comparable average mileage to a hybrid.
But really, the government is giving people ~$4K for buying cars that get less than 18MPG originally. WTF! It should have been illegal to sell a car that gets that bad of gas mileage. And anyone who had one from before the law was passed should have been required to retrofit! Like you should not have been able to get license plates registering a car that gets 12MPG. The Army or whoever that needs armored vehicles doesn't do state-based registration anyway, but state-based National Guard units could get waivers. There should have been a program to help people with retrofit costs. But they should have done this in 1975. Certainly during the gas shortages before Reagan, the government should have enacted legislation. There should have been mandated increases in CAFE standards (where the fleet of cars sold by a manufacturer must average a certain mileage... so they could sell 3 guzzling SUVs if they sold 10 econocars) throughout the past 3 decades. If we had mandated it, cars could easily be averaging 50MPG since they sold cars like that in 1980. (New manual shift Honda CVCC in 1980 got 55MPG on the highway.)
So. I bought one of the most fuel efficient cars available anywhere when I bought mine. There were no government kickbacks rewarding me for doing the right thing. But now there is government handouts for people who said, "FUCK the environment, I want a car to be my oversized codpiece so everyone thinks I have a huge penis!"
Basically, since my car would qualify now for the CARS rebate standard, I'd like my free money. "Because you've been a good person who chose wisely for a dozen years before it even occurred to us that the environment mattered...." They could get that money by fining the people with the guzzling cars. Or they could have just added a gas tax that completely sodomized people who got 3MPG. Like $3/gallon in taxes. I buy about 60 gallons of gasoline per year, I can afford the extra $180. And if we'd used that tax money to subsidize public transit, then poor people wouldn't need to drive places. And it wouldn't cost more to repair roads than we take in in car-based taxes.
I don't mind, not really, not getting a handout for making the right choice. But I think it's wrong to reward anyone who deliberately chose wrongly.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-22 01:00 am (UTC)No, I believe you've said that your old car has comparable avg mileage to the outmoded, since-then-twice-revised Prius.
In 1980, most of the people who wanted the little Honda Civic actively were people who couldn't afford something with aircon and a little more head- and leg-room. I'm not sure that's a fair comparison. I do agree that different mandates would've resulted in a different state of affairs and that it would've been logical to apply different mandates than the ones we've got.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-22 01:19 am (UTC)I think the interesting point is that my car, because I purchased it with fuel efficiency in mind, is better than some of the cars people are buying with their Cash For Clunkers handouts.
And since there were cars getting 50MPG in 1980, there is no excuse why those do not exist in the current crop of new cars. Admittedly I like air conditioning in the car and headroom was a deciding factor in which model we purchased, so I would not have wanted the itty bitty thing like it was 30 years ago. It just seems ridiculous that the cars existed with 1980s technology and now you can't buy a car that gets that kind of mileage except in the newest Prius model. With the advances in robotics, engineering, materials, if someone had been working on this for the past 30 years, think of where we'd be now!