Cash For Clunkers

People have different opinions about the US Government’s Cash For Clunker program, no doubt. While the merits of the program, namely stimulating the economy, reducing harmful emissions, and reducing our dependence on foreign oil by consuming less of it, could be discussed in great length and very passionately, our issue with the program is of a slightly different nature. Looking at what kind of vehicles are being crushed as “clunkers,” cars often only 6 or 7 years young, all of them equipped with O2 sensors and electronically regulated catalytic converters, many of them in perfect operating condition, we can’t help but wonder why the US Government didn’t take a meaningful second step. What step would that be, you wonder?

Well, take the healthy and very presentable among the so-called clunkers, have ‘em inspected and -- if it makes sense from a financial perspective – repaired as needed, and exchange them outright, car-for-car, for the “real” clunkers. As you may know, many truly poor people drive around in completely banged-up cars that barely can move on their own. Think of a 1970s Chevy Nova 4-door that smokes like a clogged furnace as a good example. Any such a car emits ten, twenty, thirty times more harmful emission than that shiny 1999 Volvo sedan or 2002 Dodge Caravan they euthanized by pouring liquid glass into its wonderfully smooth running engine.

If we are really concerned about harmful emission, don’t you think exchanging a car from the late 1990s or the New Millennium for a completely worn out car from the 1960s, ‘70s, or ‘80s, a car that nobody in their right mind would even consider worthy as a parts car, would have made a lot of sense, from an ecological as well as from a social perspective, especially since it would have cost us, the taxpayer, almost nothing?