Clunkers, where did the jobs go.

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Yep, with millions of Americans out of work it seems crazy to add another bill to the monthly budget. And these are cars that people are actually USING! It just seems insane. Why do we always shoot ourselves in the foot? Also, I think we are just bailing out the car industry again. Nuts!
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I know you are not calling me a young kid! LOL

My first car was a 64 Plymouth Valiant. Push button gears.
So yes I know what Pinto is!
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DH had a whole bunch of Valiants! '66, '68 & '70. And then we had a '65 Dart. I thought that car would last forever, but the springs went on it and they don't make parts anymore. Happily, we sold it for $50 more than we bought it for...
 
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+1.
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People complain about the Massachusetts public transportation being lousy (frequent breakdowns, expensive) but it's still ten times better than having none. We used to live in the Cleveland area where the only train is a trolley that goes from one end of the ghetto to the other--not to the nice parts of town or the areas where the jobs are--and a teeny tiny bus service that similarly doesn't go anywhere you might actually want to go, or during times when public transportation would be really useful, like after work or for weekend Happy Hours when folks oughtn't to be driving. The MBTA can get you from the distant suburbs to the city and then within 3 blocks of where you want to go for about the same as the cost of gas to go the same distance. Since there is your choice of a. no place to park at all, go home or b. that'll be $30 to park for two hours ma'am in Boston, it's actually something of a bargain.

One college town where we used to live always had bus service till 2:30am on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, and the bus route went by all the bars and wings-n-beer places. I thought that was a great idea, it certainly cut down on the drunk driving and roaming drunken college students stirring up trouble as they staggered back to the apartment complexes.
 
This "clunker" program was the dumbest thing I ever heard of. People should have used common sense - why trade in a vehicle that was paid off to purchase a vehicle that gets only a few more miles per gallon? Think about how much more it is going to cost in the long run - higher insurance premiums, loan payments (if financed) and interest charges, and they will have to pay not only towards the $4500 they "received" back in taxes, but everyone else's $4500 that used the program. Just imagine the amount of gas they could have bought by not utilizing this program!

It's amazing too the amount of money the dealerships are waiting for now from the government. I heard yesterday that GM was going to front the money to dealerships and then they will wait for the government to reimburse them. It would have made more sense if GM would have just taken $4500 off the sticker prices on their new vehicles. This way this program would have only worked with American vehicles, and since the "government" now owns GM no money really would have exchanged hands. Also, no money would go back to Japan or other foreign car companies.
 
It was a great program. Sold a lot of cars. Put some people back to work and got some gas guzzlers off the road. Most of the cars purchased were high mileage cars and had a lot of extra discounts on them. There are a lot of people in this country that still have jobs and can afford payments. Car loans are hard to get now. They don't just give them to anyone walking in off the street like they used to. Credit in general is hard to get. One of the problems with why we aren't coming back faster than we are. Any one that knows anything about business knows that credit is necessary to run a small business. The people that took advantage of the clunker program got rid of gas guzzlers that they didn't need but couldn't sell for what they wanted on the open market. The rest of the stimulus package is also starting to take effect. Housing is starting to go up again thanks to the 8k first time buyer incentive. Solar energy is starting to take hold too. Eventually it will all come in to place and we will have a better country for it.
 
i just wish that they could have salvaged some parts from those clunkers.

how many people out there have a great vehicle but it needs a starter that they cant afford right now

it seems strange that a little thing like a starter or a oil pump could make the difference between someone feeding their family this week or not...

no car means no way to go to work = no paycheque

when the auto ind was at its lowest point here in Canada DH needed a starter for his truck and we could not afford one but thank goodness we had a second vehicle to fall back on or we would have been sunk
 
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I agree with that. The only thing that had to be destroyed was the engine. However the engine is the main thing the salvage dealers are after. So a lot of them are going straight to the crusher. It seems like they could have figured out a way to make sure the car didn't end up back on the road. A lot of good engines went to waste that way.
 
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