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The Spectacle Blog
Former Obama economic adviser Austan Goolsbee has decided that maybe Cash for Clunkers wasn’t such a hot idea after all. Cash for Clunkers, if you’ll recall, was the scheme in which the goverment gave people who turned in their old cars cash to buy energy-efficient new ones, and then destroyed the old ones. Goolsbee now regrets the program, although his reasoning still leaves something to be desired:
Former Obama administration economic adviser Austan Goolsbee said Thursday that if given a second chance he would not have backed the Cash for Clunkers program or the home buyer tax credit passed in 2009 to stave off further economic distress.
“Because we didn’t know if [economic recovery was] going to be short or long,” the Obama administration tried measures to address both scenarios, Goolsbee explained on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“If you look at Cash for Clunkers or the first home buyer tax credit, they were geared to trying to shift [recovery] from 2010 into 2009. Given it’s taken this long [to recover], I don’t think you would do that short-run stuff,” Goolsbee added.
This makes no sense, because Cash for Clunkers and the home buyer tax credit were supposed to make the recession a short one. The administration thought that these programs would usher in a booming recovery, hence the word stimulus. They were wrong, of course, but it’s totally backward to maintain now that the length of the recession rendered the programs useless when the point of the programs was to shorten the recessions.
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More Blog Posts by Joseph Lawler
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/10/21/goolsbee-cash-for-clunkers-did
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Trinacria| 10.21.11 @ 1:54PM
Stop the presses! Liberals rely on circular logic?
nohype| 10.21.11 @ 2:50PM
Goolsbee is off message. The President has said, "All the choices we've made have been the right ones."
The cash for clunkers program never made any economic sense. It should have been obvious to any competent economist that the main effect would be to change the timing of transactions rather than increase them.
RJ| 10.21.11 @ 3:47PM
Don't try to make sense of senselessness from a liberal. Be happy to accept that they recognize they were wrong, but don't expect them to learn anything from it.
Bob Grant| 10.21.11 @ 4:14PM
What this clown said in essence is they failed to match the correct stimulus programs with this particular recession.
No problem. Were only dealing with classroom theory in his mind.
The Obama team will get it right next time...or not!
Rent Seeker| 10.21.11 @ 6:53PM
I was involved in Cash for Clunkers. Bad public policy, but I'm not one of those who believe they are under-taxed, so anytime Uncle Sam wants to give me $4,000 for a car worth about a tenth of that, I will set ideology aside and take the money.
It accelerated my purchase of a replacement vehicle, but I didn't buy anything I wasn't going to buy anyway. Got a made-in-American Toyota. The made-in-Norway Fisker wasn't available at the time.
O Tamandua| 10.21.11 @ 7:56PM
I hate that all those used engines which were sold to the "Cash for clunkers" program had liquid glass poured in them rendering them useless for resale. Have a feeling that aspect of the program worked just fine for our (Solyndra-friendly) administration.
davod| 10.21.11 @ 11:50PM
The destruction of the older vehicles increased the cost of used vehicles and placed a greater burden on the poor.
RND| 10.22.11 @ 12:26AM
Question: What was your first clue that Cash for Clunkers was flawed?
Answer: The mandatory crushing of the turned- in vehicle. (no parts permitted to be salvaged)
We are in an age where people don't think, don't examine, don't care.
This program did not come out of some brainy freak in D.C. It had already been done in France and Germany. To no effect except to increase citizenry taxation.
What journalists analyzed France and Germany's Cash for Clunkers as the program was launched in America? Who provided the tough, fact-based analysis?
None.
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