Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Fuzzy Math

Let's see now, the government's cash for clunkers program that was supposed to run into the fall ran through the billion dollars that were allocated to it in just two weeks.

The program contributed $4,500 to the purchase price of each of 22,000 vehicles.

But $1 billion divided by 22,000 means that every vehicle that was sold cost the taxpayer funded public treasury more than $45,000.

Before ponying up the $2 billion more that our rulers are insisting upon tapping us for to keep the program going, somebody might want to find out what happened to the other $40,500 (plus change) that we laid out for each clunker that was replaced with a new car. Someone also might muse about how many of the clunkers would have been replaced even without the program.

No matter though -- we all should feel good about helping other folks buy shiny new cars.

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