Anyone else experiencing "moral" issues with the cash for clunkers deal?

[bull]

This has been touched on a few times here but it never really hit home for me until my brother-in-law announced that he wants to turn in my former 1985 Dodge Ram 1/2 ton pickup to buy a new car (I sold it to him about 12 years ago). And then I find out they are required to destroy the cars they turn in. What a waste. There's nothing wrong with it other than poor fuel ecomony but these big pickups do have a purpose. Then I considered turning in my aging Dakota pickup but I just don't think I can stand the thought of it being destroyed. It's a pretty good little truck and it always gets me where I need to go. It's odd to feel this way I guess but it just seems wasteful to start smashing decent cars and trucks. What's the hurry? Most of them aren't going to last forever anyway so why push them into the crusher before their time?

[Silver R/T]

It's a mind game. They want you to think that you're doing good thing by "recycling" your "clunker" While they rip you off on a trade-in. Just another scam that government is helping dealers to push through.

[Ghoste]

It's called helping government to purchase the green vote.

[Dans 68]

Now, what California is doing, as of July 1st, is to offer $1,000 for your '89 and older "clunkers", which, if approved, will be taken apart by the local pick-n-pull and thus recycled. I have a '87 BMW 535i which will probably go that way. I can't get near $1,000 for it, and really the only thing wrong with it is that I don't have room for it. Damn shame, but the economics say to turn it in. I need the space.    But of course I'll probably get an I.O.U. from the State....

Dan

[bull]

I can kind of understand something like that. If the car is beat, belching smoke and using a quart of oil everyday, and it's not a restorable classic, then I can see turning it in to the hippies to crush. But I just don't see the logic in smashing perfectly good cars just because they get 18 mpg.

[Dans 68]

... I just don't see the logic in smashing perfectly good cars just because they get 18 mpg.

Agreed.

Dan

[Mike DC]

The Greenie lobby always seems a lot more poweful whenever they're pushing Corporate America to do something that is unpopular but profitable. 

[68X426]

Here's a twist on the clunker story. I know someone with a 2002 Honda Insight. 80k miles and the battery needs replacing. It is $5000 for the battery and $1000 or more to install. The Blue Book is $4800. The old battery comes out and Honda gets to recycle it and keep the money. The Insight owner is financially screwed. But she will remain green no matter the waste. 

Ironic, that she really does have a clunker.

Where is there anything practical, green, or sensible with this car? Just more consumer waste but that's ok to the greenies because she lowered her carbon footprint. I'll keep my free range, fair trade Hemi Road Runner.

So is the clunker program moral? I think that the clunker sham is just one more example of CONSPICUOUS VIRTUE. So no, its not moral.

I share selected observations from Joe Rago writing in the Wall Street Journal in 2007. I wish I had the capacity to express these concepts like he did. Go Joe.

Conspicuous Virtue:

Increasingly many consumers are not seeking an outright demonstration of wealth. Instead, they consume to demonstrate their innate goodness. They spend not to suggest the deepness of their pockets but the deepness of their hearts. We inhabit . . . an age of conspicuous virtue.

A trip to the supermarket is instructive. For some time, everyday food has groaned with every sort of moral sentiment: all-natural, sustainable, cage-free, free-range, organic, organic, organic. Foods like these are more than mere sustenance: They commodify values, making them real -- material -- in the world. They are virtuous goods.

To consume a virtuous good is to make a statement. It is not only to do right, whatever that might mean, but to announce that you are doing so.

Thus we encounter the extreme specialization of virtuous consumption. Upscale boutique grocers like Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe's base their identities (and marketing strategies) on giving people a way to eat so that each of us may demonstrate where we rank in the virtue standings. The "holistic thinking" of Whole Foods Market, for instance, could not be fully expressed in a "vision statement," so the store is governed by a posted "declaration of interdependence" as well. Trader Joe's actually makes a point of advertising that it does not kill baby seals in the procurement of seafood.

Only the affluent can afford to align their products with their beliefs.

Take Toyota's hybrid auto, the Prius. Studies consistently show that fuel savings do not justify the price premium of a gasoline-electric power train. People who can afford the gesture continue to buy the Prius anyway, largely because it certifies personal enlightenment in the matter of global warming.

Culturally, it addresses a continuing fussiness, even conflictedness, about materialism in America. Conspicuous virtue offers to those with guilty consciences a way to feel OK about consumerism.

A fine scotch is vulgar. A "fair trade" scotch is righteous.

Yet we also have here a tidy illustration of a robust market economy at work.. If consumers desire the specialized production of goods as evidence of moral strength -- hell, they'll get it. But there may not be any deeper meaning than that.

In closing I attached a photo to demonstrate what I think of the clunker sham. Good night everybody and remember to generously tip your waitresses on the way out.

[aussiemuscle]

Not to mention that a new car consumes a large volume of resources, which and 'older' car has already paid for. to make as much economical/environmental sense out of a car,  instead of buying a new car every three years, you should own it until it's 'end of life'. (those restoring old mopars ARE environmentalists after all!)

as for the opening question, if you have any sentimental attachment, it makes no sense to trade it in as a junker.

[chargergirl]

Had a "greenie" walk...stride actually up to me at the local Wally World and berate me for driving a gas guzzler. I retorted it didn't guzzle gas...it's a deisel. It's a 24 valve Cummings Diesel 6 speed dually. (Yes I have issues with the greenies). She told me how she gets 23 mpg on the highway. I started laughing and she got even madder and asked me what my problem was. I told her that her gas mileage on such a small car was atrocious and we got 22mpg on the highway towing. WHAT! she yelled. I then went in to my car lover tirade...when did you change your oil last, check the air pressure in your tires, change the filters...pick one! My whole life, growing up in Maui, we had these hippies that lived on the beach, went around with no clothes on, and showed up in the welfare line driving their Audi and BMW's. Older ones but so trendy in their eyes. "If God intended us to wear clothes he would have had us born with them", was their favorite excuse for being in your face naked. Ask how they got to Maui they would reply, "I flew". Strange...none of them had wings.

[b5blue]

  NAKED HIPPIES  I think I just threw up a little in someones carbon footprint! 

[Ghoste]

Mike is right, this whole thing is becoming a very profitable way to take advantage of the green guilt much of the public have been fooled into shouldering.  If they didn't believe everything they saw on tv, they could sleep better.  It will all pale though when the government starts handing us the bill for carbon use.  The coming carbon taxes will hit nearly every single aspect of our daily lives. 

[694spdRT]

This whole plan is going to benefit the people out there that have older SUV's and trucks IMO. I have several older cars that are worth much less than what the clunker deal is providing. They are all bigger cars with V8's and guess what, they get better than 18mpg combined according to the site provided by the government. If they are converted to the "new" mpg standards then the might qualify. Regardless, there are not really any new cars that I am interested in owning that qualify anyway except maybe a Calibre SRT4 and they are pricey little things.

The new Challenger doesn't qualify in case anyone was wondering....I checked. 

[PocketThunder]

Mike is right, this whole thing is becoming a very profitable way to take advantage of the green guilt much of the public have been fooled into shouldering.  If they didn't believe everything they saw on tv, they could sleep better.  It will all pale though when the government starts handing us the bill for carbon use.  The coming carbon taxes will hit nearly every single aspect of our daily lives. 

On the radio this morning was a guy that is starting a brokerage company to buy every homeowners carbon credits and sell them to the industrial companies.  You sign up for the program, track your utility bills each month, and when you have improved your energy needs and saved up 1 metric ton of carbon credit you sell it to the broker, who then sells it to the next guy.  I'm sorry but i cant remember the website at the moment, (i'm thinking about lunch right now). 

[Old Moparz]

Doesn't bother me much at all, but it would if I sold something cheap to someone as a favor, & they turned around & flipped it right away for a profit. In this case, 12 years is a long time, & an '85 is pretty old, so it doesn't seem unreasonable at all. If the vehicle was mint, then it makes no sense, but if it's worn & will need all kinds of things replaced in the near future, then it might make a lot of sense to trade it in.

It's easy to say that it can be salvaged or restored, or used as a parts source to fix other cars, but anyone who's parted cars out before, knows that you will sit on things forever before you sell them. As much as I'd like to snag a few vehicles for parts I need & maybe make a few extra bucks on the leftovers, I won't do it anymore. I have no time to tinker with an older daily driver & don't want the hassle of hearing "Sorry, we don't stock old crap like that."

What bothered me more, was the pollution credits deal that big companies took advantage of by crushing old cars that weren't on the road anyway, so they can continue polluting.

[my73charger]

Had a "greenie" walk...stride actually up to me at the local Wally World and berate me for driving a gas guzzler. I retorted it didn't guzzle gas...it's a deisel. It's a 24 valve Cummings Diesel 6 speed dually. (Yes I have issues with the greenies). She told me how she gets 23 mpg on the highway. I started laughing and she got even madder and asked me what my problem was. I told her that her gas mileage on such a small car was atrocious and we got 22mpg on the highway towing. WHAT! she yelled. I then went in to my car lover tirade...when did you change your oil last, check the air pressure in your tires, change the filters...pick one! My whole life, growing up in Maui, we had these hippies that lived on the beach, went around with no clothes on, and showed up in the welfare line driving their Audi and BMW's. Older ones but so trendy in their eyes. "If God intended us to wear clothes he would have had us born with them", was their favorite excuse for being in your face naked. Ask how they got to Maui they would reply, "I flew". Strange...none of them had wings.

This reminds me of when I was a kid in the early 70's.  We had a hippie couple living down the road from us in a tiny cabin.  They didn't believe in owning a car, but they sure were glad my dad owned one on cold days.  They frequently stopped in and asked him for a ride to town.

[Todd Wilson]

The owner of the shop I work at part time cashed in his 1990 Jeep GC on the deal for a new Minivan.    The clunker deal has a lot of guidelines to go by.  The clunker has to meet a certain MPG rating to qualify. If you trade it in on a small econo car you get 4500$. If you trade it in on a lesser MPG vehicle you get 3500$.   Little cars dont qaulify as a clunker. My 1986 Honda Prelude is not a clunker and I could not trade it in under the plan.  A guy at the shop has a Ford Escort he commutes in and it approaching 300000miles. Car still runs fine but its getting up there. He was gonna clunker it but it didnt qualify.

There are no incentives or wheeling and dealing.  Its sticker price minus the clunker cash and thats how it works.  The program is really only for select situations and not as good of a deal as we all originally thought.


Todd

[LeadfootBob]

Am I the only one who instantly associated "carbon credits" and "emission rights" with something the church did way back when, where you could just mail the pope a couple of bucks and have your sins forgiven? Green guilt just makes me nauseuous, whatever the manifestation...

[mauve66]

the problem with this clunker deal is that MOST of the people that have older cars that are worth less than $4500 can't afford a $300 per month car payment when they turn in their PAID OFF car to go green, don't htink the government cares about their monthly bills do ya

of course you can go get a kia rio for $4500 after the clunker money but who in the $$$$ wants one of those?? not people with 5 kids and a paid off car that still runs fine

[bearbqd]

Am I the only one who instantly associated "carbon credits" and "emission rights" with something the church did way back when, where you could just mail the pope a couple of bucks and have your sins forgiven? Green guilt just makes me nauseuous, whatever the manifestation...

It makes me so sick I'm seriously considering having my wife's shop make me some magnetics to stick on the back of my musclecars when I drive them. They would say "I Kill Trees!"

[Todd Wilson]

the problem with this clunker deal is that MOST of the people that have older cars that are worth less than $4500 can't afford a $300 per month car payment when they turn in their PAID OFF car to go green, don't htink the government cares about their monthly bills do ya

of course you can go get a kia rio for $4500 after the clunker money but who in the $$$$ wants one of those?? not people with 5 kids and a paid off car that still runs fine

You are exactly right.  My boss bought his GC brand new. It was completely wore out,rusted out and barely running. He's got the $$$ to go buy what ever he wants. Wife has a car thats getting to be 6-7 years old but still in fine shape. He's having health issues that will eventually put him in a wheel chair so he traded the GC in for a real nice T&C minivan. It made perfect sense for him to do it.  He is one of the few that really should and could trade every 3 years but he's nto that type. The clunker deal wont do those people a bit of good. I think they will find out this clunker deal isnt gonna do a whole lot but make some officials feel good.


Todd

[jb666]

I can kind of understand something like that. If the car is beat, belching smoke and using a quart of oil everyday, and it's not a restorable classic, then I can see turning it in to the hippies to crush. But I just don't see the logic in smashing perfectly good cars just because they get 18 mpg.

I agree with you completely, and you're going to see more and more of this. My City has a billboard up that says "Scrap your old car (pre-1994) and get $3000 tax credit for it regardless of it's condition! Do something good for your community!!"

So a 1992 Chevy Impala is a load that needs to be crushed??

I did something good for my environment, I sold my black smoke spewing diesel truck... That's as far as I'll go.

[Todd Wilson]

I wonder what those folks that are driving old beaters will drive when their current beaters give up. There wont be any 90's cars left to buy for 800$ if this clunker deal and tax credit thing pans out like they hope.


Todd

[bull]

There are no incentives or wheeling and dealing.  Its sticker price minus the clunker cash and thats how it works.  The program is really only for select situations and not as good of a deal as we all originally thought.
Todd

So what's to stop the dealers from jacking the prices in anticipation of this? If they know there's no negotiating then why not pad the already-too-high price by a 2-3 G's or more? I could see where someone using this "rebate" program might actually spend more money on a car than they would have otherwise. It's like Vegas, the house always wins.

[jb666]

I wonder what those folks that are driving old beaters will drive when their current beaters give up. There wont be any 90's cars left to buy for 800$ if this clunker deal and tax credit thing pans out like they hope.


Todd

Right. We just bought my youngest daughter a 1999 Chevy Impala for her first car. Got it from a friend for $500, and it runs like a top, passed inspection right away, has every option possible and best of all? It's safe for her..

But, by their standards, it should be crushed and put out of it's misery.