Guest commentary: Clunker logic
08.08.09
Millions of incorruptible Americans get up and go to work every morning (or evening, as in the case of many auto workers) to create property -- designing, building and selling things. The government then takes a big chunk of the fruits of their labor (outwardly because they know better how to spend it). Then the government passes new legislation, sets up a new program, hires people to keep an eye on it and redistributes those fruits (greatly diminished since their taking, by the way) by hiring people to take perfectly wholesome, working cars and destroy them.
And somehow we are to believe that these actions are a benefit to society? That this will serve to fire the economy? That this will result in less pollution, than if the government would have just stayed out of it and let people do productive things? That this won't add to the already unsustainable inhabitant debt?
If those old cars would have just disappeared we could argue that we lost all of the natural resources -- materials, tender creativity and labor, millions of gallons of water, fuel, etc. -- associated with their initial formation and therefore partially represented in their remaining usefulness. But by paying people to haul, track and exhaust them, we have only increased the net loss to society. (In case you haven't heard the old cars must be scrapped, with the apparatus and transmission being destroyed -- the engine being filled with liquid glass.)
Source: Daily Camera