1 – Cash for clunkers was a good program as keeping big car companies a float is important. We have learned from other recessions that spending has to come from somewhere to get out of a recession. As for Toyota, you would be shocked to know how many Toyotas are actually built in the US where many “American” cars are actually built in Mexico.
2 – I think that any unwanted child is a tragedy so I can’t see any better way to spend my tax money. If you think about it how come it is ok for taxes to pay for an alcoholic to get a new liver but not ok for taxes to pay for the abortion of a woman that has been raped or simply can’t afford to keep a child.
3 – I don’t support everything in the health care bill but two concepts have to be understood by everyone. One, the uninsured cost us more then it does to insure them as these people get very expensive care (as they dont do any preventive care) in very inefficient ways (the ER). Two, this country is way too rich to have such terrible healthcare for the insured and uninsured and it is not acceptable that people in this country should suffer from prevetable disease.

I am not a liberal and I hate taxes as well but just like with education I think there is a minimal level of healthcare that everyone deserves. I much rather take home 3-5% less pay and live in a better country.

Where Obama angers me is he doesn’t get anything concrete done and wont admit that some of this will cost money.
Total Comments by Peter Rabbit: 44

First, the amounts were clearly way too high. This was obvious to a lot of people the day it was announced.

Second, it focused on improvement of raw MPG, which is not a good method. For example, take this scenario:

General situation: You drive 10,000 miles per year.

Situation A: You have a truck that gets 5 mpg and you trade it in for a truck that gets 6 mpg.

Situation B: You have a car that gets 20 mpg and you trade it in for a car that gets 50 mpg. (Yes, I know that a 20 mpg car would not have qualified for C4C – just using this example to illustrate a point).

What trade saves more gas (and thus has more of an environmental impact)?

At first glance, it’s obvious that boosting mpg from 20 to 50 had the greater impact, right?

Well, no.

At 5 mpg, the truck uses 2000 gallons to drive the 10,000 miles. At 6 mpg, it uses 1667 gallons – a decrease of 333 gallons.

At 20 mpg, the car uses 500 gallons to drive 10,000 miles. At 50 mpg, it uses only 200. This is a decrease of 300 gallons.

It’s pretty obvious that we shouldn’t have simply been rewarding an increase of X mpg, if the goal was to make a significant dent in the use of oil. It should have been turned on its head to reward a decrease in the rate of consumption. For the truck above, consumption drops from 0.2 gallons/mile to .167 gallons per mile. The car dropped from .05 gpm to .02 gpm.
Total Comments by kosmo: 589