Save the Mustangs!

Drew Cline weighs in against the rampant destruction of wealth known as the Cash for Clunkers program.

Those vehicles are all nearing the end of their useful lives. Many, if not most, of them would be sold, traded or scrapped within a few years anyway. So really the taxpayers are not paying to get these vehicles off the roads. They would find their way to the junk yard soon anyway. The taxpayers are paying to get these vehicles off the roads now.

In so doing, we are eliminating their remaining economic value, which prevents that value from being put to use by those who could really benefit from it. If we wanted to pay people to trade up to newer, more fuel-efficient vehicles, wouldn’t it do more good to take the “clunkers” and redistribute them to people in need? Millions of Americans are out of work. Millions have had their vehicles, even their homes, repossessed. Wouldn’t it be more beneficial to give them these cars than to destroy them, thus lowering the supply and therefore raising the price of used vehicles?

He makes an excellent argument. The true cost of the Cash for Clunkers debacle isn't just the $3 billion in federal subsidies to buy your neighbor a new car. It's also the destruction of hundreds of thousands of functional cars.

According to Lojack, 1.1 million cars are stolen every year in the U.S. Congress will pay to destroy three-quarters of that total in just a few short months. So not only is Congress harming the economy more than all the car thieves in America; it's taking $3 billion from us to do it.

Plus, anything that results in the unnecessary destruction of a perfectly good red and white Ford Mustang convertible with leather seats has to be a bad idea.