Cash for Clunkers and Foreign Car Models

As the Cash for Clunkers program rolled on, there were some complaints that foreign auto models were selling at a much quicker pace than American-made cars. This led to a typical line of comments, particularly by folks who oppose any manner of government stimulus program, about how Cash for Clunkers wasn't doing much to help Detroit automobile manufacturers.

Nate Silver over at FiveThirtyEight.com has done his usual bang-up job of crunching the numbers and comes up with the graph below.

Notice, if you will, that the three major US auto makers - Ford, Chrysler, and GM - have significantly fewer of their available models that qualify to be purchased under Cash for Clunkers. So caught up in the massive profits of SUVs and trucks that they failed to hop on the fuel efficiency bandwagon, American manufacturers produced few vehicles that met the Cash for Clunkers required minimum of 22 miles per gallon.

Let's hope that this serves as yet another wake-up call for Detroit, and that they begin to crank out quality, high-mileage cars and SUVs. I'm ready for a new car - my Jeep was paid off in January - and if I want to buy American, I still don't have a lot of choices.

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Where Are The Stimulus Jobs?

There's a lot of gum-flapping going on in Republican circles about how slowly the jobless numbers are rebounding. Not that they have a plan, of course, but that never stops them from pontificating about that which they themselves cannot solve.

Derek Thompson, via Andrew Sullivan, points to this chart and make an interesting observation:

The best explanation I've found for why the stimulus didn't work is this graph from the GAO analysis of the stimulus act. It shows pretty clearly that the 76 percent of stimulus spending through the first four months went to fill in the gaping holes in Medicaid and state budgets. In other words, the stimulus isn't acting like a pole vault lifting job creation above the baseline. It's been acting like a crutch to keep state budgets and payrolls from imploding.

Rick Perry - All Asshat, No Cattle

Remember when Texas governor Rick "Goodhair" Perry threatened to secede from the United States of America rather than continue to have the federales mess with Texas?

I believe he turned down nearly $556 million in Obama administration stimulus funds to be applied to Texas unemployment benefits. There may have been some hitchin' of his britches and nutsack adjustin' as he hopped from tea party to tea party, posturin' and demagogin' and bein' all "we can care for our own in Tejas."

Yeah...Texas is asking the feds for a $170 million loan so they can keep paying those unemployment benefits. So much for independence.

Media outlets are reporting that Texas is expected to request $650 million in funds. I know that Texas schools are all about that there readin', writin', and 'rithmetic, so surely they know that's about $100 million more than they turned down initially.

Maybe they are going to secede, and the $650 million is like key money for a new apartment. Once they get the cash, they'll change all the locks and stop returning our calls.

Don't mess with Texas.

Image by StevenM_61 on flickr

Stimulus: What Would Dilbert Do?

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, weighs in on the current approach to getting us all to spend money again.

This is yet another situation where smart people are ironically incompetent if left to their own devices. If the world were populated only with the smart and well-informed, we'd all sit around waiting for someone else to spend money first, so they can take the highest risk. Eventually society would crumble and all of us geniuses would be eaten by rats. But if you throw a bunch of clueless bastards into the mix, suddenly the economy is supercharged. Money is flying everywhere, confidence becomes warranted, and the economy flourishes.