By Jerry D. Rose
Although I wouldn’t mind having a new car, my “clunker” doesn’t quite qualify for the cash for clunkers voucher. Sure, she’s old enough, a 2000 Toyota Camry, but she still gets about 30 mpg and doesn’t qualify as a gas-guzzler. Oh well, I have another idea, how about “Rags for Cash?” I have a wardrobe that definitely needs updating with new clothes and I could use a government voucher to spend to buy some of the Asia-sewn clothes at Wal-Mart. Of course you’d want to put my turned-in rags in the incinerator like clunker cars have been turned into scrap confetti. So my cast-aside clothes will no longer be available to be repaired by clothes repair people or sold by Goodwill or Salvation Army to those unable to afford new clothes, even with a voucher. Well, nobody worried that incinerating clunkers was going to deprive less wealthy people of the only kind of car they could afford to buy (they used to call clunker cars used cars) or even of a free one if community-minded people turned in their clunkers for a tax break to be furnished as free transportation for the indigent. So what, let em cake those poor folks, it’s their own fault if they’re poor. And they can walk or get their clothes from dumpsters.
And, by the way, I have a couch that’s still serviceable but seen better days and I’d love to get a voucher to buy a new one at Furniture Kingdom. Before you know it, my whole life style will get bailed out with taxpayer dollars and every purveyor of every kind of newly manufactured product will see sky-high rises in their sales. Yippee, it’s go shopping time, how patriotic is that?
This material appeared in a slightly edited form as a Letter to the Editor in the Gainesville (FL) Sun on August 11, 2009.
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Jerry D. Rose is editor of The Sun State Activist
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Great reasoning – and point made with humor – we like to have the government not help us – please just leave us alone. Less Government, More Liberty is our thought.
I would love to have time to keep up with your interesting work – I’ll come by when I can. LS
If the “Cash for Clunkers” program had been designed to improve the environment and help the poorer people who own the older cars, instead of as a boost for Big Auto, it would have been a program by which you could turn in your qualifying vehicle for $4500 cash rather than getting the amount to put down on a new car.
A friend of mine from Texas came to Oakland in June and is living with me. He would like to sell his aging minivan which needs repairs. He would have liked to get the $4500 for the “cluncker” and use $3200 to buy us each an electric bicycle. These vehicles go 20 MPH tops and are legal wherever regular bicycles are legal. They don’t use gasoline (and can be pedalled if you run out of juice). They don’t need to be insured. For people like us, who only go to the grocery store, and the Marina and my workplace in neighboring Berkeley they are a good deal. If we want to go into San Francisco, there is public transit. If we want to venture farther than that we could rent a car. Moreover, if it were a cash program we could keep what we didn’t spend and that would really be a help now, as I work part time and he has found only one freelance gig that hasn’t paid yet. An electric bike would be a good commuter vehicle for jobs within a 15-mile radius of home.
But I don’t think the government really wants people to give up their cars, even if it means buying Toyotas, and give up using gasoline and buying car insurance. Less gas purchased means fewer gas taxes paid, and, as we know from the health debate, insurance companies are big players in the political world.