I imagine you get quite dizzy trying to spin anything and everything a person has to say when you blindly disagree with them. Its much like a lie ... when you get caught in one, you have to compound others to cover that one. After awhile, you make absolutely no sense. For example, I said companies, not cars. You even maliciously took the time to quote those very words. So now that you want to blur everything up and point out how American cars are made in mexico and foreign cars made in America, wouldn't it have been better to prop up the foreign companies and let the American companies fail since all the jobs are in mexico? But then again, spin never does make sense.
you seem to get a little defensive when called out, Sam. I'll give you a quick lesson (free of charge, this time). When examining whether or not something is successful or not, one must consider both the costs as well as the benefits. You instead were wearing the horse blinders and only considered the benefits. Please think critically before making this mistake again. TIA
There are hundred of thousands of jobs the defense industry employees. I be no means justify wasting money on defense just to employee people, but it stimulates the economy much more than the stimulus bill, bank bailout and auto bailouts will ever accomplish.
I think you missed the point. If the goal is to stimulate the US economy, then all that matters is whether those cars were made here. It doesn't matter what country the corporation is from. If more cars are being built in the US as a result of this, the goal was met (regardless of whether you agree with the goal or not). Do you disagree with this?
I want to know if bigtexxx thinks the costs outweighed benifts in this program. if it stimulated the economy who cares if defense stimulates it more. do you think we should have started another war instead?
I have yet to see a full cost benefit analysis of this program. I would like either you or Sam Fisher to present this to me. Thanks.
You said companies. I'm talking about "companies." Toyotas made in Aamerica are made by Toyota Motor North America, Inc, a Delaware incorporated entity, wholly-owned by Toyota Motor Co. of Japan. Toyota North America Inc. owns a number of entities (which are all incorporated in the US, Canada, or Mexico, including (acccording to wiki): Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. Toyota Financial Services TSSC, Inc. Toyota Canada Inc. Toyota Credit Canada Inc. Toyota Motor Sales de México, S. de R.L. de C.V. Toyota Services de México Toyota de Puerto Rico, Corp. Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America TABC New United Motor Manufacturing Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky Bodine Aluminum Toyota testing Motor Manufacturing Indiana Toyota Motor Manufacturing West Virginia Toyota Motor Manufacturing Alabama Toyota Motor Manufacturing Texas Canadian Autoparts Toyota Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada Toyota Motor Manufacturing de Baja California Toyota Racing Development USA Toyota InfoTechnology Center USA Cold Research Centre R&D Center, south of Saline in in Washtenaw County, is an expansion of the existing Toyota Technical Center in Ann Arbor, also in in Washtenaw County Calty Design Research Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America TABC New United Motor Manufacturing Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky Bodine Aluminum Toyota testing Motor Manufacturing Indiana Toyota Motor Manufacturing West Virginia Toyota Motor Manufacturing Alabama Toyota Motor Manufacturing Texas Canadian Autoparts Toyota Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada Toyota Motor Manufacturing de Baja California. I took time to quote those words - because you obviously don't understand what you are talking about. You are basically advancing the notion that the purchase of a car: from an Texas car salesman, working on commission, who works at an Texas dealer-owned car dealership, of an Alabama-made automobile, which may incorporate R&D techonology from a Michigan based research plant, and which will require parts and maintenence from American facilities - has zero impact on the U.S. economy, because the parent holding company and its shareholders are domiciled in Japan. I don't think even you need me to explain why this is silly. Or do you?
The nationality of the company only matters because the profits of the company will be repatriated to that company and paid to the owners. If Toyota was owned by Japanese, then that'd be a lot of American money going into Japanese pockets and having multiplicative effects in Japan. However, Toyota (and Honda) is traded on the NYSE and undoubtedly has shareholders from a zillion countries, including many American investors. So, here, it really doesn't matter; the salaries paid to domestic workers is probably a bigger impact than dividends paid to foreign investors. That said, I hate the C4C program. It took my tax money and rewarded the stupid and selfish of my fellow citizens who didn't have the foresight to buy an efficient car in the first place. Now they take money out of my pocket to bribe these people into getting decent cars; meanwhile my old but comparably efficient car's replacement cannot be subsidized because I had been wise with my own investment nine years ago.
how do you know its going to get better? the economy improved in the 3rd quarter, but how much of that was due to artificial boosts (car rebates and the $8k tax credit for homebuyers)? i think the 4th quarter will be very interesting - i dont expect it to be as bad as 4Q08, but its far from smooth sailing. from what i read, most of the people who bought under the program were going to buy by years end anyway - if you based it only off people who otherwise would not have bought a new car the rebate program cost the taxpayer about $24k/car.
Exactly - the primary focus was to create jobs in the US, and then beyond that, these are publicly traded companies that's really owned by investors everywhere. I tend to agree. I think it had solid stimulative impact and probably good bang-for-the-buck relative to other stimulus, but the incentive structure is a little bizarre. I also think, if they were going to do this, they should have made the fuel increase requirements much more strict (though the net result of a gain of about 8mpg wasn't too bad) - at least then you could make the case that the goal was also to have other secondary benefits. But the whole 1mpg improvement requirement for trucks kind of makes that idea silly.
This is a bit speculative, and the early data suggests the opposite. If this were the case, you'd expect sales in the post-clunkers period to actually drop to below the pace pre-clunkers, since that clunkers period would be cannibalizing future sales. But the initial data seems to show the sales page only returning to the pre-clunkers pace as opposed to something below it. That would imply that the sales were additive.
Artificial boosts are the name of the game when the economy is in freefall. If not you get stuck in a spiral where fear (artificial fear at that) ends up feeding off itself and negative growth becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. What is true on one side of the equation is true on the other. would they have bought by years end if c-for-c did not spur some short term economic growth? Stuff like this is notoriously hard to account for ex post.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/28/autos/clunkers_analysis/index.htm Clunkers: Taxpayers paid $24,000 per car Auto sales analysts at Edmunds.com say the pricey program resulted in relatively few additional car sales. NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- A total of 690,000 new vehicles were sold under the Cash for Clunkers program last summer, but only 125,000 of those were vehicles that would not have been sold anyway, according to an analysis released Wednesday by the automotive Web site Edmunds.com. Still, auto sales contributed heavily to the economy's expansion in the third quarter, adding 1.7 percentage points to the nation's gross domestic product growth. The Cash for Clunkers program gave car buyers rebates of up to $4,500 if they traded in less fuel-efficient vehicles for new vehicles that met certain fuel economy requirements. A total of $3 billion was allotted for those rebates. The average rebate was $4,000. But the overwhelming majority of sales would have taken place anyway at some time in the last half of 2009, according to Edmunds.com. That means the government ended up spending about $24,000 each for those 125,000 additional vehicle sales. "It is unfortunate that Edmunds.com has had nothing but negative things to say about a wildly successful program that sold nearly 250,000 cars in its first four days alone," said Bill Adams, spokesman for the Department of Transportation. "There can be no doubt that CARS drummed up more business for car dealers at a time when they needed help the most." In order to determine whether these sales would have happened anyway, Edmunds.com analysts looked at sales of luxury cars and other vehicles not included under the Clunkers program. Using traditional relationships between sales volumes of those vehicles and the types of vehicles sold under Cash for Clunkers, Edmunds.com projected what sales would normally have been during the Cash for Clunkers period and in the weeks after. Edmunds.com's estimate of the ultimate sales increase generally matches what industry experts had thought, said George Pipas, a sales analyst with Ford Motor Co (F, Fortune 500). But that misses the point, he said. "The whole purpose of the program was to provide some kind of catalyst to kick-start the economy," he said, "and by all accounts the extra production that was added this year was a boost to the economy."
im self-employed - earlier in the year i was hemorrhaging clients (thankfully, that slightly turned around the last few months). i had to take a couple pay cuts to keep afloat. why didnt the government give my clients a 'rebate' so that they could continue to buy my stuff? if they are going to bail out the auto industry, why not help me too? also, i bought my house in september 2008 - i missed out on the $8k tax credit by 4 months. how about giving me just half of that and we will call it even? im not bitter
Thanks for posting, jo mama. Sounds like a great deal under the SamFisher school of program analysis.