Cash for Clunkers was specifically aimed at getting gas guzzling cars off the road while providing economic stimulus.

Would you have been glad to see those 14 mpg cars shipped to Mexico to be reused and the emissions just sent overseas?

What of the role cheap used cars play in helping people with little money improve their lives (for instance, by allowing them to commute to better jobs) and the positive ecological effects of raising people out of poverty? An impoverished population has less leverage against corporations and empowered corporations can lobby governments to stop meaningful environmental regulation.

It's not clear to me that 'clunkers' were a net benefit to society. Maybe getting rid of them was the correct choice. I don't know what the answer is, but I think there is probably more to consider than car emissions.

Old, cheap cars have very bad fuel economy. The same logic you use could justify why we can't prevent rural Indian farmers from burning their fields, or Brazilian loggers from deforesting and slashing/burning the Amazon. Hey, it's their only source of income, who are we to take that away from them?

Obviously there is a balance to be struck. I don't have enough data to know what the correct answer is, but I do think it's not such a simple matter that can be decided by only looking at it from a single perspective.

Cash For Clunkers also made the average price of a used car go up significantly.

This really impacts poor / low-income families and individuals- lots of people can barely afford to feed, clothe, and house themselves, and the increasing costs of transportation can really really sting, and may make it harder for them to find stable employment.

The financial stimulus of Cash For Clunkers is now long-gone, but poor people- and, for that matter, teenagers buying their first vehicle- are still feeling the aftershocks of it in the form of higher vehicle prices across the board.

> Would you have been glad to see those 14 mpg cars shipped to Mexico to be reused and the emissions just sent overseas?

If it means better lives for the people the vehicles are going to, then yes, I do.

I'm in support of burning the Amazon too, because it provides those people a livelihood.

Fair enough, there do need to be limits on this- though I suppose the native peoples of the Amazon Rain Forest should be enough reason to stop logging, but we've seen how well that's gone throughout history...

Cash for Clunkers was a terrible program: it took many affordable albeit older cars off the road. The barrier to get a car on the road for someone without means has been raised significantly.

It was ~0.2% of the US vehicle fleet. Whatever sense it did or did not make, it seems pretty unlikely that it is having any significant effect on the availability of cars 10 years later.

(yes 2 tenths of a percent, 2 vehicles out of 1000)

Believe it or not, the used car market changed drastically. I regularly shop around for cheap beater cars to fix up. Before the program, there was never a problem finding a running car for $500. It was also easier to find used parts, as cars would go through a part out process before recycling. The program required the cars to be crushed with no hope of salvaging good parts from them.

~700,000 cars were crushed.

~170,000,000 new cars have been sold in the meantime (so assume tens of millions of used car transactions related to that).

It was a blip. It's more likely that other factors are driving the change in the market.