The government seems to think the cash for clunkers was a huge success, because so many people took advantage of it. They gave people who traded in their older, non efficient cars (which they destroyed) and gave them $4,500 to get a new car with better gas mileage.
Now, in some cases, these cars were
perfectly good cars, they ran great, got less than perfect gas mileage,
but
they ran well.
These cars, instead of
being crushed, could have been used for parts for other cars of the
same model,
could have been given to women who had left abusive houses and helped
them get
jobs. There were just too many things that could have been done with
those cars
that would have helped our economy more than destroying them.
But, now for my stupid idea of the day!
If the government thinks that is such a great idea, why not “Cash for
Clunkers
– Home Edition”? Do you have an older home that you own outright and
can’t be
sold for more than $20,000 because of some meth dealer decided to use
it as a
lab? The home has become an eye sore on the community and because of
it, it
certainly is no longer or may have never been a green home.
Why not offer that owner $150,000 to burn down that house and to build a new one in its place? Think what this would do for the economy. (This the governments logic, not mine!) You have now taken away an eye sore that wouldn’t get hardly any tax revenue and increased the amount of property taxes that would come for that new home. The neighbors value would also go up that would increase the property value of those homes and making more taxes for the government.
So here is the math
$20,000 Meth House (tear it down and give the owner $150,000 to build a new home)
-$150,000 (Plus the amount the government is giving to burn down this house)
-$147,500 (-$2,500 the increase amount of tax revenue generated by new home in property taxes)
-$140,000
(-$7,500 this represents the taxes paid by the workers who earned money
to
build the house in gas taxes, sales taxes and income taxes)
$127,500 (This is minus the increase of $500 per 25 closest homes in
property
taxes because of their new increase value because of the eye sore being
gone)
$102,500
(Don’t forget the $25,000 in building permits paid to local government)
$60,500 (Of course you have to pay a 28% tax on the $150,000 given to
you as
income)
So after just one year on this home
the
government will get over $90,000 of their money back and over the next 4 years because
of the increase
property taxes in the area the government will get all their money back.
See? Even I can make fuzzy math work. We all know this wouldn’t happen in real life, but looking at the cash for clunkers car edition, this is the same math they used on those and did it save Saturn? Nope, it actually put a lot of money in the Japanese car makers pockets and why? Because they make a better product, plain and simple! Stop bailing everyone out, because this isn’t working, just let the economy run its course because you may actually be doing more harm that good!
