Automotive News recently editorialized that the program “worked,” and now it is time to “build on its success.”  The editorial declared:

The August U.S. light-vehicle sales tally reported last week proves that the government’s cash-for-clunkers program was a huge success. Now it’s up to automakers and their dealers to be clever marketers and salespeople to maintain and build on the clunkers momentum.

From the beginning, there were doubters who, for political or other reasons, said the clunkers program was little more than a federal handout to the Detroit 3. But the rising tide of enthusiasm among U.S. consumers for purchasing new cars lifted many automakers, not just those with a fleet full of fuel-sippers.

The writer added:

Better yet, dealers say cash for clunkers sparked a positive shift in consumer attitudes that will lift new-car sales in the months ahead, especially if economists are right about positive indicators.

This editorial was written two weeks ago, The industry has come back to earth with a thud since then.  The Boston Globe reports that things are rather quiet in the aftermath:

[O]nce the federal money dried up, so did the sales rally. Now, customers at dealerships like Silko Honda in Raynham are few and far between, and inventory is once again accumulating.

Manager Adam Silverleib said business was “pretty intense” as a result of the federal stimulus program, with the dealership hustling to accommodate customers and handle the piles of paperwork required for them to receive reimbursement on vouchers. “Now we’re kind of back to where we were in the spring,’’ he said.

And what was it like in the spring?  It was called a recession, with recession-like sales figures to boot.  In other words, one can liken the Cash for Clunkers program to throwing lighter fluid on damp wood.  Flames will rise up for a few minutes, but unless the wood catches fire, the lighter fluid was next-to-worthless.

Contrary to what Automotive News breathlessly declared, the Cash program pretty much was what anyone with common sense and decent economic training could have predicted.  It spurred sales for a while, but after the money dried up, so did the new car sales.

I contend, however, that where Automotive News saw “momentum” for the auto industry, in reality this program has brought long-term economic damage.  To understand why the program was, on net, economically harmful, one first must understand Frederic Bastiat’s “broken window fallacy.”

Since most, if not all, readers are familiar with this fallacy, I don’t need to repeat it.  However, the most important part is that while the townspeople believed the broken window brought prosperity, it actually reduced their wealth because they were forced to use resources to recreate a window which already had existed, thus depriving the community of the use f those resources elsewhere.

With Cash for Clunkers people turned in vehicles on which they were making small if any payments..  In normal situations, if they had wanted another vehicle, many would have traded in what they had for another used car or truck.  Instead, even though they were given a fairly large down payment, many purchased cars that substantially raised their personal debt.

To make matters worse, the government ordered the dealers to destroy the engines of the so-called clunkers, many of which were not clunkers at all.  Thus the government managed to destroy a huge amount of wealth, all in the name of creating wealth.  Furthermore, if any automakers or dealers used the Clunker  program as a reason to engage in new capital expansion, they quickly will find that those “investments” really are malinvestments, which means they will be worse off in the long run because they diverted resources to lines that won’t be profitable.

Like so many government programs, Cash for Clunkers, while creating some short-run benefits for a few people, will have negative effects in the long run.  I suspect that even the editors of Automotive News will realize sooner or later that it was a lemon.

These were the recently traded clunkers whose owners were “nudged” by federal policy to accept a handsome payment from the rest of us for ridding the nation of older, more heavily carbon-emitting vehicles and replacing them with shiny new machines that required a lot of energy to produce but would, on average, yield lower carbon exhaust and greater fuel efficiency.  The clunker statute gave consumers $3,500 vouchers if they purchased vehicles that yielded a four-to-nine mpg improvement in fuel economy, and $4,500 if the yield was ten or more mpg.

In all, according to Bloomberg, some $2.88 billion in tax money was provided to those who together purchased some 700,000 vehicles made up of the popular Ford Focus, Toyota Corolla, Camry, and Prius, along with some Hummers and Ford F-150 and F-250 trucks.  These and a wide variety of other cars and trucks moved quickly from dealer lots to the homes of the blessed. In fact, the speed of the transactions was more than government could handle.  The program was wildly popular.

Taken together the average fuel economy of vehicles traded in was 15.8 miles per gallon, while the average for the clunker replacements was 24.9 miles per gallon.  And according to Ford Motor Company, this kind of fuel-economy improvement translates to a reduction of five to ten million barrels of oil consumed over the next five years. (The nation currently consumes nine million barrels a day.)  This will be oil that some other people can enjoy.

President Obama cheerfully termed the program “successful beyond anybody’s imagination.”  Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, who administered the program, said the effort was “a lifeline to the automobile industry, jump starting a major sector of the economy and putting people back to work.”  LaHood quickly added that while all this happened, “[W]e’ve been able to take old, polluting cars off the road and help consumers purchase fuel-efficient vehicles.”  Economist John Lott surmised that “Only in Washington could a program that is spending money 13 times faster than was planned be labeled a ‘success.’”

In their sober assessment of the program, the Obama Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) found that the program will spur the economy for months as the auto industry gears up to replace inventories and meet growing demand.  Putting all this into numbers, the CEA estimates Cash for Clunkers will raise third-quarter GDP by 0.3 to 0.4 percentage points and lift total employment by 42,000 jobs by the end of 2009.

While the clunker program has been hugely successful in the eyes of Obama administration officials, the auto industry, and the consumers who received transfers from the rest of us, there is serious doubt that the program is all that successful when final costs are counted.  The doubt arises for at least three reasons.  First, the program was supported politically primarily for its much touted environmental benefits.  Carbon emissions would be reduced.  But the reduction costs are at least ten times higher than alternate ways of removing carbon.  Second, there is Bastiat’s parable of the broken window to consider. And third, there is a serious matter of eroding social norms for conserving wealth.  A crushed clunker with a frozen engine is lost capital.

Let’s consider each of these points briefly.

University of California-Berkley economist Christopher Knittel has developed a rigorous assessment of the implied cost of carbon emissions under the clunker program. (“The Implied Cost of Carbon Dioxide Under the Cash for Clunkers Program” [pdf], Center for the Study of Energy Markets, Berkeley, The University of California Energy Institute.) Knittel made plausible assumptions about the average life remaining in vehicles removed from the road, the average fuel economy associated with those vehicles, and the resulting levels of carbon emission that would have survived in the absence of clunkers.  Eventually, of course, the clunkers would have died a natural but less dramatic death.  Knittel then estimated the carbon reduction gained when the large fleet of clunkers was replaced by a new fuel-efficient fleet.  When he ran the numbers, Knittel found the cost per ton of carbon reduced could reach $500 under a set of normal values for critical variables.  The cost estimate was $237 per ton under best case conditions.   And what does this tell us?  The much celebrated Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade carbon-emission control legislation estimates the cost of reducing a ton of carbon to be $28 when done across U.S. industries.  Yes, we are getting carbon-emission reductions by way of clunker reduction, but we are paying a pretty penny for it.

Frédéric Bastiat’s brilliant parable of the broken window reminds us that a street hoodlum throwing a brick through a window generates a series of job-generating transactions that might raise GDP by a trivial amount, if it could be measured.  Indeed, the idea seems so compelling that people today often speak of the silver lining found in the clouds that create hurricanes.  Think of the roofers that become employed.  But Bastiat’s key lesson is that a window has been destroyed—and it had value.  Before touting the total benefits of clunkers, we must take account of the destroyed vehicles and engines that represented part of the wealth of the nation.  As Tony Liller, vice president for Goodwill, put it:  “They’re crushing these cars, and they’re perfectly good.  These are cars the poor need to buy.”

Finally, over the eons, human communities have contrived all kinds of devices to transmit critical survival skills and compatible behavioral norms.  One of these has to do with conservation of wealth.  “Waste not, want not,” we are told.  “A penny saved, is a penny earned,” we are reminded.  Using politics to pay people who destroy valuable vehicles, or to hold crops off the market, or to produce ethanol that may use more energy in production than it adds when burned, teaches a lesson of anti-matter and wealth destruction.  When all these considerations are made, Cash for Clunkers sounds like a sorry idea that should not be the model for future policy.

Let’s stop Cash for Refrigerators before the idea spreads further.

Although no serious discussion is occurring in the nation about the desirability of shifting economic power from individual decision-makers to the national government, that shift is a basic characteristic of virtually every policy proposal being debated in the Congress.

Take tax policy.  A 131-page document (pdf) issued by the Treasury goes way beyond recommending the extension of some of the expiring Bush administration tax cuts.  For example, the fine print contains over a dozen ways of discouraging American firms from doing business and investing overseas.  Supposedly minor technical changes also would have a severe impact.

For example, eliminating LIFO (last in-first out) inventory accounting will raise business taxes over $60 billion in one decade.  The Treasury also wants to revive four corporate environmental taxes that were eliminated in 1969.  These four arbitrary taxes have no relation between the tax burden imposed on a company and the pollution that it generates.  This bears an uneasy resemblance to Willie Sutton, who robbed banks because that was where the money was. Inevitably a variety of technical tax provisions will increase the paperwork burden on business.  The penalties for failing to file information returns (such as Form 1099) promptly and accurately are raised in a very complicated fashion involving three tiers of penalties.

On the expenditure side, the typical stimulus project increases the power of government in private business decision-making.  The bailout of the automobile industry is really an inefficient method of financing union pension and health plans.  The stockholders are zapped and the bondholders poorly treated.  The taxpayers are left holding the bag, especially considering the restrictions on General Motors importing the really fuel-efficient cars they produce overseas.  Apparently, the new General Motors factory for building compact cars was chosen on the basis of “carbon footprint” and “community impact.”

It is hard to keep a straight face when analyzing the new “cash for clunkers” program.  For example, owners of the biggest old clunkers get a $3,500 credit for trading in the old vehicles for a new one with an improvement of just one mile per gallon.  Surely, it would save energy if the Treasury just mailed the $3,500 checks directly to Detroit!

Of course, the Obama administration is making some reductions in federal spending.  It is reportedly imposing a 9 percent reduction in the budget for the division in the Labor Department that polices fraud and other illegalities on the part of labor unions.  As noted below, a simultaneous expansion of business-oriented antitrust enforcement is taking place.

Turning to regulation, one of Ralph Nader’s biggest disappointments during his heyday as a consumer advocate was the failure of his proposal for a new Consumer Protection Agency.  However, the administration’s financial regulatory plan creates a powerful new Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA).

This new free-wheeling agency takes authority now divided between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Reserve System.  In a change guaranteed to cause confusion, the CFPA will share authority with the Federal Trade Commission.  The new regulatory agency will also have a mandate to give consumers more economic education.  Educators find that especially scary.

Moreover, the agency will have its own money pot, independent of the normal congressional appropriations process.  It will be financed directly by fees assessed on “entities and transactions” across the financial sector.

The Treasury’s financial plan contains many other expansions of government power over business.  The Federal Reserve System is given new authority to oversee any large financial entity whose failure the Fed thinks could generate “systemic risk.”  The Treasury heads a new Financial Services Oversight Council to “resolve” the inevitable jurisdictional disputes among federal agencies.  A new Office of National Insurance is to be established in the Treasury to monitor “all aspects of the insurance industry,” a sector of the economy traditionally under the province of state governments.

The SEC will require the registration of all advisers to hedge funds and other private pools of capital with assets over a given threshold.  It also will have the power to inspect the books of the advisers and to ensure compliance by their clients.  In addition, the power of the SEC will be expanded by legislative proposals to give it a more active role in guiding the compensation committees of all public companies.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will have new authority to take over and shut down financial institutions (not just banks) whose failure is deemed to pose “systemic risk.”

Viewed in their totality, these technical financial changes would represent a historic expansion of government.  Sadly, there is little comfort in the Treasury’s warning in its 88 pages of detailed proposals:  “More can and should be done in the future.”  Comparisons with the New Deal of the 1930s are too timid.  Shades of Alexander Hamilton!

The complicated climate change bill that recently passed the House of Representatives is a dramatic example of expanding government power over the economy.  Again, the fine print deserves far more attention than it has received.  For example, buried in the 1,201 pages of detail is a provision authorizing the Department of Transportation to require automotive manufacturers to produce vehicles that can run on methanol (wood alcohol), a fuel not widely available.

Other provisions, as expected, have little to do with the subject of global warming.  For example, contractors on some energy projects must pay employees at least the locally “prevailing wage.”  It is well known that, in practice, that means paying higher union wage scales.

Many federal departments are trying to climb aboard the economic stimulus bandwagon.  The Department of Justice wants to help out by showing that antitrust should be a “frontline issue” in the response to the problems facing the economy.  Apparently, business is not getting sued often enough.  Incredibly, one new assistant attorney general views antitrust enforcers as “key members of the government’s economic recovery team.”

When we step back and try to add up all the tax, spending, and regulatory actions and proposals of the new Obama administration, the result is clear: a cumulative squeeze on private decision-making and a more slowly growing economy in the years ahead.

In the process, private businesses will be discouraged by a host of government policies from making major new investments, especially those of a long-term nature with payoffs far in the future.  Key negative factors are the likelihood of higher taxes and greater inflation resulting from the huge budget deficits that are likely to arise in the next several decades, abetted by lax monetary policies.

The American public is likely to have a long wait until the national unemployment rate gets back down to the 7.6 percent that was reported when President Obama took office in January 2009.

One fundamental point deserves to be stressed.  In the inevitable tension in public policymaking between economic prosperity and income redistribution, for the next several years the American people can expect that income equalization will get the government’s priority over improvements in people’s living standards.  The average American, at best, will receive a more equal slice of an income pie that will be far smaller than the public expects.

Cash-for-Clunkers, of course, is the popular term for the Car Allowance Rebate System, which funds down payments of up to $4,500 for new cars if older model cars are also traded in and destroyed.  The program was temporarily discontinued when it ran out of its initial allotment days following its implementation.  Congress refunded the program.

Well, yes, he’s right, I thought, careful not to cut myself.  When you offer $1 billion in free money to people, why was anyone shocked that they went for it?  And if you offer free health care to a supposedly narrow segment of the population that cannot now access it, why do economic planners create budget projections that assume health care demand will remain static?

But that wasn’t what caused me to move the shaver from my face.  That had to do with all of the talk about Cash-for-Clunkers being such a good program.  It clearly isn’t, or at least it shouldn’t be to anyone who remembers the basics of their college economics classes.  From this perspective, there is so much wrong that it’s hard to know where to start.

First, let’s dispense with the notion that this bill had anything to do with improving the environment.  Getting people into cars that get better mileage often leads them to drive more, negating any benefit from the switch.  What’s more, scrapping hundreds of thousands of clunkers en masse while encouraging production of new cars to replace them isn’t exactly an environmental blessing either.

The real purpose of the program is to help car dealers sell off the excess supply of 2009 vehicles that consumers weren’t buying at the prices dealers preferred to charge. Giving people free money to put toward a down payment was a way for Congress to pay back a powerful lobby that produced an unsustainable level of output during the Fed-fueled boom.  It’s reminiscent of those New Deal programs that also tried to thwart falling prices by destroying perfectly good and usable products that otherwise would have lowered prices.  In the 1930s, people rioted when the government forced farmers to pour perfectly good milk down sewer drains.  No one’s rioting today because now the government is more richly compensating those who own the property being destroyed.  (For a fascinating, contemporary account of the Agricultural Adjustment Act and other New Deal programs, see journalist John T. Flynn’s The Roosevelt Myth. For a more-recent account, see Amity Shlaes’s The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression.)

The result is a situation described by Clemson University economist Bruce Yandle’s “Bootleggers and Baptists” theory for the growth of government.  According to Yandle, government often grows because two otherwise opposite groups are able to join forces to pass legislation that neither would have been able to get passed individually.  His example applied to groups that supported alcohol prohibition: The bootleggers benefited from the outlawing of their “legitimate” competition, and religious groups opposed it as a matter of morals.  When both groups joined forces, legislation became far more likely to pass.  Yandle concludes that dry counties are likely to be Baptist-dominated but also contain active bootleggers comprising its “extra-legal” market.

Applying Yandle’s theory to the clunker program, the bootleggers are car dealers who face low consumer demand and sales revenues at current prices, while the Baptists are environmentalists who believe that older model cars insult Gaia, Mother Earth.  The prospect of an old-car trade-in program unites both groups.

Cash-for-Clunkers, Agricultural Adjustment Act Comparison

That’s not to say Cash-for-Clunkers does not have its share of winners and losers.  Car dealers who are experiencing summer profits are surely winning for now, as are those individuals who otherwise would have gone without a car but can now afford one.  Let’s not forget the banks and finance companies that now have loan assets on their books.  You can be sure the members of Congress who voted for this bill will remind dealers of their generosity in directing other people’s money their way in this old-fashioned shell game.

And it is a shell game, because the losers here are the poor and the lower middle class—the very groups in the most precarious economic shape 18-plus months into the Great Recession.  They suffer in two ways.  First, as primary consumers in the used-car market, they will see supply shrivel.  Many cars that qualify for Cash-for-Clunkers still have long lives ahead of them.  (My 2000 Chevy Astro qualifies for the program even though it easily has another 75,000 miles in it.)  One car dealer in New York—like many dairy farmers in the 1930s—remarked about the immorality of a program that forces him to destroy goods that would otherwise provide benefit to members of his community.

The poor also pay in the form of higher prices resulting from the inflation that will be required to finance the program.  The government is broke, with tax revenues falling while spending soars at levels even higher than those associated with the profligate Bush administration.  In terms of cost, Cash-for-Clunkers is at least twice as expensive as its New Deal inspiration, the Agriculture Adjustment Act  (see table).  This program will be paid for, at some time, with monetary inflation furnished by our not-so-independent central bank, and we will pay for it in the form of higher prices.  This is why inflation is a tax, and a regressive one at that.

Indeed, when I first read about Cash-for-Clunkers, I thought it should have been named the “I Hate the Poor Act of 2009” because—you can be sure—this program sticks it to those members of society least able to thwart it.  In the end they will find maintaining economic autonomy all the harder, making it more likely they will become dependent on government in the future.  The cynic in me wonders if this might be the actual intent.

Nonetheless, Talk Show Guy thought this was a good program.  He liked it!  I bet he got a good deal on a new car too.  Hope he enjoys his ride.