Clunker Post Mortem

The Obama administration spent $3-billion this summer on the Cash For Clunkers program trying to help the environment and stimulate the auto industry.The Wall Street Journal reports on the post mortem:

It achieved neither. According to Hudson Institute economist Irwin Stelzer, at best "the reduction in gasoline consumption will cut our oil consumption by 0.2 percent per year, or less than a single day's gasoline use." Burton Abrams and George Parsons of the University of Delaware added up the total benefits from reduced gas consumption, environmental improvements and the benefit to car buyers and companies, minus the overall cost of cash for clunkers, and found a net cost of roughly $2,000 per vehicle. Rather than stimulating the economy, the program made the nation as a whole $1.4 billion poorer.

The people who really belong in the junk yard are the wizards in Washington who peddled this economic malarkey.