Cash For Clunkers From Suckers

Last month Americans For Tax Reform released a break-down of the recent Car Allowance Rebate Program, or “Cash for Clunkers”. Although their release on September 8th didn’t quite have all the math correct, the report still shows that if you are floating in a fantasy world that says: "more government and more government spending is the solution to all our problems", you need to wake up one of these days and comprehend that government does not create anything in and of itself. Government just spends your money, and when it needs more, government raises your taxes and damages the economy by devaluing our dollar by injecting more into the stream by printing more.
I know how people use numbers to further their ideological cause. People do it all the time. Politicians especially love to use numbers to help bring the illusion of validity to their causes. You have to be very careful taking for face value any numbers that are just dropped in front of you. Any Statistician will tell you numbers never lie; it is just how they are presented that can be deceitful. This is not deceitful. This is as straight forward as it gets.

Here is the correct breakdown of how the Government just blew three billion ($3,000,000,000) of our tax dollars to save about $717 million:

The average mileage a persons puts on their vehicle per year is 12,000 miles. The average “clunker” trade was for a vehicle that got 16mpg to a vehicle that got 25mpg. (Actually it was more like 15.8 to 24.9, but we will round to keep this nice and fifth-grade-like)
• Driving a 16mpg vehicle uses 750 gallons of gas per year (12,000/16 = 750)
• Driving a 25mpg vehicle consumes 480 gallons of gas per year (12,000/25 = 480)
• This equals an average of 270 less gallons consumed per year for each person. (750 – 480 = 270)
• 690,114 vehicles were used for this program equaling a total savings of 186,330,780 million gallons of gas per year. (690,114 x 270)
So far so good, right?

Here is the second part:
1 barrel of oil is $75 (right now anyway) and contains 42 gallons of crude oil.
1 barrel of oil will produce an average of 19.5 gallons of motor gasoline.
• 186,330,780 gallons saved divided by 19.5 gallons of gas from 1 barrel of oil, equals about 9.56 million barrels of oil.
• 9.56 million barrels at $75/barrel is about $717 million.
So, the government did in fact spend three billion ($3,000,000,000) of our tax dollars to maybe save about 717 million. This is no joke. There really are people out there that put their faith and trust in the government to do what is right with our money without ever thinking twice or questioning them. Sheep to the slaughter I say! And you want to give them Health Care, 17% of our entire economy?

Decide for yourself. Was this a fiscally sound program aimed at stimulating the economy? Or was this just another stunt by a far left administration with no sense of fiscal responsibility to force the country into aligning itself with a political or ideological notion? Let me ask you: Where do you think the $3500 or $4500 was going to come from if you qualified for this program? Money trees on Capitol Hill? Well, practically! We are the money trees! Every time (all 690+ thousand times) the government said “You want a new car? Here’s a bag of money!” they dug into our pockets. We are the suckers...
You’re welcome…