Obama Math 1

Brad M. · Oct 2, 2009

A clunker that travels 12,000 miles a year at 15 mpg uses 800 gallons of gas a year.

A vehicle that travels 12,000 miles a year at 25 mpg uses 480 gallons a year.

So, the average Cash for Clunkers transaction will reduce US gasoline consumption by 320 gallons per year.

They claim 700,000 vehicles so that's 224 million gallons saved per year.

That equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil.

5 million barrels is about 5 hours worth of US consumption.

More importantly, 5 million barrels of oil at $70 per barrel costs about $350 million dollars

So, the government paid $3 billion of our tax dollars to save $350 million.

We spent $8.57 for every dollar saved.

How good a deal was that ???

They'll probably do a great job with health care, though!!

Darky · Oct 6, 2009

Just to play devil's advocate, that's a potential 350 million a year saved by the one time expenditure of 3 billion. So, if those vehicles stay on the road, in the hands of their original purchaser, maintained to a state where they will continue to achieve factory gas mileage and emissions, then in 10 years, we will have turned a profit....

IslanderOffRoad · Oct 6, 2009

A barrel of oil is rather different than the price/gallon of gasoline as well.

I'm far from an Obama fan, but people are seriously starting to stretch on the criticism of him. Which is really ironic when you consider there's so much low hanging fruit to criticize.

BruceB83 · Oct 6, 2009

This has already been posted on here, I think more than once.

But to throw just one stick in the spoke of this....what about the fact that new cars are driven almost 70% MORE than someone's previous car? That messes up the math a little bit.

kastein · Oct 6, 2009

Islander - I re-ran the numbers on my own with much more optimistic (i.e. skewed towards supporting cash for clunkers as a good idea) and came up with a break-even period of something like three years.

My real criticism of cash for clunkers is that it didn't even really solve the clunker problem... the real clunkers are still on the road. They are owned by people who cannot afford a new car payment and thus were not capable of taking advantage of the program.

Also, I compared the amount of gasoline saved to other sources of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere... and by the time we break even (whenever that is) we will have avoided approximately the equivalent of ten days of volcanic CO2 emissions. That's before we consider the counterbalancing pollution caused by the process of destroying the clunkers and the pollution caused by creating the new cars to replace them.

I can post my calculations and sources if you want.

IslanderOffRoad · Oct 6, 2009

kastein said:
Islander - I re-ran the numbers on my own with much more optimistic (i.e. skewed towards supporting cash for clunkers as a good idea) and came up with a break-even period of something like three years.

My real criticism of cash for clunkers is that it didn't even really solve the clunker problem... the real clunkers are still on the road. They are owned by people who cannot afford a new car payment and thus were not capable of taking advantage of the program.

Also, I compared the amount of gasoline saved to other sources of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere... and by the time we break even (whenever that is) we will have avoided approximately the equivalent of ten days of volcanic CO2 emissions. That's before we consider the counterbalancing pollution caused by the process of destroying the clunkers and the pollution caused by creating the new cars to replace them.

I can post my calculations and sources if you want.

I agree completely, I hated the idea of the program.

The fact is that the purpose of CFC was to bail out the auto industry that our government just purchased; nothing to do with pollution or energy use, those were just spins they used to justify it to John Q Public.

The initial argument that you copied/pasted just uses a self serving single variable for the author's determination that the program was a waste of money, and not a good one at that.

I agree... waste of money... but not for the reason specified.

Brad M. · Oct 6, 2009

IslanderOffRoad said:
A barrel of oil is rather different than the price/gallon of gasoline as well.

I'm far from an Obama fan, but people are seriously starting to stretch on the criticism of him. Which is really ironic when you consider there's so much low hanging fruit to criticize.

Agreed, this is not exactly accurate. But I posted it to incite discussion as I was looking for some "better" math, and Kastein is headed in the right direction there.

As for criticism of Obama, that comes with the territory. We all know the President is just a puppet, not a lawmaker. But it wouldn't matter WHO was President right now, the criticism STILL falls on them because this is happening under THEIR Administration. And I agree with the low hanging fruit possibilities, they are limitless...

RichP · Oct 6, 2009

A better solution would have been some kind of exchange where people driving real wrecks, real clunkers, could have gotten rid of that real clunker and traded up to a newer clunker with the other person getting the credit. This was just something that popped into my head.

kastein · Oct 6, 2009

Yeah, I would have supported that in a second. But it wouldn't support the auto industry and get the glut of new vehicles off the showroom floors before the end of the model year, as others have noted, so I guess that was not an acceptable plan...

Obama Math 1

Brad M.

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Darky

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IslanderOffRoad

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BruceB83

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kastein

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IslanderOffRoad

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Brad M.

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kastein

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