THE KLUNKERS COMMENT ON ‘CASH FOR CLUNKERS’
NOW that Washington has stopped giving away taxpayer money to people who want to own a new car, there’s one question left unanswered: What do the Klunkers think?
The giveaway, in case you’ve been in a coma and may not have heard yet, was called “cash for clunkers,” with a C.
It ended yesterday.
The Klunker family — spread out mostly in the West — spells its name with a K. And, basically, they thought Washington’s new-car giveaway was krap.
I’ll get to some of their comments in a moment. But first, here’s a word on my methodology.
As the experts would say in political polling, I conducted a random sampling of the 40 or so Klunker families in America who appeared on a list given to me by the skilled and patient Post library.
When I couldn’t reach Kristen Klunker of Layton, Utah, or Dieter Klunker of Overton, Nev., or even Mike Klunker of Farmington, Utah, I kept dialing. Eventually, four Klunkers answered the phone and were more polite than I would have been under the circumstances.
In polling lingo, that’s a scientifically significant number so I could now report my results with a semi-straight face. (I really don’t know if that’s true, but if you state something with enough authority it sounds legit.)
Now that you are on the edge of your seats, I’m going to first tell you what I think. (When the Klunkers have their own column, they can go first.)
The idea behind Cash For Clunkers was simple, turn in a beat-up old wreck and President Obama would give you up to $4,500 or so for a new fuel-efficient car — good for the economy and good for the environment, said the supporters. Well, kinda!
The experts estimate that 450,000 new cars were sold during the $3 billion program, which was rife with problems including the not too insignificant fact that some car dealers were slow in getting paid and pulled out of the program.
Other complications: well, a lot of those 450,000 people probably would have bought cars anyway. So they were just pulled into the showroom a little sooner than normal.
And now that cash For clunkers is over, auto sales could fall well below the depressed levels before the program.
After all, who in their right mind would have waited to purchase a car in September if they could have gotten a better deal in August?
And if you suddenly need a car, why not wait until the government comes up with its next deal?
Another problem: overall retail sales — including everything from shirts to skirts and gasoline to bow ties — were miserable last month.
Cash For clunkers didn’t even move the needle on the depressed retailing economy.
There are other problems I can think of without trying too hard.
Car dealers, of course, are a crafty bunch. So if they knew a buyer was going to get $4,500 back from the government, do you really think they didn’t raise the price? Or, at least, reduce the inevitable discount that always occurs when the car salesman at the end of a deal “talks to the manager.”
So the ultimate savings to car purchasers might really not have been as good as they should have been.
And on any given day in New York City I probably pass 10 carbon-monoxide belching trucks that, if taken off the streets, would eliminate as much pollution in the global environment as those 450,000 clunkers.
I’ll let Joann Klunker of Salt Lake City, Utah, pick it up from there. “I’m against it. People think the money is coming out of thin air. It’s our money,” she said.
It isn’t, of course, coming out of thin air — unless you believe the Treasury Department can just print money without consequences, something that Heiko Klunker of West Jordan, Utah, and I discussed at length.
Heiko has one car that has 198,000 miles on it and another with 90,000, so he probably could have qualified for the program.
“My wife just looked at me and said ‘heavens no,’ about buying another car, he said. “Why go into extra debt?”
And Heiko, like many other Americans, just didn’t want to deal with the extra debt load in difficult economic times He — like I — is also concerned with the macro-economic aspects of this program.
Put in simpler terms, Heiko is concerned that the Chinese — who lend us a whole lot of dough to pay for things we can’t afford — are getting too much control over our economy.
Yep, they think about these things in Utah too!
And spending government money buying back clunkers has gotten us $3 billion deeper in the hole.
Lavona Klunker, a senior citizen who lives with her husband Erik in Fairmont, Minn., says she really didn’t give cash for clunkers much thought.
“We were not in the position to do it,” Lavona said.
All the Klunkers seemed tired of hearing their name mentioned in obvious relation to cars of little value.
And I made it clear to them that my intention was merely to write a gimmicky column to pass one of August’s dog days, not to besmirch their good name.
(Crudele, incidentally, means “cruel” in Italian. So who am I to pick on names?)
“We kind of got annoyed by it,” said Josh Klunker of Lawton, Iowa. “I got tired of hearing about it.”
Heike, who says Klunker means “jeweler” in German, added “It was kind of funny at first, but then it got old.”
Heiko, Josh, Joanne and Lavona might like the program better if the name was changed to Cash For The Klunkers.
And you never know what the White House will come up with next.