Tuesday, August 4, 2009

"Cash for Clunkers" Is A "Redistribute the Jobs" Program

What they never tell us regarding the impact of government stimulus like "cash for clunkers" and "green jobs stimulus" programs, is that they cannibalize the funds people would have spent elsewhere INSTEAD! So instead of buying a car, people would likely have purchased a new sofa, or a new furnace, or new windows for the house. Those furniture, furnace, and windows jobs will go away instead. The $3 billion taken from taxpayers and funneled into autos is $3 billion that WON'T be spent in another part of the economy to give work to other Americans. Thus, these government incentive programs ALWAYS rob Peter to pay Paul. They don't really CREATE any jobs at all. They just reallocate jobs from one sector to another based upon political favoritism! Thus the politicians will claim that they "saved" or "created" jobs, when they just reallocated them. It's very misleading, and even deceptive!