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The “Cash for Clunkers” program was actually instituted over a decade ago in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System https://en.wikip

by tarr11 5y ago

The “Cash for Clunkers” program was actually instituted over a decade ago in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System

Syonyk 5y ago
And having been "grad school broke" during that era, it absolutely destroyed a decade's worth of cheap "runs and drives" grade cars that I drove and most of my friends drove. $100 cars were suddenly $1000 cars in a few months, which was fine if you owned one, bad if you were looking for another backyard project you could limp home and work on for a while. "Destroying the long tail of cheap resources for political points" is the sort of "reverse thinking" that we need less of, especially by politicians who make the right noises about caring about the poor. Great, a bunch of older cars are off the road... sucks to be someone who used those for transport if you couldn't afford the payments on a new car (or didn't have reliable enough income to even consider that option).
- anamax 5y ago
  Eggs, comrade, eggs. Specifically your eggs. No, there won't be omelets. What are you, some sort of kulak?
  - lucian1900 5y ago
    We communists frequently argue against such programmes and instead for cheap and rational transportation for the working class, like trains, light rail and biofuel cars for rural areas. And kulaks had it coming, even my great-granddad. Destroying food during a famine is inhuman.
    - robertlagrant 5y ago
      Cheap trains and light rail require very high levels of automation. As long as you argue in favour of that as well it makes sense.
      - lucian1900 5y ago
        Of course. Such automation wouldn’t be sustainable under capitalism because the rate of profit would drop even further, but it would be entirely possible under a socialist economy that produces for use instead of for profit.
        anamax 5y ago
        > Such automation wouldn’t be sustainable under capitalism because the rate of profit would drop even further I get that you don't like profits (even though investment to do automation requires profits), but automation reduces costs which INCREASES profits and/or reduces prices.
        ClumsyPilot 5y ago
        "I get that you don't like profits (even though investment to do automation requires profits)" That's literally opposite of how accounting works, if you reinvest everything, your profit is 0%. Profits are what's lefts after Cost of good sold, reinvesting, etc. which you then may distribute to shareholders.
        anamax 5y ago
        > That's literally opposite of how accounting works, if you reinvest everything, your profit is 0%. Wrong - Profit is revenue minus costs. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_(accounting) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_(accounting) and all of the other definitions on the web. Reinvesting affects cash flow but not profits.
        lucian1900 5y ago
        One enterprise automating increases its competitive advantage for a while, thus temporarily increasing its profits. However, over time, all enterprises will either automate or fail. Since profits are a portion of the value generated by labour, as the proportion of costs attributed to labour drop, so do profits. There are secondary effects as well, as workers lose their jobs, their wages fall through competition and they can no longer afford to buy the commodities produced. This phenomenon is well documented historically, as the rate of profit has an overall tendency to drop which is more clearly noticeable after bursts of automation. https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2020/07/25/a-world-rate-of-profit-a-new-approach/ https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2020/07/25/a-world-ra...
    - HideousKojima 5y ago
      >And kulaks had it coming, even my great-granddad. Destroying food during a famine is inhuman. Don't take people's property by force and not expect them to fight back. And especially don't use their fighting back as an excuse to oppress and slaughter them, that's what's truly inhuman. And the famine was caused by collectivization policies in the first place, you're just blameshifting your failed policies onto the victims of it.
      - lucian1900 5y ago
        When some starve and others hoard food, is property more important than hunger? The famines were environmental, for centuries. It was only collectivisation and industrialisation of agriculture that stopped the famines.
        HideousKojima 5y ago
        >When some starve and others hoard food, is property more important than hunger? Yes, because destroying private property rights will lead to further famines. It's something called second-order effects, which Communists seem utterly incapable of understanding. >The famines were environmental, for centuries. None were ever on the scale of those caused by the Soviets, Mao, and others, so they clearly weren't just environmental. >It was only collectivisation and industrialisation of agriculture that stopped the famines. Industrialization is doing some Atlas-tier lifting for the rest of your argument in that sentence. Collectivization did nothing to stop famines unless you count causing millions to die and thereby having fewer mouths to feed in the following years. Reversing collectivization, on the other hand, increased food output six-fold in Xiaogang, China: http://www.china.org.cn/china/features/content_11778487_2.htm http://www.china.org.cn/china/features/content_11778487_2.ht... Edit: Note that the villagers of Xiaogang had to undo collectivization in secret because they risked literally life imprisonment and execution. They even made pacts with each other to care for the others' children until adulthood if any of them were caught and executed. Edit2: Since HN won't let me reply to your response directly, here it is. I lived in the Czech Republic and befriended countless people rich and poor who suffered under the evils of Communism. Communism has led to political violence in every single country that has adopted it, without exception. For a good historical overview (since you implied I haven't read any boons on the matter) I would recommend From the Gulag to the Killing Fields, which contains excerpts of historical accounts from every single country that established Communist regimes. You support a Godless ideology of murder, oppression, and lies.
  - afarrell 5y ago
    Let's have a sense of proportion. There is a significant difference between applying a mild economic disincentive and the starvation of 3.9 million people.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    “Cash for Clunkers” was a massive subsidy to the car industry. Seems you motto is 'Communism for me, but not for thee'?
- nine_k 5y ago
  On one hand, it's cheap transportation for less well-off. On the other hand, it's one of the worst pollutants, per person-mile traveled. A lot if America was built on a presumption of cheap car transportation, when the exhaust was considered free. Now we are starting to pay the price of it, and such places start to look less and less sustainable. But a lot of people lives there, and won't easily move to a metro area and start relying on public transport.
  - ThunderSizzle 5y ago
    Metro areas aren't magically sustainable. If anything, metro areas are very unsustainable whenever there's a supply chain issue, which is whenever there's an election to be won now.

by tarr11 5y ago

Syonyk 5y ago

And having been "grad school broke" during that era, it absolutely destroyed a decade's worth of cheap "runs and drives" grade cars that I drove and most of my friends drove. $100 cars were suddenly $1000 cars in a few months, which was fine if you owned one, bad if you were looking for another backyard project you could limp home and work on for a while. "Destroying the long tail of cheap resources for political points" is the sort of "reverse thinking" that we need less of, especially by politicians who make the right noises about caring about the poor. Great, a bunch of older cars are off the road... sucks to be someone who used those for transport if you couldn't afford the payments on a new car (or didn't have reliable enough income to even consider that option).

anamax 5y ago
Eggs, comrade, eggs. Specifically your eggs. No, there won't be omelets. What are you, some sort of kulak?
- lucian1900 5y ago
  We communists frequently argue against such programmes and instead for cheap and rational transportation for the working class, like trains, light rail and biofuel cars for rural areas. And kulaks had it coming, even my great-granddad. Destroying food during a famine is inhuman.
  - robertlagrant 5y ago
    Cheap trains and light rail require very high levels of automation. As long as you argue in favour of that as well it makes sense.
    - lucian1900 5y ago
      Of course. Such automation wouldn’t be sustainable under capitalism because the rate of profit would drop even further, but it would be entirely possible under a socialist economy that produces for use instead of for profit.
      - anamax 5y ago
        > Such automation wouldn’t be sustainable under capitalism because the rate of profit would drop even further I get that you don't like profits (even though investment to do automation requires profits), but automation reduces costs which INCREASES profits and/or reduces prices.
        ClumsyPilot 5y ago
        "I get that you don't like profits (even though investment to do automation requires profits)" That's literally opposite of how accounting works, if you reinvest everything, your profit is 0%. Profits are what's lefts after Cost of good sold, reinvesting, etc. which you then may distribute to shareholders.
        anamax 5y ago
        > That's literally opposite of how accounting works, if you reinvest everything, your profit is 0%. Wrong - Profit is revenue minus costs. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_(accounting) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_(accounting) and all of the other definitions on the web. Reinvesting affects cash flow but not profits.
        lucian1900 5y ago
        One enterprise automating increases its competitive advantage for a while, thus temporarily increasing its profits. However, over time, all enterprises will either automate or fail. Since profits are a portion of the value generated by labour, as the proportion of costs attributed to labour drop, so do profits. There are secondary effects as well, as workers lose their jobs, their wages fall through competition and they can no longer afford to buy the commodities produced. This phenomenon is well documented historically, as the rate of profit has an overall tendency to drop which is more clearly noticeable after bursts of automation. https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2020/07/25/a-world-rate-of-profit-a-new-approach/ https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2020/07/25/a-world-ra...
  - HideousKojima 5y ago
    >And kulaks had it coming, even my great-granddad. Destroying food during a famine is inhuman. Don't take people's property by force and not expect them to fight back. And especially don't use their fighting back as an excuse to oppress and slaughter them, that's what's truly inhuman. And the famine was caused by collectivization policies in the first place, you're just blameshifting your failed policies onto the victims of it.
    - lucian1900 5y ago
      When some starve and others hoard food, is property more important than hunger? The famines were environmental, for centuries. It was only collectivisation and industrialisation of agriculture that stopped the famines.
      - HideousKojima 5y ago
        >When some starve and others hoard food, is property more important than hunger? Yes, because destroying private property rights will lead to further famines. It's something called second-order effects, which Communists seem utterly incapable of understanding. >The famines were environmental, for centuries. None were ever on the scale of those caused by the Soviets, Mao, and others, so they clearly weren't just environmental. >It was only collectivisation and industrialisation of agriculture that stopped the famines. Industrialization is doing some Atlas-tier lifting for the rest of your argument in that sentence. Collectivization did nothing to stop famines unless you count causing millions to die and thereby having fewer mouths to feed in the following years. Reversing collectivization, on the other hand, increased food output six-fold in Xiaogang, China: http://www.china.org.cn/china/features/content_11778487_2.htm http://www.china.org.cn/china/features/content_11778487_2.ht... Edit: Note that the villagers of Xiaogang had to undo collectivization in secret because they risked literally life imprisonment and execution. They even made pacts with each other to care for the others' children until adulthood if any of them were caught and executed. Edit2: Since HN won't let me reply to your response directly, here it is. I lived in the Czech Republic and befriended countless people rich and poor who suffered under the evils of Communism. Communism has led to political violence in every single country that has adopted it, without exception. For a good historical overview (since you implied I haven't read any boons on the matter) I would recommend From the Gulag to the Killing Fields, which contains excerpts of historical accounts from every single country that established Communist regimes. You support a Godless ideology of murder, oppression, and lies.
- afarrell 5y ago
  Let's have a sense of proportion. There is a significant difference between applying a mild economic disincentive and the starvation of 3.9 million people.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  “Cash for Clunkers” was a massive subsidy to the car industry. Seems you motto is 'Communism for me, but not for thee'?
nine_k 5y ago
On one hand, it's cheap transportation for less well-off. On the other hand, it's one of the worst pollutants, per person-mile traveled. A lot if America was built on a presumption of cheap car transportation, when the exhaust was considered free. Now we are starting to pay the price of it, and such places start to look less and less sustainable. But a lot of people lives there, and won't easily move to a metro area and start relying on public transport.
- ThunderSizzle 5y ago
  Metro areas aren't magically sustainable. If anything, metro areas are very unsustainable whenever there's a supply chain issue, which is whenever there's an election to be won now.