Cash for clunkers works

To the editor:

Ashley King (Letters, Aug. 7) is not a fan of the so called “Cash-for-Clunkers” program, which offers up to $4,500 to people to replace their gas-guzzling car, truck or SUV for a much more efficient one. As an alternative to what he refers to as “an act of wealth destruction,” Mr. King would have us get rid of all fuel efficiency standards for automobiles, thereby magically restoring America to its former economic prowess.

King further offers analogies of imaginary cash-for-clunker home exchanges (might you live in a clunker home?) and Depression Era piglet shortages, blamed on that most socialist of presidents (before Obama, presumably), FDR.

And yet, Wall Street seems to love Cash-for-Clunkers, as does GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda and all the rest. So do their workers. So do the car dealers, the parts manufacturers, and anyone who stands to benefit from the program. This includes you and I, who will have cleaner air, less carbon in the atmosphere, and less reliance on foreign oil.

As for wealth destruction, remember that it was World War II that finally brought us out of the Great Depression. World War II cost us $288 billion ($5 trillion in 2009 dollars), and most of the materiel produced for the war wasn’t melted down and sold for scrap (though most of it ultimately was), but was sunk in the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans, shot down over Germany or sold for a fraction of its original cost as military surplus. Yet that expenditure, the Marshall Plan and the GI Bill (another “socialist” program) which followed it, propelled the American people to an economic world dominance that lasts even today.

Maybe we should make Cash-for-Clunkers a permanent program.

Bill Siedler,

Wasilla