Commentary
In 2009, in all of our environmental wisdom, we launched a program that came to be known as Cash for Clunkers. That wasn’t the official name, but it is the one most people remember. In just a couple of months, nearly 700,000 cars were traded in under this program, backed by taxpayer subsidies of up to $4,500 per vehicle.
Some of those cars were truly worn out. But many were not. Many were the kind of vehicles that could have kept running for another 20 or even 30 years. They were simple, mechanical, and fixable. They did not require a computer to diagnose or proprietary software to repair. They were the kind of cars a person could work on in their own driveway with a basic set of tools and a little know-how….