Cash for Refrigerators, Or The Impossibility of Reason

You’d think this is a hoax, but only if you were sane.

Congress has decided it has had enough of Cash for Clunkers. After all, the program proved to be unmanageable, has completely run out of funding, and still has yet to pay money to the people who were to have been saved: auto manufacturers and dealerships. GM, for example, is fronting the money to dealerships who are running out of cash due to the government’s inability to pay up.

The same folks who want to run your healthcare system, but proved incompetent at handling a quarter million basic cash transactions.

Maybe they should try something easier. Like refrigerators. Yup. Cash for Refrigerators kicks off this Fall, in hopes that the government can accomplish something quite a bit smaller without effing it up.

And they’ve already effed it up. There is no requirement in the legislation for you to turn in your old fridge. You can simply buy a new fridge, freezer, or other Energy Star appliance minus up to $200 off sticker price, and keep your old one. So the environmental benefit of getting rid of your old appliance to get a greener one? None. Manufacturers and retailers both fully expect consumers to buy inexpensive appliances to move the old one out to the garage or basement and keep it. So because most older, inefficient appliances will remain in use but will be joined by new units elsewhere in the house, we will actually add to the appliance load on the environment by an amount exactly equal to the number of appliances moved to the garage or basement. Except now, it’s taxpayer money burning up the ozone layer.

The same folks who want to run your healthcare system think that this will help the environment.

The intent of course is to Save the Liberal World. “These rebates will help families make the transition to more efficient appliances, making purchases that will directly stimulate the economy,” said Steven Chu, whom the Czar regards as a fantasy-prone individual unable to differentiate between reality and academic theory. Analysts believe the small amount of stimulus money available—only $300 million this time—will not make a dent in stock prices or enough to benefit appliance makers. And the $50 to $200 rebate adds up to little more than a Fall sale price for retailers.

The same folks who want to run your healthcare system think that $300 million will offset the losses caused by the massive unemployment rate and subsequent decrease in purchases of durable goods.

The only truly helpful government exchange program should be the Democrat-to-Republican exchange currently scheduled to happen in late 2010. Everyone should benefit there.