Thoughts on California and the "Cash for Clunkers" program

My friend Chet reminded me of this; apparently Kahleefornja is giving out IOUs instead of actual funds to pay its debts these days. It's the only state to do so since the Depression (though Illinois may join them, I believe), and it reminds me of playing Monopoly as a kid.

I would play, but my brother loved the game to the point where he would finagle the issuing of IOUs when luck turned against him. The end result? A brother and a father tired of accepting IOUs, a longer game, and the final result unchanged; my brother always lost with IOUs.

The same result I expect with Kahleefornja, of course. Bankruptcy judges are waiting!

And I was thinking this morning about the "Cash for Clunkers" program. If we can assume that a person has a vehicle with about 100,000 miles and 18mpg, and trades on on an average sedan with 24mpg, one could use about 800 fewer gallons of fuel over the "expected" 50,000 miles of life left on the car.

Maybe. Of course, if it's a true clunker, it doesn't have that kind of mileage in it.

In return, one melts down two tons of old steel and makes it into two tons of new steel and aluminium, and in doing so...you use the equivalent of about four tons of petroleum, or the equivalent of about 1500 gallons of fuel.

Or, since you're burning coal, not oil, probably the carbon equivalent of about 2-3000 gallons of fuel. While of course you'd be buying a new car in a certain amount of time, the end result is that the environmental effect of this bill is probably a wash.

As I've noted before, one definition of "environmentalist" is "person who cannot do math."