The White House intends to boost government subsidies for wealthy buyers of the Chevy Volt and other new-technology vehicles — to $10,000 per buyer.
That mammoth subsidy would cost taxpayers $100 million each year if it is approved by Congress, presuming only 10,000 new-technology autos are sold each year.
But the administration wants to get 1 million new-tech autos on the road by 2015. The subsidy cost of that goal could reach $10 billion.
The planned giveaway will likely prompt populist protests from GOP legislators, but it will likely also will be welcomed by auto-industry workers in the critical swing state of Michigan.
That welcome is critical for President Barack Obama, who is touting his support for blue-collar manufacturing programs to help offset his low public approval ratings.
The new subsidy level represents a 33 percent jump from the current $7,500 government payout for each Volt buyer, even though the Volt’s buyers are already among the wealthiest Americans. It will be offered to buyers of any new-technology autos, including battery-powered autos and cars powered by natural gas, said a White House official.
The extra money for wealthy buyers will be borrowed funds, eventually paid off by future taxpayers in all income brackets.
Can you say “boondoggle”?
I knew you could.
The same budget that includes this campaign contribution also discontinues the school voucher program for poor D.C. children. But remember that this President is a champion of the poor.
The fact of the matter is the progressives have a different vision for America than do conservatives. This vision encompasses a view of history that includes the evolution of democratic revolutions of the 18th Century and beyond. While conservatives prefer to stop with that era, progressives recognize the we are now in the 21st Century, which requires new answers. I’m sure that there are plenty of readers of this site who may make fun of this view in terms of clever one-liners; their jocular notions will be assimilated into the dust created by the march of the dialectic of Hegel. Don’t know what that is? Why don’t you look it up—it may change how you view the world.
@Liberal1 (objectivity):
You should really look more objectively at the “new answers” that Obama and the liberal/progressives in DC are pushing, Lib1. They aren’t “new” at all, but instead, are rehashed versions of the same “answer” that statist/socialist historical figures have pushed for well over a century.
As for the subject of the OP itself, it should be interesting to note that the beneficiaries of such a “deal” will not be the American taxpayer, nor the American society. No, the beneficiaries of this “deal” will be the UAW and GM, even while they are putting out an inferior product being subsidized by the government. In simple terms, this is “redistribution of wealth”, except in this case, the redistribution is going to Obama’s cronies in the automaker industry and the relative handful of Americans who will be duped into purchasing the product due to the handout the government is giving them.
And, just so we are clear about Lib1’s remark on Hegel’s Dialectic theory, that theory was adopted by Marx and Engels to promote their socialist ideology. That theory essentially states that the history, and future, of mankind is basically a continuing, sometimes concurrent, set of opposing ideas(theses and antitheses) whereby a new idea(syntheses) is reached, and that idea then becomes a new idea(theses) opposed by another idea(antitheses) to create a new idea(syntheses), and on and on and on until the final idea(syntheses) is reached, whereby it is stated to be so perfect that no antitheses will emerge, and that will be the final state of mankind.
One must remember that Marx and Engels vision of society is one of “from those according to their abilities, to those according to their needs”. In other words, redistribution of wealth. That vision, when placed into practice, cannot help but subvert the freedom and liberty granted by “natural rights”, or, those rights guaranteed by our Constitution.
What is amusing to note, regarding Lib1’s use of Hegel, combined with his statement for “new answers”, is that Hegel’s formula uses the same idea over and over and over to eventually come to the “final solution”. There is nothing new about it. An issue comes up, there is an opposition in direct, opposite conflict to one side(it all depends on viewpoint here), and, that with “compromise” and “dialogue”, that an acceptable solution(syntheses) can be reached. However, the opposition in a conflict has to base their premise on something, correct? So, the amusing part about Lib1’s statement above is that in every conflict, the opposition has based their premise, or stance, on an issue based on Marx and Engel’s view of how society should be. Again, there is nothing new about it, and Lib1’s statement is just a bunch of blah, blah, blah around a clever one-liner about Hegel.
@Liberal1 (objectivity):
How about you folks on the left quit protesting all the existing energy systems, quit getting degrees in romantic lit, get a science or engineering degree, and make some of your dreams come true. Do you not think there are people out there trying to create better energy technology? The market will go crazy when something that is worth a crap is finally developed. Put down your philosophy book and pick up a physics book and quit whining.
@Aqua:
It’s the mentality of wanting “something for nothing”, that the left believes they “deserve” what you have simply because you do and they don’t. And, they get irate when someone has a product and decides to make money off of their invention or industry, especially when that person is seen to “gouge” their customers. This leads to believing that the thoughts of a person are owned by society in general, for the “greater good”, and that the person has a responsibility to society to share it with all of society without benefit to the person whose reasoned thinking, or industry, made that product possible.
This is exactly what one sees in the Occupy movement, and why such initiatives as the one presented in the OP are championed by the left. No longer is a product subject to economic sanctions, the decision of customers to purchase or not purchase, influencing a desire to come up with a better product. Instead, the government will subsidize substandard products, taking wealth from some and redistributing it to others, in order to placate the people.
The below statement begs the question why there are any tax credit for Volts…
The average income of the Chevy Volt’s buyers is $170,000 per year, according to General Motors CEO Dan Akerson. “Some of them — I think roughly half — are either [Toyota] Prius or BMW owners,” Akerson said in a Dec. 16 interview with the Associated Press.
Really, somebody earning a 170K a year needs/deserves a 10,000 dollar tax credit?
I would like to buy a 45,000 dollar Dodge Challenger SRT equipped with a 392 Hemi putting out a modest 470 horses…Think I can get a 10,000 tax credit? Of course not, I am not purchasing a piece of crap that Government Motors can’t get people to buy…
More on Lib1’s talk of Hegel;
Socialist? You be the judge. As for Hegel’s dialectic theory, which I touched on above, the real idea of his theory is that it is a control mechanism designed to lead people into a predetermined idea, or syntheses. That predetermined idea leads to others, which leads to others, eventually culminating in a vision of mankind’s society where the above quote by Hegel is indicative of.
There is much more involved in this topic, and I hope to get to it later, possibly in a topic posting. We’ll see.