Clunkers: Taxpayers paid $24,000 per car

Ahh.... statistics.... !!!!

SUCKISSTAPLES said: another case of media playing with #s to mak it seem more SENSATIONAL

They estimated only 1/6 of the purchases wouldnt have been purchased anyway to come up woth the $24,000 per car madeup figure.

I can estimate only 1/20 of the purchases wouldnt have happened anyway and say it cost taxpayers $90,000 per car. BS

Beat me to it!

Bloomberg
Consumers “are certainly interested” in the program, said Jeremy Anwyl, chief executive officer of research firm Edmunds.com in Santa Monica, California. “But they haven’t read the fine print yet.”

The program isn’t “much of a big deal” for automakers because the $1 billion will only fund about 250,000 in sales, “a drop in the bucket” for an industry that used to sell 16 million a year, Anwyl said in an interview.

.

If you look at annual vehicle sales, it's not an unreasonable projection of the difference between cars that would have been sold w/o the incentive versus sold with the incentive. So I don't really think the calculation is bad - but it doesn't change the $3 billion bill that my kids got - it's still $3 billion.

I don't buy the "without Cash for Clunkers, October's sales increase would be even higher." - how can an incentive be a disincentive?

Regardless, I don't need any sort of tailored statistics need to be given to me to think any less of the pile of garbage this program was.

I have an economic plan to dig ditches, and then pay people to fill them. Stimulus!

nycll said: Xnarg said: That means the government ended up spending about $24,000 each for those 125,000 additional vehicle sales...
No kidding. why 125,000? Why not assume an even smaller number to make the cost per vehicle even higher?

I know we should just take goverments word, and not do any anyalsis of their spending programs.

Who would dare question such kenysain princples.

michal1980 said: nycll said: Xnarg said: That means the government ended up spending about $24,000 each for those 125,000 additional vehicle sales...
No kidding. why 125,000? Why not assume an even smaller number to make the cost per vehicle even higher?

I know we should just take goverments word, and not do any anyalsis of their spending programs.

Who would dare question such kenysain princples.I was just questioning where the 125,000 number came from. Is that allowed?

nycll said: I was just questioning where the 125,000 number came from. Is that allowed?

It's a number that someone came up with after playing around with historical data most likely.

The fail happens when the report erroneously divides $3 billion by 125,000. This leads the average reader (average) to think that the government actually spent $24,000 per car sold in cash for clunkers. Bad journalism.

It seems like the author might be using historical data for sales - which can't be used since this recession was unlike anything the majority of the people have lived through. Can we assume that the historical sales from the past 5, 10, 20 be reliable for 2009? When cars sales are down to historic levels?

I trust the analysis by Edumunds_ more than I value the significance of the current GDP growth figures, which are primarily related to increases in government spending rather than any actual economic growth in terms of consumer and business spending or investment.

Xnarg said: I trust the analysis by Edumunds_ more than I value the significance of the current GDP growth figures, which are primarily related to increases in government spending rather than any actual economic growth in terms of consumer and business spending or investment.Really? Do you know how Edumunds get the 125,000?

If you want to find out how GDP number is computed, you can see everything they do on http://www.bea.gov/.

the sales trend for luxury vehicles is skewed bc of the economy anyway, so using any calculation based off historical luxury car trends is bs

tazzy531 said: To conduct the analysis, the Edmunds.com team of PhDs and statisticians examined the sales trend for luxury vehicles and others not included in Cash for Clunkers, and applied the historic relationship of those vehicles to total SAAR to make informed estimates. These estimates were independently verified through careful examination of sales patterns reflected by transaction data. Once the numbers were determined, Edmunds.com's analysts divided three billion dollars by 125,000 vehicles to arrive at the average $24,000 per vehicle.

Coincidentally, a parallel analysis of the first-time homebuyer credit was reported yesterday by MIT Sloan Professor Simon Johnson and Yale law student James Kwak, who both blog about economics at The BaseLine Scenario.

http://www.edmunds.com/help/about/press/159446/article.html <-- Original press release.. Not the diluted one by CNN Money.
The second column is what I am a little confused about. Why they put in a hefty growth in there? These are supposedly seasonally adjusted numbers so the new model impact is supposedly evened out already.

Also the mentioning of "parallel analysis of first-time homebuyer credit" is very bizarre. Why on earth would a car site point to a home buying analysis? Is this an editorial or a publication of an objective study??? /scratch head/

PMonkeyDishwasher said:
Edmunds wears the sexiest lingerie? I looked for evidence of that on their site, but couldn't find any.

you should learn how to use google images.

I also love how they have one of their affiliated sites report the news:

http://www.autoobserver.com/2009/10/cash-for-clunkers-tab-24000-...

Also, michal1980 and others... The critique here isn't anything for or against the administration. People here on FWF don't take any analysis at face value without looking at how they deduce the outcome.

We just don't like flawed math and flawed logic.

wilesmt said: SUCKISSTAPLES said: another case of media playing with #s to mak it seem more SENSATIONAL

They estimated only 1/6 of the purchases wouldnt have been purchased anyway to come up woth the $24,000 per car madeup figure.

I can estimate only 1/20 of the purchases wouldnt have happened anyway and say it cost taxpayers $90,000 per car. BS

Edmunds has been collecting and publishing data on new and used cars since 1966. They are not a political entity and they are currently one of the most influential sources of automobile data in the country. Why would I not trust their data and forecasting?

You shouldn't discount the data they provided just becuase CNN drummed up sensationalism. Doing so distracts from ones ability to sort through information.I don't know if I would agree with you. How do you answer the questions I asked earlier?

About the new vehicle sales tread, what had happened at least 6 month before CFC, was that used price had stopped falling and started rising. This is not intuitively the expected results, since used car buyers tend to be hit harder and earlier in a recession. However, since this recession is so deep and so broad, the trend of slower new car sales will be persistent. That's why I don't understand why their NO CFC assumptions are so high. Because that part is the only tricky part of the study. Everything else is just substractions.

HumDoHamaraDo said: Ahh.... statistics.... !!!!

Who really needs lies or damn lies?

Edmunds is the new monday morning quarterback? You can't use historic data to predict car sales, because no one was buying anything during that time. Let's do the same math to calculate the cost of the housing credit.

Glitch99 said: wilesmt said: Edmunds has been collecting and publishing data on new and used cars since 1966. They are not a political entity and they are currently one of the most influential sources of automobile data in the country. Why would I not trust their data and forecasting?Because there are too many variables in play to attribute any sales data fluctuation to a single factor - in this case, the clunker program.

The "extra 125,000" cars sold could just as likely have been due to people rushing to qualify for car loans prior to losing their jobs, making that 125k figure inflated. And consumers who buy due to a promotion/rebate can tend to play the "I was going to buy it anyways" card to justify the purchase and counter any remorse, meaning that 125k figure may actually be much larger...... There is simply no way to look back and predict what would've happened with any certainty.

So then why pass programs and spend billions if you cannot measure any of the results?

This is why Kenysain followers are mind numbing. Spend money. But question the results ... and then there is 'no way to look back and predict what would've happened'.

Fine if thats the logic we are going to use after spending 3 billion dollars. Then lets use it before we do.

At least then we have a known : We have saved 3 billion dollars.

Glitch99 said: michal1980 said: Glitch99 said: michal1980 said: SUCKISSTAPLES said: another case of media playing with #s to mak it seem more SENSATIONAL

They estimated only 1/6 of the purchases wouldnt have been purchased anyway to come up woth the $24,000 per car madeup figure.

I can estimate only 1/20 of the purchases wouldnt have happened anyway and say it cost taxpayers $90,000 per car. BS


Ahh so now Edmunds is BS, before it was seeking alpha now its Edmunds.

I geuss the only true source for costs and benefits is what the Goverment tells us.

Because everyone outside of goverment is BSing.Its not where the conclusions comes from. Its that the conclusions are based solely on biased assumptions of what "might" have happened, yet presented as fact. As the responses in this thread show, estimations can vary wildly but be just as 'valid'.

So now Edmunds is biased against this administration? Next up 'Edmunds is raciest'Who said anything about "this administration"? This has nothing to do with pimping any sort of agenda. It has everything to do with pimping conclusions calculated from that estimate of 125,000 cars, which could just as easily be estimated to be 400,000 or 20,000 cars.

You implied it by stating that Edmunds was 'biased'. Since this data makes the current (cannot mention because might be political) look less good. Then obivously Edmunds must be biased against them.

Otherwise, who is Edmunds biased against?