come on gentlemen, there are those who wish to keep to cars here… 
Thanks for the replies everyone.
The basic economic justification for C4C was that it would provide an extra push for some people to buy new cars now, instead of either a used car now or a new car later. There is some prominent economic theory that suggests that stimulating economic demand is an effective way to deal with recessions, but if all additional car sales due to C4C were from people planning to purchase in September 2009 instead of July/August this wouldn’t be that helpful.
But anyway, if anyone actually has any anecdotal experience about license plates, it would be extremely helpful as its important for my experimental design that MA wasn’t handing out a ton of new plates around this time. I know they were trying to get the old green plates off the road and were waving the fee for plate transfers as an incentive, but I’m not sure how much of a difference this should make given the green plates were last issued in 1987!
@JoeMario thanks for the response to my actual question! I know they weren’t actually connected but I was wondering if there it might have been easier for dealers to just push new plates on everyone given the busy volume at dealerships that summer. This might explain what I’m seeing in the data but would be bad news for my data analysis.
“There is some prominent economic theory that suggests that stimulating economic demand is an effective way to deal with recessions…”
Never worked; never will.
I beg to differ. When WWII stimulated demand for planes and ships, it stimulated the economy quite well. It’s macroeconomics 101.
There’s much more to it than that simple-minded view:
yes, after ww2 the world was our oyster. we reaped great benefits from the victory and the opportunities and goodwill it provided.
everyone wanted a Coca-Cola…
WWII is not a valid economic model on which to draw peacetime economy conclusions. Enormous amounts of tax revenue were diverted directly to the war machine from social programs, peacetime economic stimulus programs, and just about every other government program Civilian products manufacturing came to a dead stop, including automobiles. Additionally, millions of women went to work in factories to produce war machinery while the men went to war.
In short, the traditional economic model came to a dead stop and the government completely took over the economy. I’m forever grateful that they did (I don’t goose-step well), but I would not want to live my entire life totally under the control of the government.
What suddenly caused the economy to blossom at the end of WWII is a combination of some 16 million troops suddenly becoming civilian consumers in a post-WWII manufacturing infrastructure suddenly confronted with a serious excess of capacity.
To say that the federal government can stimulate the economy by injecting tax dollars ignores the effects of the removal of those same tax dollars from the hands of the consumers. And of the deficit.
Economic stimulation by the government reduces the pain of recessions and starts recovery earlier, but it would happen anyway eventually. I think the relatively soft landing is usually worth it. Especially in the last recession.
@mountainbike, Oh I agree sir. The economic models are quite different. I was simply refuting the statement “never worked; never will” because I know it has worked. I know blanket statements like that are the low hanging fruit of economic debate, so I provided the first example that came to mind.
Still, Forbes recently reported that what conservatives call “the Obama economy” is outpacing the “Reagan economy” in several key factors, including job creation and stock market growth. Next time I’m near a computer, I’ll post a link. Let’s not revise history too much. At the end of WWII, we had a pretty large government debt.
What suddenly caused the economy to blossom at the end of WWII is a combination of some 16 million troops suddenly becoming civilian consumers in a post-WWII manufacturing infrastructure suddenly confronted with a serious excess of capacity.
Well, I’d say that the US economy boomed in the late 40’s through the 60’s because all of Europe, and much of Asia, had to be rebuilt…and everybody else’s factories had been bombed into oblivion. Thus, plenty of work for the US! Eventually, other first-worlders got in on the act…but only once the US had an 8-year head start on 'em.
(Really, the Allies had a HUGE advantage by having a country like the US located outside of Axis bomber range. It’s no accident Germany was working so hard on ICBMs, and nukes to put on 'em.)
ahahahahahahahahhahahhahahhaha
Here is the link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2014/09/05/obama-outperforms-reagan-on-jobs-growth-and-investing/
Good evening – would you kindly redirect this one back to cars? Thank you.
I’d be happy to. The C4C program might have been a failure in terms or it’s effect on the automotive market, and I was against the bailout of GM and Chrysler at the time based on principle, but one can’t argue with the macroeconomic numbers that have come out since these programs were implemented.
Has anyone done a study on how many people traded large trucks/SUVs in for a Prius type vehicle? Have they also followed up with how many bought a Prius then traded their Prius in after a few years for another large truck/suv?
Also, wasn’t Obama hoping people would buy US union labor built vehicles in the hopes of getting some of the bailout money back? I’d read that that backfired as well, as many bought foreign made or American made foreign models that wasn’t made by union labor(i.e. Honda of Marysville/East Liberty are not union plants)
but one can't argue with the macroeconomic numbers that have come out since these programs were implemented.
The problem is it’s very difficult to directly relate the numbers back to those programs.
I agree, and I agree there are economic forces in play that are far greater than any president can control, but we seem to be experiencing a trend where whoever is in the White House gets the blame or credit for whatever happens in the automotive market and the macroeconomy, so I’m going to play along. The president was taking blame when the economy was sour, but those who were against his programs like the bailout of GM and Chrysler and C4C don’t seem to be lining up to praise the economic growth were experiencing now. The criticism is partisan, and strangely exclusively negative, in spite of the evidence of growth in automotive sales and the economy at large.
ahahahahahahahahhahahhahahhahaFull moon tonight?
The president was taking blame when the economy was sour, but those who were against his programs like the bailout of GM and Chrysler and C4C don't seem to be lining up to praise the economic growth were experiencing now.
I think I can praise/denigrate POTUS on a cafeteria basis: I like this; I really DON’T like that. I think bailing out (at least one of the) US auto makers was a lot more defensible than CARS. CARS has already been analyzed to death by legions of economists, and generally found to be a colossal waste…of every measurable input, really. (I mean, how can anything “make sense,” economically, when it features HUGE inefficiencies like deliberately destroying perfectly good cars, making car dealerships so busy one month that they lack manpower…to become ghost towns the next.)
If you want to curtail gasoline consumption, the simplest method is the best: tax gasoline! A lot of people don’t like it–hey, I don’t like it–on account of the fact it’s a regressive tax, but it gets the job done with a minimum of fuss. (CAFE is close, but a side effect of higher-MPG cars, plus cheaper gas, is that people tend to drive more, partially negating the FE gains; also, mfr’s tend to “job” the standards by creating cars to beat the tests, playing games with “footprint” (extended cab trucks), etc.)