A friend suggested there should be a ‘cash for clunker ex-wives’ program to replace alimony sucking old ones for new, more energy filled models. Given all the money the government is giving away, I told him it was only a matter of time.
A $300 million cash-for-clunkers-type federal program to boost sales of energy-efficient home appliances provides a glimmer of hope for beleaguered makers of washing machines and dishwashers, but it’s probably not enough to lift companies such as Whirlpool (WHR) and Electrolux out of the worst down cycle in the sector’s history.
Beginning late this fall, the program authorizes rebates of $50 to $200 for purchases of high-efficiency household appliances. The money is part of the broader economic stimulus bill passed earlier this year. Program details will vary by state, and the Energy Dept. has set a deadline of Oct. 15 for states to file formal applications. The Energy Dept. expects the bulk of the $300 million to be awarded by the end of November. (Unlike the clunkers auto program, consumers won’t have to trade in their old appliances.)
“These rebates will help families make the transition to more efficient appliances, making purchases that will directly stimulate the economy,” Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a statement announcing the plan. Only appliances covered by the Energy Star seal will qualify. In 2008, about 55% of newly produced major household appliances met those standards, which are set by the Energy Dept. and Environmental Protection Agency.
Seems to me you get “two bangs” for your buck here. The first one is a job stimulus for manufacturing hard goods. I just wonder what domestic product makes up the refrigerator market?
But the second and perhaps even more rational goal is energy efficiency.
If we make hardly anything on manufacturing because it is 90% done overseas, BUT we break even on the ROI from energy savings, then isn’t this not only a program that only the government can do, and good economic policy?
All you really have to do is fudge the numbers.
What about people with old small TV’s, they could trade up to large flat screen HD TV’s?
Most electric utilities have programs nowadays to take away your old clunker refrigerator for $30 cash or so to take it out of the consumption loop.
Or the store you buy the new appliance from offers to take away the oldie for free – and then they turn it over to the power company for the bucks.
Can I get a credit for all my ex-wives?
Obama contributors (aka GE Appliance divisions) will receive a short-term “sugar high” at the expense of lower future sales when the program is over.
Sales of appliances over the next few years will be correspondingly reduced.
But who cares, when Obama’s generated hyper-inflation rolls over all of us.
The Cash for Clunkers is reportedly being touted as stimulating the economy and helping jump start it. Proposing another program to remove older, inefficient appliances will help even more.
Of course, the right wing nuts will never accept anything coming out of our government as helping the economy. They would rather all those laid off people just died and disappeared. They don’t care about America, they only care about some abstract concept of “Obama is evil”.
I was going to replace our refrigerator next year. I might just move that up to this fall.
All of this is based on the totally flawed concept that energy independence is going to save us from terrorism. Wake up people. Spend all the money you want on energy efficient products, we will still be dependent on foreign oil TO MAKE ALL THOSE PRODUCTS as that dependence is exactly what makes us energy efficient. ROFL at the stupid masses that get their knowledge from TV.
Cash for Clunkers and Cash for Coolers programs are all well and good, but they really are only drops in a bucket.
I oouldn’t participate in Cash for Clunkers because I couldn’t afford the payments on a new car. I would love to participate in the Cash for Coolers program but I don’t have the money.
All my extra income is going to pay the credit card companies that jacked-up my interest rates and are now showing record profits.
How about a Cash for Credit Card bills program?
Fusion, are you being sarcastic or stupid? Following your logic we might as well “stimulate” the economy by putting everyone on the Dole.
GE sponsered plan
Due to the difficulties and costs involved in generating additional power, it is actually cheaper and more profitable for power companies to offer rebates to remove older appliances than to try to keep up with increasing demand.
In California they have limited the rate increases by actually adding a small surcharge to your bill, which is then used to buyback low efficiency appliances. You pay ‘more’ in your bill, but you actually pay much less than if they had to spend 10’s of billions upgrading the capacity and infrastructure, which they would have to charge for, and would increase your bill significantly more.
I know, it is counter-intuitive, but pay a little more to end up paying a lot less is the end result.
And often the surcharge for the buybacks pays for itself many times over due to lowered bills due to you using less power because of the much more energy efficient appliances.
#9, Daddy Tomb,
Well, this is not sarcasm, YOU ARE AN EFFEN IDIOT.
Paying people while they are unemployed has several benefits. The least of which is the workforce is still available for when the economy recovers.
Another is these people are Americans. We don’t throw our people away or let them die in the streets. Maybe the right wing nuts would like to, but our social mores don’t allow it.
Unemployment is paid out of premiums. They are not taxes like welfare would be. Payments are consistent. They are not dependent upon everyone else donating some food.
The return on paying unemployment insurance is much more than went into it.
BUT, unemployment does nothing to create wealth. Jobs do. Stimulating the economy to create jobs, either new jobs or calling back laid off workers, is better than nothing. Of course, the right wing nuts want to do nothing because they all hate America.
LOL.. great pics!!
This new Cash for Appliances program could really make a significant difference for urban areas in regards to economic stimulus, more so than the Cash for Clunker Autos program in my opinion. I read an interesting article about how New York businesses could really benefit from this new program. I hope it has its desired effect!
OK,
this is getting stupid.
This will only stimulate the NO SALES, of goods.
Who remembers the SALES “Save $6000 when you buy this car”? BEFORE the rebate?
NOW its going to happen on OTHER ITEMS?? They will stop ALL Major SALES and depend on MSRP(manufacturers suggested retail price) which IS’ generally 20-30% MORE than any sale price during that time of season.
NOW lets add to this notion that MONEY will get around. WHO is making the money??
Maker?
Copy right holder for DESIGN AND CONCEPT and SOME PARTS?
Distributor?
reseller?
STORE?
IF’ you could buy from the MAKER, and buy at COST + 10%, you would probably spend 1/2 the price you would at ANY STORE.
AND IF’ you cant/wont look for an item thats AT LEAST 20% lower then MSRP, you are an idiot.
MSRP is a fictional number. and is generally 2-3 times the COST of the product from the maker.
Mr. Fusion has it all figured out. Absolutely brilliant, too bad he’s an “effen idiot”.
Because of the “Obama Effect” many of us need higher volume, turbo-flush toilets. When are we going to see a Cash for Clunkers toilet trade in?
Heck, I’m down 10 lbs since he took office because I have to go every time I see him. It’s not all bad, I guess.
I’m with you. For a channel that is supposed to be so unfair and unbalanced Fox News has The Messiah Obomba on the screen too many times during the day and it makes me want to throw up.
CARS had to be for the economy and not the environment bullshit since it cost more that tens as much per ton for carbon reduction as it would be to just buy the credits.
Another dumbass idea from the government, over budget, run into the ground and pretty close to screwing over the dealers….and I hear they hired 1100 people in the government just to process the paperwork.
Can’t wait to get my healthcare.
Truth of efficiency..
“Efficiency SUCKS…
Take an older community, with all the heaters rated at 60%.
The first few that get better quality Heaters (99%) start to get savings.
After about 30% of the community ships over to the better heaters the price of Fuel/electricity goes UP.
WHY? The company isn’t making the same amount of money.
You want us to SAVE, you want us to be responsible to the environment, but it costs more money with higher charges.
Even though they aren’t putting in any new pipe/lines to supply the energy.
To think about the little old lady that cant update her home because of the cost, and then the rising efficiency costs, tends to make a bad situation worse.
Efficiency is supposed to SAVE us money, but doesn’t. Companies want their money, they want to sell the same amount every year, and make the SAME profit.
Stocks are the same. Its only a LONG term loan.
Companies used to use their OWN profits to make NEW products to sell.
They used their own profits for there OWN R&D.
Now they inflate there Stock prices to get money, so they can get more money to do the same.
Their own Profit was used to generate commercials and advertisement, but is now paid for by the consumer. If the advertisements don’t work, they increase the price to fix the profit margin, so as NOT to have a loss. This is totally redundant and is far reaching.
If and when a company goes under/is sold, it has a LARGE debt to pay off. But this isn’t paid by the company but, in the end, by the consumer.”
#11 You may be right. They’ve been kissing Democrat bottoms big time and you know they expect something in return.
CASH FOR CLUNKERS CONGRESS.
Trade in the old for fiscally responsible new.
You know what’s really cool about CARS? It came out today that the 4500.00 is taxable income!?! Everything this administrations does is hosed.
As Jebson2 said, all these rebates only diminish future sales for the rush of “stimulated” sales this quarter.
Remember what happened when Detroit started selling cars at “employee” prices and zero percent APR a few years ago? I’ll tell you what happened, those companies could not sell cars at full “street” prices after offering those deep discounts because Detroit:
1) saturated the marketplace with new cars that absorbed all potential future buyers for years to come
2) canabalized future price increases by becoming stuck on a competitive unsustainable price point that ended up becoming a mutually assured destructive battle between GM, Chrysler, and Ford
Mr. Confusion lives in a fantasy land of the mind where we the taxpayers can fund our own prosperity by borrowing from our own futures to buy crap we don’t need today. And where he doesn’t believe that we will have to pay back these loans we’ve signed because it is someone else’s problem.
So many Americans, like Mr. Confusion, want to believe we can spend our time comfortably at home watching TV and doing nothing more to improve ourselves that to plan our next car or refrigerator purchase, while the rest of the world desperatly tries to survive by coming up with ideas to “eat our lunch”.
With patriots like Mr. Confusion, the US has more enemies than it can probably handle.
Spelling errors curtosy my I’m-too-sexy-for-a-spell-checker Crapple Iphone.
#22, I’m an asshole,
So what is the problem? Capital gains are usually taxable.
Yes! We need a new fridge current one is running all the time…[pause] Anyway, you’d a rebate and a tax deduction for buying an energy saving appliance.
TV’s are all ferun made.
#24, Daddy Tomb,
I notice you are full of criticism. I also noticed that you don’t seem to have any solutions.
Just another typical Liebertarian. Perhaps you know Liberty Loser. He seems to be from the same mold as you.
Look at Mr. Confusion, with his little ad hominem rebuttal.
Perhaps his kind will evolve in several million generations to understand such startling simple concepts as the encapsulated economic system and the limit. But science, as advanced as it is today, can not predict the rate of advancement of The Confused that occupy the Earth with us.
Thank goodness there are people that understand the importance to society at large that we each strive to live our lives within our means and to strive toward our greatest potential.
“A friend suggested there should be a ‘cash for clunker ex-wives’ program to replace alimony sucking old ones for new, more energy filled models.”
My mother liked to tell the story of the time she turned 40 and my father said he ought to trade her in for two 20-year-olds. She told him, “You’re not wired for 220!”
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# 18 Mr Diesel:
….and I hear they hired 1100 people in the government just to process the paperwork.
Alright! JOBS!
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#19 ECA:
“Take an older community, with all the heaters rated at 60%.
The first few that get better quality Heaters (99%) start to get savings.
After about 30% of the community ships over to the better heaters the price of Fuel/electricity goes UP.
WHY? The company isn’t making the same amount of money.”
And those with the more efficient heaters will still pay less than the others. And the reason the prices will rise is because of all the oil we still import, with possible assists from speculators. If enough people invest in more efficient energy use, maybe we can import less oil.
#29, Uncle P.,
If enough people invest in more efficient energy use, maybe we can import less oil.
WHOA!!! You are talking way over the heads of certain wing nuts. It is their god given, Constitutional RIGHT to waste as much energy as they can.
(Great joke by the way. I loved that twist on an old line)
Grandparents just replaced their refrigerator last months when the old one finally stopped working. Apparently their electricity usage has gone down by almost 1/3.