How Efficient was Cash for Clunkers?

Just how efficient was the Cash for Clunkers program last year? I do agree that there is an environmental impact that cannot be quantified, but here is some number crunching to get at the monetary impact of the program. I thought it was quite interesting.

A 15 mpg clunker that travels 12,000 miles a year uses 800 gallons of gas a year.

A 25 mpg vehicle that travels 12,000 miles a year uses 480 gallons a year.

The average Cash for Clunkers transaction will reduce US gasoline consumption by 320 gallons per year.

Reports were that about 700,000 clunkers were traded in using the program. So that is 224 million gallons saved per year.

That equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil.

5 million barrels is about 5 hours worth of US consumption.

More importantly, 5 million barrels of oil at $70 per barrel costs about $350 million dollars

So, the government paid $3 billion of our tax dollars to save $350 million.

We spent $8.57 for every dollar we saved.

The program did have some merits, but in the end it was extremely inefficient and not a good use of tax dollars........BUT......I'm pretty sure they will do a great job with our health care, though.