I just read this and thought I’d pass it on. Here’s what you find out when you crunch the numbers:

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

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

So, the average Cash for Clunkers transaction will reduce US gasoline consumption by 320 gallons per year (a very generous calculation, and far greater than the program requires).

They claim 700,000 vehicles so that’s 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 saved over one year.

If we look at a five year life, we save $1.75 billion.

It takes over 8.5 years to break even, not considering opportunity or interest costs.

How good a deal was that???