Written By : Warner Todd Huston

On August 13 I posted a piece wherein I facetiously asked “Why does Obama hate the poor?” Then I pointed out that the cash for clunkers program was likely to cause the price of used cars to skyrocket in the near future. I also asserted that the reason this will be so is because Obama’s clunkers program was set to destroy hundreds of thousands of otherwise perfectly functional cars all of which would have ended up on the used car market were it not for Obama’s interventionism.

It really is the most simple principle of supply and demand, so simple a ten-year-old could follow it — not that any Democrat is smarter than a fifth grader.

Here is what I wrote in August:

There’s little doubt of what will happen later in the year as cash for clunkers expands. Many thousands of lower end, used cars will be entirely eliminated from the market place as the government destroys them after they’ve been redeemed via that cash for clunkers program.

These will be the many thousands of cars that will not be available for people that have less than $10,000 with which to buy a car because so many perfectly good cars that would have ended up on the used market will have been destroyed by the government. Because all these cars have been artificially removed from the used car market — and all at once at that — there will be thousands fewer cars left for sale. Worse, the ones that are left will rise in price as there will be far more customers for them than units for sale.

This means that many millions of people that make less than $50,000 a year will now not be able to afford to buy a car at all.

I noted that Obama was condemning lower middle class folks to going without a car. He is also dooming many used car dealers, mostly small businesses, to failure because they won’t be able to get stock to sell not to mention for for being priced out of the market.

Of course, that was all my educated guessing back in August. It was all theory and supposition, based on tried and true economic theory, yes, but supposition nonetheless. Today I can proudly claim it as fact with the following story as found in The Reading Eagle, a local Pennsylvania news paper.

Berks dealers say federal clunkers program has made cheap, used vehicles harder to find

Dealers say program has made cheap, used vehicles harder to find

In her search for a cheap, used minivan for her and her husband, Krissy Dieroff has visited seven dealerships across Berks and Schuylkill counties in the last week, but to no avail.

“There’s not much to pick from, and the ones we do find are overpriced,” said Dieroff of Auburn, Schuylkill County, while browsing the lot of a city dealership on Monday.

Dieroff blames the shortage of inexpensive used cars on the federal cash-for-clunkers program, in which almost 700,000 used vehicles were traded in for newer, more fuel-efficient vehicles, and then scrapped.

Precisely what I said would happen.

“Cash for clunkers really hurt the used-car industry,” she said. “I think it hurt more people than it helped.”

I am compelled to paraphrase that: Obama for president really hurt the country, I think he hurts more people than he helps.

At this point I have to agree with Rush Limbaugh. It’s by design. Obama fully intends to hurt as many Americans as he can. He sees his role as delivering just punishment to an evil America.

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