Is this the dumbest government program in my lifetime? There's so much competition...

WSJ: Cash for Clunkers wasn't a great idea. "Rather than stimulating the economy, the program made the nation as a whole $1.4 billion poorer."

Gosh, there's a shocker. We took money from people who couldn't afford new cars and gave it to people who could so that they could have usable assets destroyed, and it didn't make us all better off? Who'd'a thunk it?

Brought to you by the people who think that they should be running the health care system. The same government policy makers who felt that tax dollars would be well spent in destroying useful vehicles and delaying some sales and pulling some forward, while subsidizing the relatively well off at the expense of the less well off, want to take control of the health care system. What could possibly go wrong?