Is it true that 1000's of perfectly good cars were crushed in the recent scrappage scheme?
I have heard there are fields of late model, decent, working cars that are due to be scrapped because they were traded in under the governments scrappage scheme.
Is it true?
If so, does this make sense?
Or is it just another example of the Law of Unintended Effects which New Labour seemed to specialise in.
Many have likened it to the broken window fallacy used in Economic theory (that if someone throws a brick through a window then it can be judged as a good thing - it gives someone a job fixing the window.)
It kept many companies alive and people in jobs and they continued to pay tax and corporation tax over what was hoped to be a short term economic downturn. Like the similar systems did in the US and a dozen or so other countries around the world. So it wasn't just New Labour's idea. The problem is doing nothing would be a far worse idea. There would be much more long term unemployment and industries would have vanished allowing foreign competition to gain a foothold. Also many older cars with poor emissions and a larger carbon footprint were taken out of service. So it makes sense if you look at in that way.
If you don't want it to make sense then it doesn't. That's the way political spin works as a propaganda device. You take an event and either make it look purely positive or purely negative when it is in fact both positive and negative.
