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Re: Cash-for-junkers

To: bobj@meaddata.com, toms@sharebase.com, british-cars@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: Cash-for-junkers
From: "TeriAnn Wakeman" <twakeman@apple.com>
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 94 08:54:58 -0800
I realize this topic best belongs in rec.autos and not here but I can not resist
the temptation to add my $0.02 because everyone seems to be forgetting who will 
really be hurt by this.  

Enthusiasts like you and me grab up a number of cars and fix them up plus take a
number of cars off the road to dismantle as parts cars.

Then there is a group of people who just don't buy into  the new car myth.  
These generally have older cars that are cheaper to license, insure and 
maintain.  Not because they have too but because they just don't buy into the 
myth.  They aren't entusiasts and pick cars based upon percieved reliability and
usually don't part out cars just to have a pile of spares just in case.

Take away the old cars & we will be upset, perhaps even extreamly upset.  But 
most of us would live through it (Some of course will be exicuted for 
terminating the people who come for their cars).

The group that everyone seems to forget about (because historically their vote 
turnout is small??) is the poorer masses who couldn't afford a newish car by 
legal means. What do you do if you are working two minimum wage jobs, just 
barely affording rental on a run down drafty house/appartment, and gas to get to
& from work and someone takes away your car???

There are a great many people on the financial bottom third of society who only 
survive because those cheap clunkers allow them to get to and from work.  If 
they break down, and the owner can not get a good used part cheaply,  they are 
in real danger of loosing their job and the roof over their heads.  Raise the 
liscens fees on old cars significantly or take them away, and you have taken 
away the means of achieving a livelyhood for a large number of people, and 
forced a lot more to undergo extream hardship paying for that newer car than 
they can afford.


I have some friends who do not have electricity, gas, or a phone this winter 
because the car died and they needed to purchase a new old clunker.  Their kids 
are doing homework by coal oil lamps, and showering at school.

This isn't fair to them or to the many other people I do not know.

Sorry, for spouting off with non-LBC content



TeriAnn Wakeman             One of these days, I'll be old enough that
twakeman@apple.com          people will stop calling me crazy and start
LINK: TWAKEMAN              calling me eccentric.
408-974-2344        TR3A - TS75519L, MGBGT - GHD4U149572G, 109 - 164000561



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