Politics and Cars

Yesterday, President Obama announced that he will seek (or was it mandate -- does he need Congress to approve?) to require higher overall MPGs from vehicle manufacturers.  I believe this was also combined with lower emissions requirements as well.  Wonderful goals, right?  We all want to get higher miles per gallon and we want to emit as little pollution as possible.  So, why am I against this?

Three reasons.  One is that the government has just taken over two U.S. auto manufacturers and is now saddling them with even more requirements that will further reduce sales, because it forces the price to go up.  In one sense, it makes the most sense for the Democrats running the U.S. government to just run the car companies because they set up so many of the rules and regulations for how to build a car that they might as well just build the cars and trucks themselves.  Can you imagine being an entrepreneur today who wanted to start up a new car company?  No, the smart creative types are getting involved with computers and biotechnology.  

Remember how the Democrats chafed at the restrictions placed on embryonic stem cell research by Presidents Clinton and G.W. Bush?  They argued that these restrictions hindered creativity and progress in researching cures or treatments for many ailments.  Well, all the restrictions placed on the car companies over the last 40 years are what has killed the American automobile industry.  

The second reason I oppose this is similar in that the government has taken another step in killing the fun out of cars.  Thinking back to the glory days of GM and hot rods and Pontiac GTOs and TransAms or Chevy Camaros or Ford Mustangs.  Cars were fun! Now what do we have?  Boring cars like the Toyota Camry or the Honda Accord.  

Safety, fuel economy, and emissions regulations have boosted the price of cars to excessive levels.  $20,000 is probably just a starting point for a new car.  So, with prices that high, how many cars and trucks will one person buy in a lifetime?  Not as many, that's for sure.

A third point to consider is that there are inevitable safety tradeoffs when we raise the fuel economy standards as people are forced into smaller cars which are proven less safe than larger cars when involved in a crash.  So, to save ourselves from the mythical threat of Global Warming, we end up causing more real deaths as people are driving smaller cars.