Santa Cruz for Vacation

This past weekend I went to visit Santa Cruz for vacation because that is where Smark is doing an internship this summer. It was fun!

I have posted pics here.

We stayed at Alicia's dad's hotel. Fancy!

Cash For Clunkers Success?

Cash for clunkers is a government program subsidizing the trade-in of a "clunker" for a car that get at least 10mpg mileage than the clunker. It was wildly popular and ran out of money in a week.

I'm not sure how this is different from bailing out the car industry or giving people some stimulus money back or cutting taxes.

I guess the most valuable aspect is that the government is changing the market demand for more fuel efficient cars and therefor influencing the future of the industry. In that sense, it is better than loaning car companies money and stipulating that they make more fuel efficient low emissions cars.

A free marketer might disapprove since the government is meddling, but since the government is not giving money to any individual companies thereby picking winners and losers, there haven't been a lot of objections from raging capitalists.