In a more civilized time (the bar is very low), if the government wanted you to give up your car, it paid you for the vehicle. Europe is just making drivers surrender their older model internal combustion cars. Coming soon to the U.S.? From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:
At least the Obama-era “cash for clunkers” program was voluntary.
People were paid to have their older vehicles – these were characterized as “clunkers” to make it seem as though they were on their last legs and ready for the scrapyard anyhow – destroyed in order to “stimulate” demand for new cars. In fact these old cars had a lot of life left in them, as evidenced by the requirement that to qualify for the cash, the “clunker” had to have been recently licensed and registered – and that meant capable of passing both state safety and emissions tests, absent which the owner could not get or renew registration in most states.
In other words, the program targeted operable cars – not cars that were sitting on cinder blocks in the backyard.
The destroyed cars were merely older cars.
It is the difference between being an “asymptomatic spreader” and someone who is actually sick.
An entire generation of older cars were destroyed, which had the intended effect of denying an inexpensive first car to a rising generation of young Americans, who could not afford a new car.
