Cash for Clunkers and Keynesianism

I recently read this article which appeared in the Wall Street Journal, exposing cash for clunkers as an idea that turns out, was as stupid as it sounded:

Cash for clunkers had two objectives: help the environment by increasing fuel efficiency, and boost car sales to help Detroit and the economy. It achieved neither. According to Hudson Institute economist Irwin Stelzer, at best "the reduction in gasoline consumption will cut our oil consumption by 0.2 percent per year, or less than a single day's gasoline use." Burton Abrams and George Parsons of the University of Delaware added up the total benefits from reduced gas consumption, environmental improvements and the benefit to car buyers and companies, minus the overall cost of cash for clunkers, and found a net cost of roughly $2,000 per vehicle. Rather than stimulating the economy, the program made the nation as a whole $1.4 billion poorer.

Apparently, it didn't even benefit the automakers, who have seen record sales slides for September in the wake of the program.  I guess it's obvious in retrospect that no one wants to buy a new car just after a sale.  The Wall Street Journal article then goes on to compare the rationale for the program to slaughtering pigs to raise the price of pork during the great depression and cites economist Henry Hazlitt's broken windows fallacy.

However, it was not Hazlitt that came up with the broken windows fallacy.  It was 19th century liberal economist Frederic Bastiat, who made a career out of making fecetious arguments in favor of liberal ideas.  In addition to the parable of the broken window, Bastiat wrote a fake petition on behalf of the candlemakers lobby suggesting the French government block out the sun, and advocated that everybody cut off their right hand, because more difficulty means more work, and more work means more wealth. 

All of this points out the absolute adsurdity of using taxdollars to finance the destruction of something that has value to someone simply to provide the work of replacing it.  It's time this sort of Keynesian thinking be recognized as the spent idea it is.