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Those are the questions that dominated the "Clunkers" program -- I just saw a Bloomberg interview with Bob Lutz from General Motors in which he was peppered incessantly about pull through and even after he said that Michael Jackson from AutoNation (NYSE: AN) (Cramer's Take) -- a pretty large auto retailer!! -- told him there were no stolen sales, the reporter just shrugged it off.

Same thing I am hearing about what will happen if you don't get your housing contract in come November when the $8,000 credit goes away. All I hear is that the pull through is going to destroy December sales and impact 2010 sales negatively.

OK, let's speak some truth about this process.

We have gone from being reasonably "skeptical" about the possibility that demand is being stolen from future periods to being "impossible" about even entertaining that sales aren't being stolen.

That's right; we have gone from being cynical and skeptical to being impossible to convinced that these programs are basically busts that mean nothing and don't stimulate demand and are worse than a waste of time because they distort what we would otherwise be seeing, which is an incredible downturn in business.

The idea that there might be a whole non-stolen-from cohort that bought cars because they had worthless, expensive clunkers that came back to life is just regarded as the height of Pollyanna thinking.

The idea that anyone will buy a house without the $8,000 credit -- the assumption --- is gospel.

Of course, it doesn't even seem to matter that September auto sales so far are pretty much along the trend line with pre-"Clunkers," which means sales weren't stolen but inventories went down so profits can go up and more people can be put back to work. All POSITIVES!

Nor does it seem to matter that the average price of a home and the average price of money for a home are so much lower than they were that you can barely see that $8,000 come in to play.

No, the facts don't seem to matter to people.

Here's the way I come out: To spend all of your time trying to figure out how much is stolen from or borrowed from -- the true obsession of the media -- is to miss a bigger picture. There are many moving parts to what makes people buy things, and these are but a couple of them in an environment where, alas, more people are buying things.

What I worry about is that you might be in the "impossible to convince" camp and be blind to what is happening with the American consumer, which is a healthy return to buying, but not buying beyond means.

Had the producers of goods -- all consumer goods -- not seen the slowdown coming, we would be seeing big losses. But the producers were so skeptical that they cut back to levels where they are not hurt by a more prudent consumer.

Hence, you can have so many companies like Fortune Brands (NYSE: FO) (Cramer's Take) and Black & Decker (NYSE: BDK) (Cramer's Take) and Home Depot (NYSE: HD) (Cramer's Take) breaking out.

Hence, if you cannot be convinced that any program isn't a "stealer of the future," you will hurt your chances of making money.

Jim Cramer is co-founder and chairman of TheStreet.com. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com's sites and serves as an adviser to the company's CEO. At the time of publication, Cramer was long Home Depot.