The streets were never free. We paid for it with our tax money. (Not to mention our 22 trillion dollar public debt) I don’t think people expect streets to be free in the same way you don’t expect the police department to be free, the fire department to be free, public schools, etc. In any case, my point is, we paid for the streets with our tax money and our debt, so don’t masquerade this as some kind of “economic rec…
> We paid for it with our tax money. I hate this argument so much. It comes up all of the time when chronically underfunded national and state parks say they need to raise prices. "buT muH taX doLLarS alReaDy PaY for MAH PARKS!!" Doubly true for places that add quotas and lotteries to curb overcrowding delicate areas. This is the exact same situation: Your tax dollars paid for part of it, sure, but not close to enoug…
Rather than charging everyone and giving some people waivers, increase the taxes with a progressive tax rate, where low-wage people pay less.
If you want to take them out and force everyone to use public transportation that's one thing - But if they exist they ought to be subsidized to ensure everyone can use them.
We need more economic equality, not less, particularly when to comes to such important things as basic infrastructure.