Comment by Plasmoid

Read this thread again and maybe you'll understand.

No one is assuming it's magic free fairy dust.

We're making the argument that perhaps we should subsidize public transport in the same manner we do roads - aka, fucking tax people who have the money to cover the cost.

If we assume that movement is generally positive enough that we don't charge directly for access to roads, why do we assume the alternate for public transit?

Everyone fucking understands how roads get paid for - we spend an inordinate amount of taxpayer dollars on the infrastructure at all levels of government... city/county/state/federal.

And you might then go say something silly like "but muh gas tas!"

And you're right - we do generally tax gas sales to help cover roads, and this is directly a form of consumption tax on roads. Except... we tax gas at $0.33/gallon in my state. A gallon gets you ~20 miles. We charge $2.50 for a metro ticket with an average trip length of 5.7 miles (this includes both rail and bus).

If we taxed the metro trips at the same rate we taxed gas... each rider should be paying ~9 PENNIES. We can round up to a dime. Instead they're paying 25 times that amount.

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So ultimately - I agree 100 percent. We should think more about how the public should indirectly pay for this. Instead of doing the absolutely batshit insane moral proselytizing that ends up with us ALSO indirectly paying for an entire damn legal process to prosecute broke people for skipping a $2.50 fare on the metro.

But damn if America isn't truly focused on "fuck those poor folks" in a lot of really odd (and usually self-harming) ways.

I am no expert, but those state road funding figures are highly misleading.

It ignores all direct federal subsidies on roads.

It ignores the original moonshot-scale creation of the interstate highway system, which was obviously not based on user fees.

It ignores related health costs caused by dirty air.

It ignores the intangible but very high cost of turning cities into noisy, unpleasant, and dangerous places built for cars instead of humans.

It ignores the less tangible subsidies involving things like military to keep oil flowing.

It ignores current and especially future costs due to a rapidly changing climate.

...and probably many other things.

Not a country, but it's free in Belgrade, Serbia for last two years.

Due to weird goverbnment statistics and unaccounted expats officially it's 1.1M to 1.6M of people, but actually there likely well over 2M people living there.

Public transport is pretty good there and it cost their budget $300M-$400M a year.

The buses running along the I-91 corridor in VT/NH USA centered around White River Junction VT and Hanover/Lebanon NH have been free to ride since around Covid. And those are two transit agencies. Broadly: one serves north of Hanover, the other south.

Luxemburg. Was there the other day: public transport was great!

You are falling into a false consensus trap. You are asking a question of someone who has zero comprehension or understanding of the context or foundational knowledge that would enable them to actually answer that question, let alone come to a realization by asking it in a socratic way that you likely subconsciously meant it to be.

You are well beyond the zone of proximal development, the idea that challenging someone somewhat, but within their range of understanding will lead them to come to new understandings and realizations. This person represents a type of people (and not him personally) who lack such fundamental common understanding that you may as well ask that question of a cat.

That's not meant personal, it is a universal challenge and you asking that question is also an example of the very trap you fell into asking it. You lacked the understanding of what you were doing. Many peel fall for this, often even the most "educated" or "intelligent" ... which really should put the definition of "intelligence" itself into question since the "intelligent" keep repeating these types of rather simple mistakes.