“Charge $1.50 for the bus, for example. Quite manageable, but not free.”

I’ve been reading a lot about the K shaped economy recently and I’m starting to think that it is creating a K shaped reality to go with it. I get that $1.50 a ride might seem like a nominal fee, but you can currently get a monthly pass for $132 or $66 if you’re income qualified. Assuming you’re qualified and you take two busses a day your “nominal fee” is a significant increase. By the way, you need to earn less that $24,500 a year to qualify for the discount as a single person.

Those of us who post on this site live in a different universe than those who would see free busses as a significant relief to household finances.

Swerve. This election is why I think the republicans need to end democracy before 2026. If the working class awakens to the possibility of a greatly expanded social wage, and votes for it as they did in NYC, the billionaire class is in trouble. The ONLY way the lives of working and middle class people improve in a context of increasing concentration of wealth and income is to tax that wealth and high income to invest in social wage goods. The wealthy know this, hence their current participation in and support for Trump. The concentration of wealth is incompatible with democracy.