Fare free buses?! This monster needs to be stopped. : politicalhumor

[–] kerrigan778@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (15 children)

Hi I'm a socialist transit worker and I thought free bus fare was a no brainer until I worked in transit, it's an awful idea. Transit cannot function effectively as transit when it is being forced to operate as a mobile shelter and bottle and wagon transit system. Fund shelters and ease the burden shouldered by transit.

(By all means make transit incredibly inexpensively accessible to anyone who needs it)

I apparently wasn't clear enough here, I'm sure there are places where free transit works great because people are so well cared for and general safety is so high that it's not an issue. That sounds wonderful, I want that here. However, I have learned the hard way that transit needs to continue being accessible to the majority even when there are people who have slipped fully into the margins who present hazards to transit customers. (Customers meaning people who need transit to travel)

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[–] freddydunningkruger@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I'm seriously shocked the Fox media team didn't bother photoshopping horns on his head, distorting his pleasant, lovely smile into a menacing grimace, or altering his skin color into the brimstone-red spectrum.

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[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 week ago

Yes yes yes

[–] sudo@programming.dev 2 points 1 week ago

Yass Khalifa

[+] Ledericas@lemm.ee 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] crank0271@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

I'm not quite sure what you're saying. Is the problem the fare evasion or the disproportionate amount of money spent policing fare evasion, with the collateral benefit of terrorizing the citizenry?

[–] axEl7fB5@lemmy.cafe 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Can the subway be fare free aswell?

[–] Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org 3 points 1 week ago

That's purely done by the MTA and would have to be at the state level. The state legislature and Hochul would have to stop profiting off the subway for that to happen.

[+] Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org -11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

This might be a humor magazine, but I'll be honest on my perspective out here in NJ.

That $30 minimum wage thing scares the living daylights out of me, especially with the congestion pricing still in effect. Raising the minimum wage in the City that far will make the already ridiculous costs in NYC skyrocket. It's going to make it functionally impossible for average people who work outside NYC to regularly go in and do things. You know that business owners aren't going to eat the loss of profits, the prices will just go up to match. Rents will go up, costs will go up. I do respect the idea of trying to get to a living wage. I'd love to see a viable plan, but the best way to do it is to keep all costs down, not massively increase labor costs.

I think the bus idea is a better use of tax money than 90% of what NYC has right now, as long as the funds are focused on maintaining vehicles and paying drivers who perform well, rather than lining some suit's bank account. I don't know if that's going to be possible, but hey, the worst that happens is they try it, it fails, and the buses go back to being fare-based.

It's that wage idea that's going to really, really suck.

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[+] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works -30 points 1 week ago (16 children)

Someone has to pay for the busses, and for the rest of his plans. New York already has more public debt per resident than any other large city in the USA. New York also already has high taxes and a shrinking population. So yeah, I'm worried about where the money will come from. You can say "tax the rich more" but I don't think you'll have easy pickings.

[–] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

Now that a progressive beat a centrist in a high-profile contest where the party establishment tried and failed to stop him, the talking points identical to republican propaganda come out.

[–] barneypiccolo@lemm.ee 6 points 1 week ago

Yeah, someone has to pay for it all - the WEALTHY people and corporations who benefit by the infrastructure. They get all the rewards of the system, but they expect someone else to pay to maintain it, too?

If they need to pay half of their fortunes to keep the other half, they'll be just fine. If they refuse to cooperate, we'll just take it all.

The wealthy have a choice for the next stage:

Trickle Up Economics, in which they'll still end up with the money in the end, but it greases the economy along the way,

OR

Robin Hood Economics - Take from the rich and give to the poor. The problem with this one is that it will be VERY uncomfortable for the wealthy.

I'm good with either one.

[–] bytesonbike@discuss.online 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

"shrinking population"

Okay so you didn't even do a iota of fact checking here. It's growing. And it always has.

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/23083/new-york-city/population

[–] NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

You’re already paying for it, you get that, right? The thing is that EVERYBODY needs to be paying and the ones that have the most bend over backwards so that they can give nothing back. The fact that you say what you’re saying while New York is host to some of the most wealth in the entire world is a disturbing illustration of the problems and solutions at hand.

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

That's where actually taxing the rich comes to play.

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