by James A. Bacon
Free bus fare for everyone?
Why not? Bus passengers already pay only a fraction of what it costs to operate local and regional transit systems. Ridership is down, thanks to COVID. Besides, it costs money to collect the fares. In the name of “equity” for poor people and minorities, why not just eliminate bus fares altogether?
That idea gets a serious airing in a column published today in The Virginia Mercury.
Virginia is providing free tuition for lower-income students attending community college. The state is jacking up the minimum wage. It is charging middle-class consumers higher electric rates to reduce charges for poor people. It is crushing small businesses with COVID-19 restrictions. Uncle Sam is crippling small landlords with a blanket moratorium on housing evictions, no matter why people are falling behind in their rent. Why the hell not provide free bus service for the poor — even as Virginia flirts with joining the Transportation and Climate Initiative for the express purpose of driving up the cost of driving automobiles?
This, my friends, is a war of the cultural elites upon the middle class. The elites despise us even as they plunder us.
Not only is the Northam administration nickel and diming the middle class in a hundred different ways, it is imposing Critical Race Theory on public schools and telling middle-class families how privileged and racist we are.
Yeah, middle-class families that play by the rules, work hard, pay their taxes, contribute to the community, and pay exorbitant tuition to send our kids to college, we’re all privileged and racist.
Meanwhile, our genius, virtue-signaling elites are wrecking the public schools, making higher-ed unaffordable, releasing murderers from jail, raising taxes, protecting healthcare monopolies, jacking up the cost of living, and doing everything within their power to sever any link between effort and reward.
The supreme irony is that the calamitous rule of the elites won’t even help the poor and minorities they supposedly speak for. Free bus fares can’t make up for lousy educations and stunted job opportunities.
