In the meantime I just paid 200% more for heating oil than it cost me one year ago. And I cannot use this public transport offer. But I am contributing to it with my taxes.
But your comment kinda makes sense. It’s not really worth trying much in Germany. The more one tries, the more one becomes the source of funding for others while not really getting any personal gratification or gain.
In fact, those buses are on exactly on those same roads. The existence of those roads facilities convenient public transportation.
I think this is a good program, but anything that costs 1/1000th of a large country’s budget is a large expense to my mind, not “nothing”.
It's unfortunate that you can't derive any gratification or gain from your more-than-half of the extra money you make when trying more. But it probably won't help to blame it on less wealthy people commuting to work.
I also have a mother in Germany who I pay the rent for. She's a pensioner with a minimal amount of money. I am very much looking to Nebenkostenabrechnung next year for heating.
But I still don’t understand your broader point. Mathematically a progressive tax system is going to have high income people pay more taxes than they receive back in government services, to fund the services provided to low/zero income earners
The real injustice is that capital gains (i.e., unearned income) are taxed less. But of course that's also very common internationally.
I don't believe you do not benefit.
Ask the people of Ahrweiler what is it like living without that infrastructure.
The infrastructure needed is not the same for goods, and public services compared to tens of millions of people driving, and thus doesn't cost nearly the same. So the point of my post still stands -- I pay for a lot of things I don't need as it is, including the ridiculous gas tax reduction so everybody can pretend it's business as usual that will end up being more expensive than the 9 Euro train ticket.
You miss the point completely. You need it. You don’t drive but you consume services directly depending on this infrastructure.
Anyway you don't get to pick and choose with taxes - although car owners are the absolute worst at wanting things like bicycle licensing.
Not all government subsidies, benefits, etc are supposed to help everybody equally, this should not be a hard concept to grasp and yet comments like yours are so common that it makes me think that people don't really understand how taxes and government spending works.
And there needs to be a discourse about which lifestyles and life choices should at all and to what degree they should be subsidised by the government and why this is legitimate.
There are a whole lot of subsidies that are neither fair nor sustainable and over time we need to transition away from them.
This is painful and becoming a little more evident these times but it needs to happen.
Letting the price for energy rise is necessary until it'll have become carbon neutral and you're feeling it.