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Either everyone pays to replace the lead pipes, or everyone pays when lead-poisoned children grow up dumber, angrier, and more violent. When someone with high amounts of lead in their system goes on to murder their neighbor or vote a fascist into office, you have to wonder if maybe they could have turned out different. Nevermind the added medical costs which "someone else" pays through insurance or taxes. Especially if the lead poisoned people are, on average, more likely to be homeless or less employable.
We all pay the price for toxins and pollution. That price is much higher than the tax increase.
In terms of "someone else" paid for it, well yes, in every good society to live in there exists the concept of "an individual person shouldn't have to pay for this, but it benefits everyone to have it, so we will use collectively pooled resources to create it".
It's not hard to see how avoiding lead poisoning in a country's children benefits that country a decade down the line.
I don’t expect you to pay to replace plumbing inside my house nor think that you should expect me to pay for yours, whether that’s in the form of 50% of just your pipes or 0.00005% of 1 million people’s pipes.
The quality of the society we live in and overall crime levels are a collective concern IMO, and something like this is a great example of a way to adjust that.
Banning lead plumbing with subsidies for removal is a collective improvement
Millions of individuals will pay for it. Got it.
The benefit realized down the line would be impossible to reach by each homeowner acting individually, as not everyone would be able to pay (and the people least able to pay statistically are likely to have more children!), so by having millions of people pay for it, we reach a better result.
This is IMO an example of a success of government.