"No one wants to pay for email" because they haven't thought they needed to in a very long time. For over 2 decades, the leading email providers have all provided email for free. Before that, consumers (at least in the US, as that's what I'm familiar with) received email service from their ISP, which wasn't "free", but still provided as a part of your service fee. I honestly don't think it's all that alien that folks would balk at the concept of paying for email service.

If folks ask "why would you pay for email", I think the right first answer to that question is that it's a better service than the free service providers. Then, you can talk about the why's (when you pay for email, you're the customer, not the product, the privacy aspect of not having their email being farmed to enhance a company's advertising profile about you, or being used for AI/ML research if that's important to you, or any of the other reasons that might be important to folks).

So yeah, paid email is a premium service, and if we're being honest, it's been a premium service for regular folk for decades. I happily pay for email myself, but my parents sure don't, my wife doesn't, and most of my friends don't.