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Comment by talldatethrow | Hacker News Reader

Things being free in public helps low income people live nice fulfilled lives still.

Now it costs $40 to launch a sailboat at my local reservoir. Even state camping spots are $40+ it seems in areas I know aren't full all the time.

It costs like $20 in extra gas tax to drive to LA with your friends because California can't just set the income tax appropriately?

I could go on and on. The income tax to me sounds pretty fair. But making a poor person living paycheck to paycheck come up with $40 to go to the lake with a cheap sailboat seems harsh to me (my dad and I used to go as a Kid. It was $5 then. And my dad made $20 an hour as a recent immigrant in construction).

And don't start that people that use services should pay. My tax money goes to a lot of things I don't use or even agree with.

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>Things being free in public helps low income people live nice fulfilled lives still. >Now it costs $40 to launch a sailboat at my local reservoir.

If you can afford a sailboat, you're not "low income".

A sailboat costs $500+ on Craigslist or Facebook marketplace.

We had one when my mom was cleaning a convalescent home as her job, and commuting 35 miles one way to do it.

My dad worked 55+ hours a week, and commuted 60 miles one way to do it.

So unless you think my dad let my mom clean hospital floors and bathrooms while we weren't low income, I'd argue you can.

Are you talking about a real sailboat, or one of those tiny things that boy scouts use in small lakes that one person can easily pick up and carry?

You can buy 14' fly J sailboats with trailer for $500 once in a while, or all the time for $1000.

Obviously it's not some keeled ocean going vessel you keep at the marina.

But let's use your version.. a tiny boy scout dingy you can lift by yourself and put in the water. Should it cost $40 to put that in the water?

No, I agree: a boy scout dingy should not cost $40 to put in the water. A more serious boat, however, I can understand needing higher fees to pay for whatever services are used there.

Who the heck would launch a "real sailboat" on a reservoir?

Conflating free parking with a childhood core memory, a lake trip with your immigrant father, feels a little disingenuous to me. But I think you understand the core idea: by making something cheap or free, we incentivize the activity but we spend communal resources (tax dollars, or some rival good like space downtown, or space on a lake) to do so. But we as a society get to choose what to incentivize. Cars have externalities (traffic, the space they take up, pollution, their being required is expensive for working families) that other forms of transport don’t, so people are rethinking the various ways we incentivize driving.

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