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Comment by aimazon | Hacker News Reader

Vehicle ownership in London has always been expensive. Poor people have never driven in London, poor people use public transport. For all London's faults (of which there are many) the high population density makes public transport useful. Please share evidence for your assertion that the "ULEZ is a tax on being poor". Only half of households in London have a vehicle.

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They're probably referring to poor (working class really) people living in outer London who have cars and are now basically frozen out of central London unless they use mass transit or pay for entry. There are also legacy car owners who are poor (rent stabilized, etc...). Anyway, the car has a major negative externality on the city's residents and usage should be taxed to reduce the over-usage of the roads regardless of whether the owner is poor or rich.

Congestion charge and parking availability would have already frozen out most lower owners driving into Central London (zone 1 and 2). What does rent stabilised mean here? Not a phrase I've ever heard regarding council housing in the UK.

Probably council housing or housing association tenants. My guess is that the person who said "rent stabilised" is American, as it is an American term - I know new yorkers in rent stabilised housing.

One of the many problems with the internet is the export of American culture.

Given the time of day it’s likely OP was just repeating YouTube talking points from outrage bait videos, rather than being an actual American, but the infection remains regardless, the whole “hands up don’t shoot” nonsense where people in the U.K. acted like the police were armed for example

The following is not a class bound remark: some people don't have culture, so they absorb americanisms more easily. Hands down, worst bit of the Internet is that it provides those americanisms.

> usage should be taxed to reduce the over-usage of the roads regardless of whether the owner is poor or rich.

For the tax to be equally effective on rich as poor, the tax might need to be means tested. A £100 tax disproportionately affects poor people over rich people.

ULEZ compliant cars are dirt cheap - there's a scrappage sceheme as well that will give more than a ULEZ compliant car costs.

It's a non issue turned into one by the "culture warriors" on the right.

Hold on, where were these working class Londoners parking when they drove into central London? As far as I know, _that’s_ normally extremely expensive. Like, I’m not convinced commuting by _car_ from outer London to inner London has been a particularly common mode of transport for a long time.

> where were these working class Londoners parking when they drove into central London

They were paying £20 an hour on parking meters in Mayfair while all the Hedge Fund managers took the bus into work.

Have you ever paid for parking in central London?

Where are these poor people who drive to central London parking their car?

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