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The tax on fuel has not been able to keep up with expenditures for the Highway Trust Fund for two decades; now a third of the money comes from the General Fund.

https://t4america.org/2025/05/22/the-highway-trust-fund-isnt...

That said, suburbs with high median household income are probably still putting a lot of money into the General Fund by income taxes.

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they aren't putting as much in as the city by call kinds of measures. It generally cost up to 4-5x to maintain suburban areas vs urban. High income suburbanites don't make up that difference. They're subsubdized by the urban citizens.

The suburbanites pay for that maintenance, and there are many other costs to city living that urbanites like to ignore (significantly higher expenses on emergency and social services for example). It's not nearly as straightforward as urbanites like to claim.

One thing that is absolutely clear is that commercial districts subsidize residents in every jurisdiction, and urban commercial districts rely on commuters (from surrounding suburbs) to thrive.

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