This debate has been done to death. And it's always, always a vague group of people who are apparently affected. Never specific examples. And, as we see here, there's always an appeal to class warfare: "it's hurting the poors". And it's always by someone who wishes to speak on behalf of those poor people, never actually the people themselves.

Only 2% of lower income outer borough residents (around 5,000 people) drive a car into the city:

https://www.cssny.org/news/entry/congestion-pricing-outer-bo...

When the congestion pricing rollout was paused, only 32% of lower income voters supported the move, compared to 55% of those earning more than $100,000:

https://www.amny.com/nyc-transit/congestion-pricing-pause-ho...

(AFAIK there isn't direct polling on a yes/no support question by income, this was as close as I could find)

The overwhelming majority of poor people in New York City take transit and stand to benefit from the funding congestion pricing brings. Highlighting that 2% of the population and ignoring the 98% is a fundamentally dishonest position to take, especially when you're not even in the group yourself.

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autoexec 3 days ago | parent [-]

> And it's always, always a vague group of people who are apparently affected. Never specific examples.

Someone on the other side of the country is only going to see the way this will impact the lives of people like them. They aren't going to say "Clearly this policy has impacted the household budget of NYC plumber Mitchell Tnenski" They don't know Mitchell. They know that congestion pricing coming to their city would hurt them in very real ways. They also know that rich people don't give a shit about a couple extra bucks in fines for getting where they want to go by car. That's why this issue has resonated nationally.

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yannyu 3 days ago | parent [-]

> They know that congestion pricing coming to their city would hurt them in very real ways.

But why should they even care to begin with? Just because the news and media made them aware of congestion pricing? This is the whole problem, that local issues are made mainstream news media specifically to cultivate fear and anger in people that literally have no skin in the game and a completely different lifestyle.

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autoexec 3 days ago | parent [-]

> But why should they even care to begin with?

Why should they care about something that they feel will hurt them financially when they're already struggling and restrict their freedom on top of that? Why wouldn't they care?

> Just because the news and media made them aware of congestion pricing?

Uber's "surge" pricing was what first introduced many of them to a world where the price of something they depend on changes from moment to moment. Dynamic/discriminatory pricing schemes have been worrying people for a long time now. People don't like it, they consider it scammy, and they don't want it to spread.

I think that if NYC had just jacked up the toll price all the time it wouldn't have set off as many alarms, but ultimately people in other places aren't really worried about congestion pricing in New York, their worry is that it will come to where they drive and they can't afford people taking more money from them. They're struggling to keep food on the table and are drowning in record high levels of household debt. Of course they're scared of congestion pricing catching on.

Mind you, while some of their fears are reasonable, not all of them are. I've seen some of the more conspiratorial people talking about it as a way to control and restrict the movement of poor people (something shared with criticisms of 15-minute cities). The core of the problem though is that their standard of living is declining, their trust/confidence in government is bottoming out, they know that they're getting screwed over by the wealthy and they're on edge. They see NYC using some scammy pricing scheme to take more money from people like them while the wealthy are unaffected and it hits a nerve.

They'll have plenty of skin in the game if congestion pricing spreads (and its success makes that increasingly likely) and that skin is already stretched thin which is making them feel highly skeptical of government, suspicious of people's motives, and angry over being asked to make their lives worse for the convenience of the wealthy. They worry about driving where they need to go becoming a luxury they can be priced out of, and as bad as NYC's public transportation is (compared to what's seen in other countries) most of them don't have anything even close to it in their own cities. That's what I'm seeing in discussions surrounding this issue both online and offline anyway.

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yannyu 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Why would someone in an Idaho suburb care about how Manhattan manages its congestion pricing? Why is this national news?

Everything you're saying has zero impact on 93-97% of the US population (New York State is 6% of the US population, NYC is 3%). None of these people have real skin in the game, because this literally has no effect on them. New Yorkers don't vote in other states.

Why is a single student's grade in OSU national news? Why is congestion pricing national news? Why is a library in the middle of nowhere California news?

None of these things are actually related to why people are stretched thin and getting screwed by the system. In fact they're exactly unrelated which is why we're blasted with this stuff on the news 24/7. You're worried about a slippery slope argument when most of us are already being fleeced by current, real policies from government and corporations.

Congestion pricing is not the thing screwing over American families, it's the thing they're pointing at so you don't look at the actual thing.

	▲	autoexec 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		> Why would someone in an Idaho suburb care about how Manhattan manages its congestion pricing? Because in all likelihood this isn't going to be limited to Manhattan, and I'd argue (like many others) that it probably shouldn't be. The fact that it's been so successful makes it all but inevitable that the practice will spread. Why would people wait until they're forced to choose between driving to work and affording groceries before they speak out against it? > None of these things are actually related to why people are stretched thin and getting screwed by the system I think a lot of people would argue that dynamic pricing schemes and governments taking increasing amounts of money from their pockets is, at least in part, why they are stretched thin. In any case, regardless of the cause of their struggles they are struggling. If they were feeling financially secure they might grumble at the increasing likelihood of paying fines to drive where they want to, but they wouldn't be panicking over it like they have been. Congestion pricing isn't seen as something that's screwing them over right now, but it is seen as the latest scheme cooked up by government that will be screwing them over if they can't put a stop to it. I think we'd agree that congestion pricing isn't the biggest issue impacting the struggling American family right now, but I can understand why it's being seen as a concern and as something they want to keep out of their own cities. For some that means putting a stop to the practice before it spreads.

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AmigoCharlie 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Autoexec, don't you feel a little bit like Rhea Seehorn as "Carol" in her struggle with the hive-mind humanity of "Pluribus"? It looks as in this discussion there is a lot of anti-car hivemind at play...

	▲	autoexec a day ago \| parent [-]
		Haven't seen it. The sad thing is that I share many of the concerns the anti-car crowd has, but their work is only going to be harder if they ignore the concerns that people have, can't reassure people that their proposed solutions won't hurt them, and/or don't ensure that their solutions are implemented equitably. They risk losing people who could be supporters. I also wish they put less emphasis on punishing people for driving and put more effort into giving people alternatives that are genuinely better. When people are given an option to use something better than what they have, they tend to gravitate to it naturally and with gratitude. It's a lot easier than punishing people and trying to convince them that it's for their own good.