Mr. Charles argued for user fees because they are voluntary and a tighter fit between what you pay for and what you get. The fee provides market disciple in that the cost of the product has to relate to what the market will bear. Since the government got into transit subsidies in a big way in the 1960s, the cost of transit has skyrocketed. No private firm can compete with transit monopolies run by the government, subsidized whether or not they provide good service. Taxes are coercive, Charles argued, and you are helping some paternalistic politician do things for you and set a tax rate at some arbitrary level.
People have a hard time with user fees because they get hung up on low income things.
The University of Oregon did a 1994 survey and found that most Oregonians of low education level don't use the public library. If you want to help poor people, the best way is direct assistance, a voucher program. The worse way to fund things is with a tax on everybody and transfer it through an inefficient government monopoly, he remarked. We know that schooling can be provided in the private market. There are countries all over the world that have privatized Social Security.