Elinda wrote:
They both say basically the same thing. If you own property in a community you pay taxes. If your town wants to build a new road, you pay for it with your taxes, regardless of whether you own a vehicle or not. ie the guy who drives a bike versus a car pays the same property taxes as the guy that drives the car. Similarly with schools, one pays the same rate of property taxes regardless of how many kids he may have.
Schools are a separate matter, but with car travel there are a host of things that pay for the roads and infrastructure beyond just property taxes. Most states apply taxes on gas, which helps pay for the roads. There's also a portion of the yearly vehicle registration fees that goes to maintaining the roads (and often the highway patrol as well). Actually, that's pretty much the purpose of having registration fees. So while I'm sure some portion of property taxes also get dumped into roads, it's a smaller portion, and someone who does not operate a vehicle is paying a far smaller portion of the cost of those roads.
I'm not sure where the comparison is anyway. Charging a $85 fee to sign up for a pre-screening type of thing to allow one to more quickly get through the airport is a reasonable thing. I'm not sure how much it'll do in terms of security, but as Joph pointed out, if the guys who fly all the time and have no problem ponying up fingerprints and allowing a background check pay for this and thus aren't in my line, then that helps me, and I don't have to pay a dime.