[JoeAltmaier]

An old lament. Why should rural (anywhere) fund the city folks' needs? E.g. Here in rural Iowa, we pay state taxes for schools like everybody else, and have a tiny underfunded school vs the nearby city's grand edifice with two theatres, enormous football facility, AP classes and full staff.

[thescriptkiddie]

In most cases it's the city folks subsidizing the rural folks. It turns out that it costs a lot more money to build the roads, power lines, schools, etc than the small number of rural residents that benefit from them will ever pay in taxes [0]. And in the specific case of New York's MTA, revenue from subway fares has repeatedly been diverted to pay for things other than the subway [1].

[0] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/7/11/the-hills-are-...

[1] https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2010/03/09/albany-didnt-cut-the-...

[JoeAltmaier]

Everybody benefits from farm access to markets. Rural roads are there for everybody. To say 'its more money per capita for rural folks' just means you're using a heatmap of population and putting it over infrastructure - shazam, it doesn't match!. But it says nothing about who's getting the utility out of the infrastructure.