Compared to many other countries in the world, the taxes are pretty low in the US and therefore services, which are provided free in other countries have to be paid for in the US. For example, our previous homes Germany and the UK provide their roads for "free" but use taxes to maintain them. In contrast, some roads over here require you to pay a toll to use them. A more prominent example is health care but I really don't want to get into the details of that. What's much more interesting is, that in most states (including New York where we take our pictures) air has to be paid for on a pay per use basis. Outlets of free air like this one are extremely rare.