When you shop in your home town do you accuse your local supermarket of being deceptive by not putting the price on the shelf with the taxes included, do you get mad when you walk into a car dealer after seeing an ad in the paper for a new truck for 19k but when you try and buy that truck for 19k they ask you for tax, tile and license fees. SWA has a loyal following because they have tried to keep cost down and service up, but consumers must take some responsibility, I know people who will research a $500 TV for two weeks, read everything about it, warranty, even use a site like Amazon that shows the lowest price with shipping included before they buy the $500 TV but then will buy 2k of airline tickets for their family and get mad because they get hit with a $25 bag fee at the airport because they were too tired to scroll to the bottom of the web page. If the taxes and fees are set by the federal government and collected by the airline according to the law and do not have profit added to them then showing them to you so you don't have to learn anything about how or why your government taxes you shouldn't be the airlines job. Maybe you should be asking your government if they using the money wisely, in 2010 the FAA collected 10.6B in these fees (not counting the 9/11 security fees, remember that Homeland Security’s job) and needed 15.6B to do its job so the fees cover 2/3 of the cost and 1/3 comes from the general fund sounds good, the industries consumers (that’s you the flying public) pays for 2/3 of its infrastructure cost and grandma who flies once every 5 years to see the grandkids pays out of the general fund to ensure a safe and modern system is available to her when she does fly. Now the share the wealth gang wants to take 15B out the "security fees" it collects from passengers and divert it to the "General Fund" to help reduce the debt instead of improving airport security, so instead of taking your "security fees" and making security a better, more efficient system to benefit you, the travelling public, they are going to put it into the general fund and use it as they see fit. Whys that good for the spread the wealth gang? it is because no matter how you try and spin it there are generally 3 types of travelers and they are the Business Traveler, the frequent leisure traveler and the infrequent traveler (remember grandma from above). The business traveler passes these costs onto his employer who passes the cost onto the consumer (you) thru higher costs of goods or services. The second traveler, the frequent leisure traveler is not in the spread the wealth’s gang, they are affluent (that’s how they can afford to take time off from work and travel the world with their whole family) and generally ok with being taxed for services if the taxes or fees produce results (better airports, security etc..) but in there shame for being affluent (or part of the elite 2%, or in the top 1%, that’s a household who makes more than 400K a year) they just keep their mouths closed and pay the extra few bucks a ticket. The final group, the infrequent traveler is in the spread the wealth gang demographics, the poor college student trying to get home, the unemployed construction worker flying to a new town chasing work, grandma flying to see the grandkids. So the college student who is using federal funds for higher education, the grandma collecting social security and Medicare and the unemployed working who is using some of his unemployment check to buy his ticket all see this as a temporary thing, a once in awhile expense that’s worth it because it won’t last forever, the college student will graduate and turn into either a business traveler or a maybe even a frequent leisure traveler, the construction worker will go home once the economy picks back up and grandma will only fly for a few more years and then make the grandkids come to her because travelling is too hard for her. So now the government has a fee that they mandate has to be displayed in the final advertised ticket pricing so you the consumer will be unable to determine if the total price you are paying just went up because of a government fee change or your airline is raising prices, I’ll bet that airlines will start to hike prices in “anticipation” of the government raising fees in the month or so before the fees actually take effect and once the fees hit, they may drop them back so it appears that there was no change when in reality the airlines collected the higher ticket prices for a month before they had to give that money to the government.
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