So maybe 10% of his salary goes to the state, and lets say that 1% of the state's budget goes to BART (it doesn't), so that's .1% of his salary. And if he spend

So maybe 10% of his salary goes to the state, and lets say that 1% of the state's budget goes to BART (it doesn't), so that's .1% of his salary. And if he spends 25% of his income on local taxable goods, and .5% of that goes back to bart, that's .125%. So about .225% of his salary makes it back to BART. Not much of a return. If BART wants to help return money to the community, they can ask for less money (taxes, bonds, fares), not use tax dollars and captive commuter fare money to pay employees 5 times a typical salary and count on some small percentage of that money to trickle down. A few months back my building hired a new janitor after their old one retired - the building manager literally had a line out of his office of people looking for the job. The Bay Area is expensive for sure, but even jobs like $50K janitorial positions still get filled.