Voters and societies don't decide these things very often, in my experience. No one says "we're going to give these benefits and in exchange you're going to see

Voters and societies don't decide these things very often, in my experience. No one says "we're going to give these benefits and in exchange you're going to see cost of living rise, reducing the value of your savings". If you leave it to point issues, people would want free transport run by people paid a lot of money, somehow. Subsidies make it not a simple issue.