I didnt read much judgement in th parent post, but it does imply suburbia is subsidized because it has higher infrastructure cost per dollar of tax revenue. The was a study on that very thing a couple years ago IIRC and they found the most solvent towns and cities are actually the higher density ones even if they are lower income areas.

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/2/1/the-surprising-...

It turns out that having more of them per acre is more cost effective.

It's like I'm happy to have the walkable grocery store and 24/7 piss smell, but when feeling adventurous driving out to the suburbs to set up camp in your garden.

I think most urban commuter parking is paid, whether public or private, and the expectation is that a city charges appropriate property taxes on commercial buildings to cover any costs imposed by commuters.

However, I don't think your argument justifies that American policy prejudice towards cars and suburbs. Suburbs involve more roads - trucks may the force that mainly consumes roads but of course the higher the road-to-people ratio is, the more those roads are going to be consumed by those trucks. Which is to say, of course cars and trucks both go to the far suburbs and the nowhere's villes around the country and of course these trips are part of maintaining these places.

Moreover, if we moved to more rail transit, the little towns would be more in trouble because rail tends to require larger loads and so would raise the price of goods in far suburban malls and such.