You don't have to pay ongoing fees: the initial outlay in the USA is $35 for the license (you have to pass the exam) plus the cost for your equipment (~$70 for the cheaper HAM radios on Amazon), but after that there are no ongoing charges.
I did get my novice license (or whatever the lowest license is called) but never got an old borrowed radio to actually transmit. Then life kind of got in the way.
I keep meaning to get back into it, the sstv and various data networks are really cool. I really dig the analog tech.
In most other EU countries it's once off but the Dutch government wants money for everything.
If you want a "good" HT as an introduction to the hobby, then the Yaesu FT-65R or older FT-60R are both good.
A "do everything" (analog) radio might be the Yaesu VX-6R, which I previously owned. It excels on reception, and is a "tri-band" radio, but the extra band was not useful in my experience.
Just to clarify for people who might be interested-- this is not a perfect analogy in that you don't have to pay to participate in amateur radio. You have to pay a fee to take the license exams but it's a token amount, and you don't have to pay regularly to use any ham services that I know of. Apart from buying a radio, of course.
Not in every country or even always in the US. In Canada there is no government fees for ham radio, if the test giver wants to charge a fee, they can, but most do not.
In the US there are clubs that pay for new hams fees out of a fund for that purpose.
Amateur radio is not for public use like public park. It is like a public golf course, where have to pay for membership and can only use it for certain things.
Also, amateur radio does not have that much spectrum for the bandwidths we expect for internet. That is what has kept the spectrum from being taken away. Much of the high frequenecy spectrum does have is shared with ISM bands.