Sounds like Joe should take more advantage of city services that he's paying for, and stop being a hermit simply to complain about others.
There is a direct public education impact on Joe. Namely, he was in public education as a kid. The education he has, and the job he has are a result of his using the system that you are now bitching about.
Simple logic will tell you that, on average, a family of 8 (Bob, wife, and 6 kids) is going to use a heck of a lot more services than a family of two.
That doesn't mean "Joe is a hermit" or that Bob's brood use more than a normal amount of services. There are just MORE OF THEM, so they will use more services.
This concept should be neither controversial nor difficult to understand.
I don't think you can say that a family with a minivan is guaranteed to use the roads more . . . what about the many single guys who live an hour's drive from work? If that single guy drives a heavy pickup truck he may even be damaging the roads more than the family each time he uses his vehicle. The kids may have after school activities, but the single guy is likely going out and hitting up clubs/bars/friends a couple times a week.
If you want to use parks more, you should go do it. Bitching that other people are using parks that you can use yourself is just petty.
Again, a family of 8 is going to use a lot more services than a family of two, on average.
Yes, Joe uses the road to go to work. So does Bob. But Joe ain't going to be humping his kids off to ballet practice, doctor visits, baseball games, school plays, and out of town road trips to see Bob Jr, Sally, Jilly May, Tommy, Bubba, and cute little Susie Q play soccer (or whatever).
A family of 8, on average, is going to drive more than a family of 2.
BTW, the family of 8 is likely to not only drive more miles, but own more vehicles, and LARGER vehicles, than a child free couple. You won't see nearly as many child free couples driving mini-vans and SUVs.
I dunno what it's like where you live, but here garbage pickup is household dependent. Every two weeks our city picks up a half a black plastic garbage bag worth of garbage from each household, kids or not. If more garbage is produced, then you have to pay more for additional garbage pickup.
Here, every household gets one big garbage bin (one of the ones that an automated garbage truck arm can pick up), that gets picked up once a week.
It takes my wife and myself weeks to fill the thing, so we probably put out the bin, only partially full, every 3 weeks or so. A large family 3 doors down (2 parents, 5 kids) seems to fill theirs to the bursting point every week.
Again, more people means more waste produced.
Well, this is blatantly unfair. And it's not the way that any place I've worked has been setup. Maybe you should be bitching about your shitty job rather than people with kids.
You've either lived a charmed life and had the most fair minded bosses ever, or you just didn't notice or care that you were sticking your child free co-workers with extra work. However, most of us don't live in that world- and those of us who are left behind working late while parents cut out early for their children's doctor's appointments, problems at school, ballet recitals, etc, DO notice, because we are the ones left picking up the slack.
BTW, for what it's worth. I early retired years ago, then went back to work only on condition that I could work from home and set my own hours. Should the company ever try to make me work any extra hours, I will resign on the spot.
So this isn't a problem for me, and hasn't been for many years.
But there are plenty of single people and child free couples, who are getting shafted all the time. So I bring it up for their benefit. Next time you cut out early for (insert child's activity/problem here), think about who may be stuck doing extra work because of it.
And back to the original point, which you seem to have completely overlooked: Child free parents and single folks are already paying more, and working harder, than their fair share, to support those with children. We aren't asking for a roll back, but we sure as Heck don't need an additional burden tossed on us, as the article suggested.