Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The Joke

A troll demands a toll from a traveler who wants to cross a bridge. When the traveler protests, the troll launches into a politically charged rant that mirrors real-world debates about infrastructure and taxation. The troll argues that bridge maintenance is not free, that the country has been spending less money on infrastructure every year since the 1960s, that the traveler should be grateful for the work of previous generations, and that the traveler is currently benefiting from past investments while refusing to pay their share.

The traveler accuses the troll of being part of the problem, saying "It is people like you and your taxes that are ruining this country." The troll, exasperated, announces that when the sun goes down, it is going to turn itself to stone -- and the final panel shows the troll has indeed turned to stone while people walk past, ignoring it completely, and the bridge deteriorates.

The Humor

The comic takes the classic fairy tale setup of a troll under a bridge and transforms it into a metaphor for modern political debates about taxation and infrastructure spending. The troll is not a monster demanding an unreasonable toll -- it is a reasonable public servant trying to maintain essential infrastructure. The joke is that in the fairy tale, the troll is the villain, but in the modern retelling, the real villain is the traveler who refuses to pay for the maintenance of the bridge they use. The troll literally giving up and turning to stone represents the collapse of public infrastructure when funding is refused. The crumbling bridge in the final panel drives the point home.

References

The comic references the classic fairy tale of the troll under the bridge, most famously from "Three Billy Goats Gruff." It also references the real-world decline in U.S. infrastructure spending, which has indeed decreased as a percentage of GDP since its peak in the 1960s. The American Society of Civil Engineers has repeatedly given U.S. infrastructure poor grades in their quadrennial report cards.