I'm going to disagree with a lot of the comments here. I was licensed in the 1970s when I was only 13 years old in Pittsburgh PA. I couldn't afford much. My parents were poor so I scrounged and built stuff around plans from what little material was available back then. I managed to get an inoperable DX-100 transmitter from a school teacher (he was an electronic wizard and some ham gave it to him since it was dead). It was a big step over my 10W CW transmitter (I was a Novice back then so CW only) and I had to build a silicon replacement for the tube diode stage but I did it and it cost me pennies to get that rig back up and running. I built antennas from scratch and materials I scavenged. Built my receiver (again mostly scavenged parts). Built my own SWR meter. Pretty much the only purchase was a Vibroplex bug that was a birthday gift (it was used so probably only about $5 back then) and I had to rebuild it to get it to work right. Yes a $35 fee would have probably been hard but the license is what I wanted and I did have a part time job at a full service gas station (I worked about 10-20 hours a week for minimum wage which was $3.50/hr back then) so I would have been able to afford the fee and would have gone full steam ahead and still done it.

Now 40+ years later I have HF/VHF/UHF rigs, the ability to string antennas on a fairly mid-sized plot. I still enjoy the hobby.

Maybe the $35 fee will allow enforcement of the rules and some of the broadcasting and downright garbage being spoken on the 40m bands here in the US. I can't believe how bad it has become.