Funding roads (taxes, user fees etc)

[ijmorlan]

Ijmorlan, your idea of paying for something is simplistic and dumb.  

I watched a movie on Netflix today, but my finances didn't change.  Is Netflix free?

I pay a bunch of taxes and a health care charge.  But when I go to the hospital it doesn't change my finances.  Is health care free?

As far as I'm concerned you're a zealot. Making logically poor arguments and being willfully ignorant.

No, you pay for Netflix monthly. You have the option of not paying and not watching. You are trivially correct that some pricing schemes aren’t strictly per individual use — sometimes things are bundled or packaged in particular ways. But a price has to be in some way connected to your consumption of the good or service, and it must be at least in principle possible to avoid the payment by avoiding consumption.

You do not have the option of not paying your taxes and not using the roads.

Any payment that does not depend in any way on whether or not you use the roads is not a road price. So, your income tax, consumption taxes (possible exception of gas tax but not HST on gas), and property tax are not road pricing. Do you pay any other payments that could reasonably be called road pricing? If not, you are benefitting from roads that are free to you as a driver. Of course they are not free, in fact far from free, and that is the point — they are a massive drain on the public treasury, and I believe that individuals should have at least some choice as to how much they participate in the use and payment for roads.

I’ll refrain from returning the personal comments. They don’t seem helpful.