Quote Originally Posted by Moncha View Post
No county, city, or state can survive on taxes alone so there must be alternative streams. Fines and penalties are an example.
I think you could argue speed traps are just another form of tax - it's a tax on people in a hurry, kind of like how lottery tickets are a tax on stupid people or tolls are a tax on people who need to use a road. Perhaps more appropriately it's that no politician's political career can survive based on raising taxes across his entire constituency. Traffic fines are more elegant because the politician can always say, "Well if you didn't choose to speed you wouldn't have had to pay the fine." And because most of us get lucky most of the time, we all just cross our fingers rather than charge the state house in protest.