Here come the traffic tickets as a "tax"

Just as I thought states and cities are gearing up to increase the issuance of traffic tickets to make up for falling tax revenue.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Insurance/InsureYourCar/speeding-youll-pay-higher-taxes.aspx

Garrett and his co-author, Gary Wagner, studied tickets issued by North Carolina counties over 14 years and found that "significantly more tickets are issued in the year following a decline in revenue."

But in years after revenue increases, there was no corresponding drop in traffic tickets, they wrote. "Our results suggest that tickets are used as a revenue generation tool rather than solely a means to increase public safety."

Ya think? Once a government entity finds a way to increase revenues it is essentially impossible for that entity to decrease the new revenue stream later on - it almost always becomes permanent. Personal income tax was supposed to be temporary when it was created in 1913 and has been increasing ever since. Most consumption taxes follow the same trend.

We will see many more programs such as red light cameras, automated speed traps (e.g. on toll roads and intersections), police assigned to and awarded for issuing more tickets, increases in fines, etc. Governments have become voracious in their spending and will go to extremes to keep the revenue streams coming in - the option of reducing spending or cutting programs is no longer considered a viable option.