The way that our income tax system works is that it is progressive, which essentially means that those who earn more pay more, which is fair, because there is a need for the redistribution of income so that those who are most needy are provided with the necessary funds and aid so that they can have a decent life. Indeed, those who are wealthy are the very same who can afford to pay more in taxes, which is why the tax structure of this country is progressive in nature, and why taxes that are regressive in nature should be minimized as much as they can be.
When it comes to traffic tickets, a traffic ticket and its associated fees as well as possible punishment for failure to pay that ticket, or failure to appear in court, and so on, are structured so that those being issued such a ticket, no matter their income or lack thereof, pay the same amount, which thus signifies that these are regressive taxes, which in and out itself, might be tolerable, if the traffic tickets were actually commensurate with what the traffic violation was all about. In other words, someone that is exceeding the speed limit or has run a stop sign when there literally is no other traffic about, appears to be unfair, when the fine for such is excessively high; whereas, those that are speeding on the highway and darting from lane to lane in traffic which is fairly heavy, should definitely have to pay a serious fine, because their bad driving could well cause an accident.
Yet, we find that except for driving without a seatbelt, that just about every traffic ticket nowadays has a fairly hefty penalty to it, in addition to the fact that traffic tickets increase the insurance that the driver has to pay, signifying that getting a traffic ticket while never being welcomed, can be especially problematic for those that are just struggling to get by, of which, in the United States, there are a multitude of people that are just scrapping by to begin with. All this becomes even more troublesome for those who have received a traffic ticket when they aren’t able to make an on-time payment or work out some sort of payment schedule, if so available, which leads these unfortunate people to be on the pathway in which their license could well be suspended, and they could even at some point, have to suffer jail time.
All of the above would not be necessary if traffic tickets were structured so that for the most part the fines were significantly lower than they are presently, especially for those things which don’t represent a real hazard, all things considered; but in actuality, the price of tickets is something that seems to increase yearly and definitely exceeds the inflation rate, signifying that those that determine the amount of these fines simply are doing so because they want that money and seemingly don’t care how much of a burden this may or may not represent for those that have been ticketed, under the distorted belief, that people should not commit the traffic violation, if they are unwilling to pay the fine.
In actuality, this really comes down to fairness, and regressive taxation which doesn’t take into account what people can actually afford to pay, or take into account, how certain areas of a given community are going to have more tickets issued not because the drivers are worse, but simply because there is more police presence isn’t fair at all, especially when those police officers have an implied quota of tickets that they need to issue, day by day. In sum, traffic tickets for offenses that are minor should not be overly punitive.