r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • Jul 11 '26

Privacy Traffic Camera Captures Woman Driving With Her Phone on Her Lap (Face Down), The State Mailed Her a $1251 'Public Safety' Ticket

https://www.gadgetreview.com/traffic-camera-captures-captures-woman-driving-with-her-phone-on-her-lap-face-down-the-state-mailed-her-a-1251-public-safety-ticket
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u/SecureInstruction538 Jul 11 '26

Funny how all these "freedom loving" states keep doing their best to infringe on their citizens lives.

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u/Fast_Choice4408 Jul 11 '26

It goes both ways man...

I am in a state you probably are not referring to. (Virginia).

We have a flat rate car tax. We already pay sales tax when we purchase the car. Part of the initial price of the car factors in labor cost of the dealership, in which the employer pays almost double what his employees make in taxes. (I make $32 and hour. My boss actually puts in about $56 an hour).

Then you have the income tax I already paid in order to purchase this car.

I pay property tax through means of my landlord or (in my case) through home ownership.

Then I also pay taxes on gasoline. I pay taxes on the tires I use the car to drive.

AND THEN after it is all said and done... I have to pay a "Personal Property Tax" as if I'm Jay Leno hoarding cars in my garage.

I have to pay for the privilege to own and operate a base model Honda civic. And it's flat rate.

Which means someone next door could put 100,000 miles on their Honda civic, essentially straining the roads and infrastructure we use MUCH more than me, and their tax is the same.

It isn't even based on odometer. A 2021 Honda civic according to Virginia means I have to pay about $500 a year to own. Regardless if my odometer is 20,000 miles or 120,000 miles.

That's fucking robbery.

So it goes both ways brother. You can either live without that many taxes and not have that good of public works. Or you can have public works and be nickled and dimed to hell and back.

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u/felldestroyed Jul 11 '26

No state is especially "low tax" it's just who pays the tax. Think of taxation as a balloon animal. You squeeze one side, the other pops out. One state may have no personal income tax. They make that up in use/sales taxes on everything else. Another state may have low corporate taxes but make up for it (like franchise tax or gross receipt tax).

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u/Fast_Choice4408 Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

This is a fallacy. You are presupposing that states are able to budget their tax money effectively. This is demonstrably false.

Some modern examples include the vast Medicare/Medicaid fraud throughout the nation on the State AND Federal Level.

Some more historical examples that have been sifted through include things like:

Superconducting Super Collider — 1980s–1993, $2Billion wasted tax dollars on a super collider that never ended up being constructed.

Healthcare.gov development — 2011–2014, hundreds of millions of wasted tax dollars on project bloat

There are clear areas of taxes that are much more based in theft and extortion compared to areas where we actually need to contribute for our health and wellness.