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Finland, I believe, scales fines proportionally to your income. Not perfect (the rich can more easily hide their income than the not so rich), but a good start.

giancarlostoro 8y ago
I think if it scales to a maximum amount its fine especially for driving related violations. For example nobody needs to be paying 25 grand for a speeding violation thats absurd regardless of income. But its interesting. I believe in Mexico its based on your hourly wage and x amount of hours. So if you have no job and you get a ticket you owe nothing, at least thats how it was when my sister got a ticket in Guadalajara in '07.
- ryanwaggoner 8y ago
  Sounds like you need a minimum too then...
- cocoa19 8y ago
  It's not based in hourly wage, it's based on daily minimum wage. If you have no job, you still get a ticket, unless the police officer let's you off the hook or you bribe him (which is very common). I'm not condoning bribing police officers.
- arrrg 8y ago
  Why is that absurd? Can you explain that? I was searching for reasons, but didn’t find any.
asmosoinio 8y ago
Yes - a well-known example was Anssi Vanjoki (former Nokia director) getting a fine of 116,000 euros for driving 75 km/h in a 50 zone. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1759791.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1759791.stm I have heard of other countries that have similar systems.
- justAnotherNET 8y ago
  thats absolutely insane.
- Dylan16807 8y ago
  Huge fines for the rich are amusing but scaling that part of the cost doesn't address the core problem very well. Actually, a fee of 14 days of income sounds crippling to someone who's poor, so that's an example of it not helping at all.
  - bpye 8y ago
    Absolutely. Those with less income are going from day to day without any significant savings, those with more may well have enough saved to survive several months.
    - asmosoinio 8y ago
      But this is still not an argument against fines scaling up with your income, is it?
  - jrumbut 8y ago
    It should be noted that many countries that have proportional fines seem to consider speeding to be somewhere close to the severity the American legal system assigns to drunk driving. It shocks me a little to think of a 14 days worth of income fine for going 45mph in a 30mph zone, yet when I think of the massive death toll from driving it's very possible my attitudes are not where they should be.
    - Dylan16807 8y ago
      It's a bit of a tangent, but all the roads I've seen labeled 30mph or 35mph would be quite safe to take at 45. The flow of traffic is 5mph over anyway. But this is with residential roads universally at 25mph. I'm not sure what kind of road he was on.
dahfizz 8y ago
Does that mean unemployed people just don't get fined when they speed,etc?
- askvictor 8y ago
  This is something that Melbourne, AU has recently grappled with - do you give public transport ticket fines to homeless people? You can give them as many fines as you want, but they're not going to pay them, and will just end up making it harder for them to get out of the cycle they're trapped in. I believe homeless no longer get fined for not having a ticket here. You can argue technicalities and loopholes all you want, but at both extremes (very rich and very poor) the 'normal' system of fines just doesn't make any sense.
  - dahfizz 8y ago
    I take your point, but there is a big difference between being homeless and being without income. Retirees are the most obvious example, but there are plenty of 'normal' people who don't have an income that basically get to speed and park illegally for free under this sort of system. Unless of course, we put in a minimum fine for everything and charge extra based on income beyond that. But this does nothing to help the poor and ends up just being a punishment for having a good job. I also think people imagine the super rich having to pay huge fines under this kind of system, but it's the same problem as with taxing the super wealthy. Their income is actually very low relative to the wealth they are accumulating.
    - askvictor 8y ago
      Retirees still have an income (public or private pension), as do (in civilised countries) the unemployed (in the form a dole/unemployment benefits), but yes, a minimum charge + extra seems to make sense (perhaps with an exception for homelessness. > ends up just being a punishment for having a good job. No; it's a punishment for breaking the law, with (ideally) the punishment scaling to create a similar deterrent to everyone in the society.
arrrg 8y ago
The problem isn’t so much that the rich can hide their income more easily, it‘s that the value of money doesn’t increase linearly. The more money you have available, the less valuable any additional unit of money is to you and the less it hurts if money is taken away from you. Proportional fines help, but they aren’t perfectly fair.
- askvictor 8y ago
  I suppose there's nothing requiring the proportion-curve for fines to be linear - but that might get silly and have other consequences. I guess the question comes down to value - finding something that the wrongdoer values (and remove it) that is in proportion to the damage to society they did. I would guess, that for the rich that we're talking about, time and/or freedom are more important than money. The other end of the scale is interesting too - how do you disincentivise/punish for people who don't have any money and just aren't going to pay any fines you give them (i.e. the homeless)?
- ksec 8y ago
  Then fine by Net Worth and not by Income. Fine by Tax paid. And made it like the Tax system the more you have the higher percentage. There are people who just park their car anywhere and paid parking tickets, they really don't care because it was too small amount of money. If anything, people should realise the level of inequality has become. How unfair and unjust the system has made against the bottom half of the population.
  - TheGrumpyBrit 8y ago
    I don't think it's possible to find a fair solution that's purely financially based. On the one hand, the poorest members of society might be unable to feed themselves on even a $50 fine. Unless you propose to bankrupt somebody for a speeding ticket, there's just no way to make any amount of fine sting as much for the richest members of society.
    - manicdee 8y ago
      Scale linearly to 5% of gross income before deductions, minus minimum wage/poverty line. Then someone on minimum wage of $30k will just get demerit points while someone on gross income over $200k will pay $8,500. Given that their “taxable income” after deductions is around $80k they will feel that sting.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
cc439 8y ago
That just screws the middle class (~$40k to $150k). The cost of waging legal warfare against the ticket will still be greater than the inflated fine while the wealthy will easily be able to afford the kind of lawyer who can get an overworked traffic court judge and the cop who has to take a day off from fieldwork to agree to more reasonable terms. The solution to fines is to simply get rid of fines and instead use a more aggressive "point" system. I'm not wealthy by any means but the threat of a $200 ticket has zero impact on my driving habits whereas the threat of having my license suspended if I get 2 tickets in a 12 month span (a hypothetical example of possible punishment btw) would definitely change how I drive. I can't really think of any crime that carries a fine rather than revocation of certain rights where this wouldn't work. The only issue is that of enforcement, you have to make the threat of getting caught a second or third time real enough that the punishment becomes psychologically meaningful.
- icebraining 8y ago
  License suspension is already used a lot. In fact, it's such a deterrent that states started using it for various non-traffic related punishments, such as failure to pay child support or drug conviction: https://www.npr.org/2014/03/10/288587071/reconsidering-drivers-license-suspensions-as-punishment https://www.npr.org/2014/03/10/288587071/reconsidering-drive...
  - thrower123 8y ago
    Taking someone's license for not paying child support has always struck me as stupidly counter-productive, if you want someone to work and actually be capable to pay their child support.
    - TheGrumpyBrit 8y ago
      It's also completely unrelated to the crime. How would you punish somebody who already doesn't have a driving license?
- Faark 8y ago
  > while the wealthy will easily be able to afford the kind of lawyer who can get [..] more reasonable terms. That will be the case with any effective punishment. You can be sure they'll fight points just as hard. Ofc still way better than a flat fine.
Fnoord 8y ago
We got a point system in The Netherlands. If you get too many points, you lose your license. However it only counts for new drivers. Which doesn't make sense at all, as its elitist towards the older adults.
- donkeyd 8y ago
  Until you take a look at statistics on age vs. number of accidents. Young people (<30) and new drivers in general are massively over represented.[0] So this isn't elitist, it's just based some very clear statistics. [0] https://www.swov.nl/feiten-cijfers/factsheet/18-tot-en-met-24-jarigen-jonge-automobilisten https://www.swov.nl/feiten-cijfers/factsheet/18-tot-en-met-2...
  - zimpenfish 8y ago
    I maintain that, for the UK at least, that banning male drivers under the age of 25, would save enough lives and money that the backlash would be worth it. Plus you'd probably get a big upswell in support for public transport initiatives.
  - Fnoord 8y ago
    Except the law with the point driver's license doesn't count for young people (that'd be age discrimination), it counts for new drivers.
wvh 8y ago
If you are driving slightly over the speed limit, it is a traffic violation with a fixed amount fine. If you are driving 10% or 15% (don't remember) over the speed limit, it becomes a criminal violation which then takes your reported income into consideration. Those fines hurt.

giancarlostoro 8y ago

I think if it scales to a maximum amount its fine especially for driving related violations. For example nobody needs to be paying 25 grand for a speeding violation thats absurd regardless of income. But its interesting. I believe in Mexico its based on your hourly wage and x amount of hours. So if you have no job and you get a ticket you owe nothing, at least thats how it was when my sister got a ticket in Guadalajara in '07.

ryanwaggoner 8y ago
Sounds like you need a minimum too then...
cocoa19 8y ago
It's not based in hourly wage, it's based on daily minimum wage. If you have no job, you still get a ticket, unless the police officer let's you off the hook or you bribe him (which is very common). I'm not condoning bribing police officers.
arrrg 8y ago
Why is that absurd? Can you explain that? I was searching for reasons, but didn’t find any.

asmosoinio 8y ago

Yes - a well-known example was Anssi Vanjoki (former Nokia director) getting a fine of 116,000 euros for driving 75 km/h in a 50 zone. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1759791.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1759791.stm I have heard of other countries that have similar systems.

justAnotherNET 8y ago
thats absolutely insane.
Dylan16807 8y ago
Huge fines for the rich are amusing but scaling that part of the cost doesn't address the core problem very well. Actually, a fee of 14 days of income sounds crippling to someone who's poor, so that's an example of it not helping at all.
- bpye 8y ago
  Absolutely. Those with less income are going from day to day without any significant savings, those with more may well have enough saved to survive several months.
  - asmosoinio 8y ago
    But this is still not an argument against fines scaling up with your income, is it?
- jrumbut 8y ago
  It should be noted that many countries that have proportional fines seem to consider speeding to be somewhere close to the severity the American legal system assigns to drunk driving. It shocks me a little to think of a 14 days worth of income fine for going 45mph in a 30mph zone, yet when I think of the massive death toll from driving it's very possible my attitudes are not where they should be.
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    It's a bit of a tangent, but all the roads I've seen labeled 30mph or 35mph would be quite safe to take at 45. The flow of traffic is 5mph over anyway. But this is with residential roads universally at 25mph. I'm not sure what kind of road he was on.

dahfizz 8y ago

Does that mean unemployed people just don't get fined when they speed,etc?

askvictor 8y ago
This is something that Melbourne, AU has recently grappled with - do you give public transport ticket fines to homeless people? You can give them as many fines as you want, but they're not going to pay them, and will just end up making it harder for them to get out of the cycle they're trapped in. I believe homeless no longer get fined for not having a ticket here. You can argue technicalities and loopholes all you want, but at both extremes (very rich and very poor) the 'normal' system of fines just doesn't make any sense.
- dahfizz 8y ago
  I take your point, but there is a big difference between being homeless and being without income. Retirees are the most obvious example, but there are plenty of 'normal' people who don't have an income that basically get to speed and park illegally for free under this sort of system. Unless of course, we put in a minimum fine for everything and charge extra based on income beyond that. But this does nothing to help the poor and ends up just being a punishment for having a good job. I also think people imagine the super rich having to pay huge fines under this kind of system, but it's the same problem as with taxing the super wealthy. Their income is actually very low relative to the wealth they are accumulating.
  - askvictor 8y ago
    Retirees still have an income (public or private pension), as do (in civilised countries) the unemployed (in the form a dole/unemployment benefits), but yes, a minimum charge + extra seems to make sense (perhaps with an exception for homelessness. > ends up just being a punishment for having a good job. No; it's a punishment for breaking the law, with (ideally) the punishment scaling to create a similar deterrent to everyone in the society.

arrrg 8y ago

The problem isn’t so much that the rich can hide their income more easily, it‘s that the value of money doesn’t increase linearly. The more money you have available, the less valuable any additional unit of money is to you and the less it hurts if money is taken away from you. Proportional fines help, but they aren’t perfectly fair.

askvictor 8y ago
I suppose there's nothing requiring the proportion-curve for fines to be linear - but that might get silly and have other consequences. I guess the question comes down to value - finding something that the wrongdoer values (and remove it) that is in proportion to the damage to society they did. I would guess, that for the rich that we're talking about, time and/or freedom are more important than money. The other end of the scale is interesting too - how do you disincentivise/punish for people who don't have any money and just aren't going to pay any fines you give them (i.e. the homeless)?
ksec 8y ago
Then fine by Net Worth and not by Income. Fine by Tax paid. And made it like the Tax system the more you have the higher percentage. There are people who just park their car anywhere and paid parking tickets, they really don't care because it was too small amount of money. If anything, people should realise the level of inequality has become. How unfair and unjust the system has made against the bottom half of the population.
- TheGrumpyBrit 8y ago
  I don't think it's possible to find a fair solution that's purely financially based. On the one hand, the poorest members of society might be unable to feed themselves on even a $50 fine. Unless you propose to bankrupt somebody for a speeding ticket, there's just no way to make any amount of fine sting as much for the richest members of society.
  - manicdee 8y ago
    Scale linearly to 5% of gross income before deductions, minus minimum wage/poverty line. Then someone on minimum wage of $30k will just get demerit points while someone on gross income over $200k will pay $8,500. Given that their “taxable income” after deductions is around $80k they will feel that sting.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

cc439 8y ago

That just screws the middle class (~$40k to $150k). The cost of waging legal warfare against the ticket will still be greater than the inflated fine while the wealthy will easily be able to afford the kind of lawyer who can get an overworked traffic court judge and the cop who has to take a day off from fieldwork to agree to more reasonable terms. The solution to fines is to simply get rid of fines and instead use a more aggressive "point" system. I'm not wealthy by any means but the threat of a $200 ticket has zero impact on my driving habits whereas the threat of having my license suspended if I get 2 tickets in a 12 month span (a hypothetical example of possible punishment btw) would definitely change how I drive. I can't really think of any crime that carries a fine rather than revocation of certain rights where this wouldn't work. The only issue is that of enforcement, you have to make the threat of getting caught a second or third time real enough that the punishment becomes psychologically meaningful.

icebraining 8y ago
License suspension is already used a lot. In fact, it's such a deterrent that states started using it for various non-traffic related punishments, such as failure to pay child support or drug conviction: https://www.npr.org/2014/03/10/288587071/reconsidering-drivers-license-suspensions-as-punishment https://www.npr.org/2014/03/10/288587071/reconsidering-drive...
- thrower123 8y ago
  Taking someone's license for not paying child support has always struck me as stupidly counter-productive, if you want someone to work and actually be capable to pay their child support.
  - TheGrumpyBrit 8y ago
    It's also completely unrelated to the crime. How would you punish somebody who already doesn't have a driving license?
Faark 8y ago
> while the wealthy will easily be able to afford the kind of lawyer who can get [..] more reasonable terms. That will be the case with any effective punishment. You can be sure they'll fight points just as hard. Ofc still way better than a flat fine.

Fnoord 8y ago

We got a point system in The Netherlands. If you get too many points, you lose your license. However it only counts for new drivers. Which doesn't make sense at all, as its elitist towards the older adults.

donkeyd 8y ago
Until you take a look at statistics on age vs. number of accidents. Young people (<30) and new drivers in general are massively over represented.[0] So this isn't elitist, it's just based some very clear statistics. [0] https://www.swov.nl/feiten-cijfers/factsheet/18-tot-en-met-24-jarigen-jonge-automobilisten https://www.swov.nl/feiten-cijfers/factsheet/18-tot-en-met-2...
- zimpenfish 8y ago
  I maintain that, for the UK at least, that banning male drivers under the age of 25, would save enough lives and money that the backlash would be worth it. Plus you'd probably get a big upswell in support for public transport initiatives.
- Fnoord 8y ago
  Except the law with the point driver's license doesn't count for young people (that'd be age discrimination), it counts for new drivers.

wvh 8y ago

If you are driving slightly over the speed limit, it is a traffic violation with a fixed amount fine. If you are driving 10% or 15% (don't remember) over the speed limit, it becomes a criminal violation which then takes your reported income into consideration. Those fines hurt.