5 ms·
But it didn't cost $22,000. If he didn't go to a jail would the city save $22k? The city lost $215,000,000 in revenue due to the fare evasion.
by free652 7y ago
But it didn't cost $22,000. If he didn't go to a jail would the city save $22k?
The city lost $215,000,000 in revenue due to the fare evasion.
- addicted 7y agoThat assumes people would pay the money otherwise. Which is almost certainly not true. The people who don’t pay likely don’t have the money in the first place or are drunk. It’s unlikely they would have paid any ways.
- Scoundreller 7y agoI like the French system of school lunches. Every student has a card to pay for lunch. The exact price charged is on a sliding scale depending on family income. One child has no idea what the other is charged, it's just a swipe of the card. You're also not allowed to bring your own lunch to eat in the cafeteria, but that system can work out okay when you have dedicated chefs at each school, and cheap good cheese (and funding for... children to eat... a bizarre concept in some parts of the world).
- david38 7y agoNot allowed to bring your own? You think this is a good thing? God forbid I make some food at home. Sounds like a protection racket to me or a social equality experiment gone crazy.
- Scoundreller 7y agoIf the provided lunch is any good, then yes, a good thing. Could some families afford the cost and time of providing a better 2-4 course lunch every day? Sure, but most won’t.
- majewsky 7y agoAs a child, I had a wide array of food allergies, so doctors put me on a so-called rotation diet. I could only be exposed to certain food items once every 4 days. Day 1 of the cycle allowed wheat and rye, so on the other days, I could not eat any dish with sauce bound with wheat flour. (My family used carob seed flour instead.) Day 2 was potatoes, day 3 was corn, day 4 was rice. (Those were the most significant items. There was more on the diet plan.) This is why, for the first 4 years of school, I went to a specialized school for physically and mentally disabled children. I was not really disabled (besides allergies and asthma), but that was the only school where the cafeteria personnel was able/willing to accommodate my needs. (My grandmother brought in precooked food for me for the next day when she picked me up from school.) When I changed to secondary school, my parents employed some legal tricks to get me into a school close to my grandmother's apartment, so I could go to her place for lunch. I realize that I was an edge case. But I sure hope that the laws governing those French kids accommodate their edge cases.
- danielscrubs 7y agoIt’s probably similar to the Nordics. Which is that it’s the schools responsibility to cater to your needs, no matter the costs. Just be sure to have a doctors note.
- geofft 7y agoI don't think the children are making food at home, and it seems entirely reasonable to prevent rich parents from giving food to their preferred children. If you can't fight generational inequality in a small thing, how can you fight generational inequality in big things like inheritance?
- brianwawok 7y agoI suspect the rich kids go to private boarding schools no? The policy hurts the upper end of the average kids.
- Scoundreller 7y ago> how can you fight generational inequality in big things like inheritance? France gets a big fail on this one. It's incredibly difficult to completely dis-own your children in your will.
- tdy_err 7y agoIt's unclear why this is but a quick search will show that children are not required to eat at school at all, so they are free to eat at home or off campus somewhere too.
- hawaiian 7y ago>One child has no idea what the other is charged, it's just a swipe of the card. I disagree with this assertion. If everyone knows the rules of the game, there will be plenty of guesswork as to how much whom is paying. "Just" a swipe of the card does not make social inequality evaporate. And, in my personal experience, this leads to more prejudice, not less. To me, this screams oversimplification by the state (or whoever is responsible for making school lunches "politically correct").
- Scoundreller 7y agoIs it perfect? No. Is it better than most other systems to inequality? Yes. There’s little difference between this system and a system of direct payments to address the inequality. This system also eliminates the potential of the family squandering any direct payments.
- username90 7y ago> I like the French system of school lunches. Every student has a card to pay for lunch. The exact price charged is on a sliding scale depending on family income. I never really understood the whole "Free if your parents aren't rich" mentality. Parents of rich kids pay more tax so why not give them free lunches as well since they pay for it indirectly anyway? Reduces bureaucracy. We do that in Sweden. The same thing can be said about most things, like higher education, healthcare etc.
- Scoundreller 7y agoThat system would work for school lunches. It would not work as well for an oversubscribed transit system where users may not live where the system is and you want to provide some incentive for people to live where they work, bike, carpool or travel at off-peak times.
- zaroth 7y agoAnd if they handed out $50 tickets for fare evasion, how much revenue would that generate?
- free652 7y agoIt's already a $100 fine: http://web.mta.info/nyct/rules/TransitAdjudicationBureau/rules.htm http://web.mta.info/nyct/rules/TransitAdjudicationBureau/rul...
- zaroth 7y agoNYC.gov says 14,000 summons ($100 fine) in Q4. Who knows what percentage of those are paid. But relative to the size of the problem that’s a pittance.
- bdcravens 7y agoYou almost always have the option of going to jail to pay fines, typically at $50-100/day served. Was on the train here in Houston yesterday, and this very topic came up as some folks were chatting with a transit officer onboard. Some said they'd always sit in jail rather than pay a fine.
- kristopolous 7y agoThe person who can't afford $2 is now going to pay $50? From where? How?