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Hell, I'd say that any town that leverages against the economically poor to benefit the economically elite is bad, and just going by the way fines are handed ou
by not_a_cop75 7y ago
Hell, I'd say that any town that leverages against the economically poor to benefit the economically elite is bad, and just going by the way fines are handed out, that happens everywhere. Only a handful of countries fine you by according to how much you make. While doing this can add an extra incentive for the rich to be dishonest (which happens anyway), by not doing it you are essentially telling the rich that they are above the law - which is something that large swaths of ultrarich both already believe and know to be true.
- madhadron 7y ago> Only a handful of countries fine you by according to how much you make. Example: speeding tickets in Switzerland. A guy driving his Lamborghini through a village at 60mph had a ticket for several hundred thousand dollars handed to him while I was living there.
- xfitm3 7y agoWhich is bad.
- metalliqaz 7y agoFor a billionaire, that's the same amount of bad as when I get a ticket for $60.
- mikepurvis 7y agoWhy? Speeding kills. It seems reasonable to me that the ticket be proportional to your means, so you don't have a regressive effect where poor people are highly impacted and rich people laugh it off.
- xfitm3 7y agoSpeeding kills your pocketbook.
- behringer 7y agoWhy? You know what happens to a rich Lambo owner when they owe the state 20 bucks? They hire their courier to speed to the post office at 60mph to deliver the check.
- throwaway5752 7y agoNo it isn't. Handing a $100 fine to person X and person Y is ridiculous when person X makes minimal wage and person Y is a C level executive making $400K. Normalizing the fine to the median income and proportionate changing it by income level is equitable and fair. You can look for legal precedence in bail hearings, where wealth and flight risk are definitely and correctly taken into account.
- appleiigs 7y agoDiscriminating against race, age, gender is bad. You need to treat people fairly. However, when it comes to rich people you think it's OK?
- grecy 7y agoWe already do it with progressive taxes. Fines are just a type of tax, so why can't they be progressive too?
- homonculus1 7y ago"We already do it" is not really an argument. Many people (rightly or wrongly) disagree with progressive taxation so it's really just an appeal to a non-existent consensus.
- colejohnson66 7y ago“We already do it” absolutely is an argument. There’s a thing in law called precedent.
- homonculus1 7y agoMy impression was that this is a website for logical discussions, not legal appeals. "Fine the rich because they're globalist pedophiles" is also an argument of sorts but not to the standard I'm talking about.
- deleted 7y ago
- coldtea 7y agoNo, it's proportional, hence just.
- Faark 7y agoDepends on implementation. The one I'm familiar with asks for time (e.g. x * daily income). That seems totally fair, since we all have roughly the same amount of days to spend in a life. Jail & co is balanced based on the same principle, but harder to store & exchange, thus bad for minor infraction.
- julianwachholz 7y agoAt 60mph ~= 100km/h in city limits (50km/h) it is not a simple fine anymore but a criminal charge. Fines are fixed no matter how much you make. (e.g. 1-5km/h above limit is CHF 40.00)
- distances 7y agoI'm from a country with so-called day fines: a fine is a multiplier of your daily earnings. It boggles my mind that a similar system isn't in use everywhere. It's easy to understand and fair to everyone; a deterrent against infractions independent of your income.
- appleiigs 7y agoIf it was independent to your income, then your income should not matter. The fine should be proportional to the infraction/crime/damage.
- mcphage 7y ago> If it was independent to your income, then your income should not matter. The effect of a file is strongly dependent on your income, so if fines are to have any deterrent effect, it must also be dependent on your income.
- distances 7y agoIn case my wording wasn't clear enough: level of deterrent obviously shouldn't depend on your income, which this system roughly achieves. (Doesn't totally achieve it: a poor person can't in truth afford to lose any of their income, while a rich one could easily temporarily let go of over 90% without it affecting anything; for that I don't see an easy fix.) As said, I can't imagine a moral justification for not implementing some similar scheme.
- pessimizer 7y agoIf I were moderately wealthy, there would be no incentive not to just think of the fine as a fee to break any ordinance wherever and whenever I wanted. Fines aren't costs, they are a deterrent.
- appleiigs 7y agoPart deterrent, part punishment. Consider if I punched you in the face, you laughed it off and I get charged with assault; versus: I punch you, you're now disabled for life, and I get charged with assault. Should it be based on my income?