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It's everyone not just poor people, I suspect it's mostly poor people that pay the tax now because the behavior incentive mostly worked. There's a selection bia

It's everyone not just poor people, I suspect it's mostly poor people that pay the tax now because the behavior incentive mostly worked. There's a selection bias here in part, people more responsive to not wasting money are going to be more responsive to higher costs - they're also less likely to be poor as a result of this. Parking is different enough to not to be comparable. You don't die a horrible death from parking. > If your incentive isn’t pegged to income or wealth, it’s just creating two tiers of society I don't agree with this, but it's a longer discussion and mostly off topic. You create more issues by doing this than you fix imo. "Poor" is not a permanent state. Arguably if what you're suggesting was the case we'd see rich people smoking because the tax doesn't impact them and poor people abstaining due to cost. We don't see that so it suggests something else is going on.

kennywinker 5y ago
> You don't die a horrible death from parking. You do die a horrible death from eviction because you had to choose between getting a warrant issued due to unpaid parking tickets, or paying rent. Money is a zero-sum game. > "Poor" is not a permanent state. Statistically it basically is, but as you say that's another topic. Either way it doesn't matter, because if I am poor now and you slap me with a parking fine that's 0.4% of my income, I'm going to suffer. While that SAME fine isn't going to have an impact on the quality of life of someone making just 2x what I'm making. > we'd see rich people smoking because the tax doesn't impact them Yes. This is why I don't believe that the tax had anything to do with reducing smoking rates. I think people stopped smoking because they realized they were going to die from cancer, not because it got expensive. Meanwhile, 10% of households are DEEPLY effected by this, some of them to the point of maybe staying in poverty due to smoking. You DO see very rich people ignoring fines because it doesn't cost them an appreciable amount: https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/news-opinion/jeff-bezos-paid-16000-parking-tickets https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/news-opinion/jeff-bez... https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/steve-jobs-car-apple-ceo-license-plates/story?id=14834608 https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/steve-jobs-car-apple-ceo-l...
- gonehome 5y ago
  > "You do die a horrible death from eviction because you had to choose between getting a warrant issued due to unpaid parking tickets, or paying rent." What I meant was fines for parking seem less socially important than fines for smoking. I think policy that protects the lower bound from getting crippled by cascading fines is probably good - at least it's where I think the focus should be. I think we agree more than disagree on that probably. It's expanding the cost to be more extreme at all levels that I think is a bad idea. In your two examples the Steve one doesn't really apply. CA didn't used to require plates on new cars (they do now) and he had cancer. The Bezos example sounds real, but also not personal? More of an "I'll cover your parking tickets" so the contractors don't get hit with them (which seems if anything like he's helping avoid those that would get hit harder by fines). That doesn't bother me too much - I guess I view a fine as an acceptable trade to discourage behavior, but if you're willing to pay it then you can. Is that unfair because it's worse if you're poor? Yeah, but a lot of things are worse if you're poor. I don't think being poor should be the same as not being poor, but it should be bounded. I'd argue the lower bound in American society today is too low.

kennywinker 5y ago

> You don't die a horrible death from parking. You do die a horrible death from eviction because you had to choose between getting a warrant issued due to unpaid parking tickets, or paying rent. Money is a zero-sum game. > "Poor" is not a permanent state. Statistically it basically is, but as you say that's another topic. Either way it doesn't matter, because if I am poor now and you slap me with a parking fine that's 0.4% of my income, I'm going to suffer. While that SAME fine isn't going to have an impact on the quality of life of someone making just 2x what I'm making. > we'd see rich people smoking because the tax doesn't impact them Yes. This is why I don't believe that the tax had anything to do with reducing smoking rates. I think people stopped smoking because they realized they were going to die from cancer, not because it got expensive. Meanwhile, 10% of households are DEEPLY effected by this, some of them to the point of maybe staying in poverty due to smoking. You DO see very rich people ignoring fines because it doesn't cost them an appreciable amount: https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/news-opinion/jeff-bezos-paid-16000-parking-tickets https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/news-opinion/jeff-bez... https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/steve-jobs-car-apple-ceo-license-plates/story?id=14834608 https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/steve-jobs-car-apple-ceo-l...

gonehome 5y ago
> "You do die a horrible death from eviction because you had to choose between getting a warrant issued due to unpaid parking tickets, or paying rent." What I meant was fines for parking seem less socially important than fines for smoking. I think policy that protects the lower bound from getting crippled by cascading fines is probably good - at least it's where I think the focus should be. I think we agree more than disagree on that probably. It's expanding the cost to be more extreme at all levels that I think is a bad idea. In your two examples the Steve one doesn't really apply. CA didn't used to require plates on new cars (they do now) and he had cancer. The Bezos example sounds real, but also not personal? More of an "I'll cover your parking tickets" so the contractors don't get hit with them (which seems if anything like he's helping avoid those that would get hit harder by fines). That doesn't bother me too much - I guess I view a fine as an acceptable trade to discourage behavior, but if you're willing to pay it then you can. Is that unfair because it's worse if you're poor? Yeah, but a lot of things are worse if you're poor. I don't think being poor should be the same as not being poor, but it should be bounded. I'd argue the lower bound in American society today is too low.