4 ms·

>(1) Minor transgressions shouldn't be ruinous for anyone including the poor, that's part of the point of scaled penalties. So then why do scaled penalties onl

>(1) Minor transgressions shouldn't be ruinous for anyone including the poor, that's part of the point of scaled penalties. So then why do scaled penalties only ever seem to be scaled up with income rather then down with lack of?

danaris 5y ago
Because no legislature creates non-scaled fines that are high enough to be meaningfully felt by billionaires, since they would have to be utterly ruinous to us mere mortals.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Why does everyone try and drag the discussion in the direction of a few dozen people who are a rounding error of a rounding error? Legislators seem happy to create fines that are meaningful if not excessive to everyone with a household income short of two well paid white collar professionals (who themselves are a small minority).
  - danaris 5y ago
    Because they are a very small number of people with a massively outsized amount of power. Allowing them to possess the amount of wealth they do is, by its very nature, unbalancing and damaging to the entire system.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      Citation please. That doesn't pass even a cursory sanity test. The people who are on top of the current system are the last people who want to unbalance, damage it or otherwise rock the boat.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> So then why do scaled penalties only ever seem to be scaled up with income rather then down with lack of? The two are equivalent, and many scaled fine systems have lower fines for equivalent severity offenses at low income levels than are common in the systems of fixed fines used in the US. A lot of people get fixated on, e.g., Norway's very high, even at low income levels, traffic fines compared to the US, but that's a product of Norway being a high outlier in how severe traffic violations are considered (and, also, the US being a low outlier.)

4 ms·

>(1) Minor transgressions shouldn't be ruinous for anyone including the poor, that's part of the point of scaled penalties. So then why do scaled penalties onl

by throwaway0a5e 5y ago

danaris 5y ago
Because no legislature creates non-scaled fines that are high enough to be meaningfully felt by billionaires, since they would have to be utterly ruinous to us mere mortals.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Why does everyone try and drag the discussion in the direction of a few dozen people who are a rounding error of a rounding error? Legislators seem happy to create fines that are meaningful if not excessive to everyone with a household income short of two well paid white collar professionals (who themselves are a small minority).
  - danaris 5y ago
    Because they are a very small number of people with a massively outsized amount of power. Allowing them to possess the amount of wealth they do is, by its very nature, unbalancing and damaging to the entire system.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      Citation please. That doesn't pass even a cursory sanity test. The people who are on top of the current system are the last people who want to unbalance, damage it or otherwise rock the boat.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> So then why do scaled penalties only ever seem to be scaled up with income rather then down with lack of? The two are equivalent, and many scaled fine systems have lower fines for equivalent severity offenses at low income levels than are common in the systems of fixed fines used in the US. A lot of people get fixated on, e.g., Norway's very high, even at low income levels, traffic fines compared to the US, but that's a product of Norway being a high outlier in how severe traffic violations are considered (and, also, the US being a low outlier.)