I think fines that are proportional to your income or wealth are clearly a better approach than fixed fines. In practice, that kind of stuff can be really hard to figure out, but overall it seems sensible? There are lots of downsides to a highly connected financial system for poor people, but hopefully we can move towards scaled fines as something of a consolation for all of the downsides the poor endure.
I don't even think it needs to be hard to figure out. Fines could, and should, be set to something like "basis points [hundredths of one percent] of your gross income on last year's tax return", which the government already knows. A speeding ticket could then be set to e.g. 20 bp = [last year's gross income] * .002.
I know, if you can't pay the fine don't do the crime, but realistically income is not a constant and is much too temporal to be useful here. A decent income year last year, and little income this year, means you might have no hope of paying the fine.
Why not a fraction of the current value of gross assets at the time of investigation? This a much better reflection of someone's financial standing, is a greater deterrent, ensures that the fine is actually payable, and deals with the issue of the rich not having much in the way of income.
It sounds very progressive for a society to admit high income spendthrifts are immune to self reflective remorse, but I feel like we should still try impose penalties to give them an opportunity for growth.
Fair enough. Then the fine shall be levied at the value of the car being driven when the offence occurred. Driving a $500 beater? Your fine is $500. Driving a $1,000,000 sports car? Your fine is $1,000,000.
While this theoretically allows the rich to drive said $500 car in order to minimize their liability in the event of a fine, it also means the rich have to drive a $500 car if that is what they are trying to optimize for, which is a decent social tradeoff.
Yah - income is clearly the first way to do this, but you'd want to integrate assets at some point (many wealthy people do not have traditionally high incomes). That's the tricky part.
I'd like to see progressive fines implemented as well.
I'm not sure what factor we should use but I think that it should quickly become economically infeasible for anyone to keep reoffending because the cost of separate instances of doing so quickly escalates. Maybe exponentially?
The idea of having the fine scale based on how quickly people re-offend is also really interesting! I feel like I worry about...situations where people are pressed into breaking that law out of circumstances and then are extra-harshly punished by the mounting fines? Maybe you combine it with some kind of income-based ceiling or a loss in driving privileges (has its own problems ofc but it is a public danger for someone to always be breaking the law - even if they feel they have no choice).
Oh I don't just want this for driving fines but all fines in general.If the point of fines is to serve as a disincentive and to modify the behavior of people then they need to have some teeth to them.
People are free to do their own personal cost benefit analysis when they decide whether or not whatever personal circumstance they're in is worth breaking the law, and the law isn't there to give them a pass because their personal analysis on this resulted in them deciding to break the law.
This could be an incredible revenue stream for law enforcement at all levels, without heavy balances it's almost guaranteed that it will be egregiously abused, like asset forfeiture.
Solution really is that money does not go to law enforcement, instead it goes to general budget from which then law enforcement is funded. Law enforcement really should not be able to fund itself by any mechanism.
I would argue if the goal is justice then the fine is basically a tort on the externality imposed. At some point society imposes an injustice if the fine exceeds the externality imposed by tailgating, even if it's a pittance to the rich person.
That is, for justice rather than just retribution, I think the real nominal cost of tailgating is probably not closely linked to wealth or income of the offender
But the point of the fine in this case is clearly not restitution, but disincentive. Justice in this case is ensuring everyone is equally incentivised to follow a law that society thinks everyone should follow.
If the goal were only to ascribe economic harms to certain actions and reclaim those costs, it would be called a tax or a fee, not a fine.
some people will never understand and at this stage i think its pointless.
Lets have a look at two examples of parking in a disabled person space
if you make 30k a year, have no savings, $100 is major expense.
if you make $1m a year, $100 is just a vip parking space.
Both people should be equally de-incentivized to illegally park in a disabled people parking spots. The proportional fines are the only way to get close enough to that state.
Instead of being the discretionary income of this philanthropic rich guy who would graciously give it all away to his servants, those 100k go to the Swiss government, which famously provides no public benefit or services and in fact just sets the money on fire
It's fair to say and, on some level, I like the idea of scaling fines to lower income more than scaling them to higher incomes. The marginal utility of wealth goes down as you get more anyway.
I also think that, if you wanna critique the efficacy of fines in metting out justice, you need to go further than you do here. Scaling the fine tries, imperfectly, to match the punishment to the circumstances of the offender. We could imagine an even better system that more perfectly reacts to misbehavior, but exactly what that would be seems hard and this is a sensible adjustment to an existing system.
Along with the wealth tax, these revenue-based fines also pushes you to minimize the revenues that you declare to the state, ending with overall losses in collected taxes.
For example, many crypto-bros are insanely poor on paper.
Companies can spend on behalf of a person, etc.
A more fair system is to be able to pick between jail or community service.
Time is equally precious to all humans and giving some of your time to repair your mistakes is the best you can do.
A poor person cannot afford to miss a day at the job, or not care for their children, when it would just be another day not working for a rich one. Not to mention the difference in life expectancy between the richest and poorest populations are 10-15 years. If anything jail sentences should be longer for wealthy people!
Should some people be able to drive recklessly just because they can't afford to pay speeding tickets? I don't see what problem this is trying to solve. Is there an epidemic of wealthy people speeding and running over school children? In America you get points for speeding and your insurance goes up (more expensive car, more expensive insurance) and after a number of points you lose your license.
Wealthy people don't break the law any more than less wealthy people even though the naive view of the economic costs of crime would have you think they would.
