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Posted by DanielW (Member # 5395) on :
 
At present, a lot of minor offences, especially traffice offences, are punished with fixed fines. This seems a little unfair to me - a £70 speeding ticket will hurt someone on the minimum wage a lot more than it will a multi-millionaire. So why don't we set fines as percentages of people's income ?
 

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Posted by Human (Member # 2985) on :
 
'Cause then all the poor people would speed?
 

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Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
 
Or maybe you ought to obey the law if you can't afford the consequence or not doing so . . . .


 

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Posted by Papa Moose (Member # 1992) on :
 
Is speeding a worse offense when done by a person who makes more money?

Do hours of community service instead of fines. If a person makes more money, he loses more when taking off the time to do community service, right? But the low-income person is threatened with the loss of his job if he doesn't show up one day, so it's still not fair.

No matter how it's arranged, someone will complain. That person will most likely be a lawbreaker, though. Interesting question, but I'm not sure there's anywhere we can effectively go with it.

--Pop
 

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Posted by DanielW (Member # 5395) on :
 

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Is speeding a worse offense when done by a person who makes more money?

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So if someone has no income at all, he can break the law indiscriminately?

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But firstly, people who have no income at all can't pay the fines, and therefore don't end up punished anyway, and secondly the sorts of offences I'm talking about are things like speeding (which has a fixed £70 fine here in the UK). If you have no income, you surely can't afford to run a car, and therefore these fines wouldn't affect you.

I'm not particularly advocating a soft stance on minor offences, mind you, just a consistent one.
 

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Posted by Ralphie (Member # 1565) on :
 
DanielW is another Brit?!

::tents fingers:: Excellent.
 

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Posted by DanielW (Member # 5395) on :
 
Glad to have pleased you, Ralphie. And, having re-read the 'Where Are All the British People' Thread, I absolutely adore black pudding, so if you were looking at giving out rewards for joining as well as incentives to join . . .
 

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Posted by Papa Moose (Member # 1992) on :
 
Having no income isn't the same as having no money.
 

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Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
 
Cleverly put, Greg. Anybody have stats on the median income of lawbreakers? Do you have a reason to believe that wealthy people need a stronger deterrent than they currently have?

Kayla?
 

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Posted by littlemissattitude (Member # 4514) on :
 

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So if someone has no income at all, he can break the law indiscriminately?

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Do you have a reason to believe that wealthy people need a stronger deterrent than they currently have?

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Silly Icky. They wealthy don't get speeding tickets. Their driver's do.
 

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Posted by msquared (Member # 4484) on :
 
There goes Kayla's typical left wing class warfare.

I know several people worth at least 10 million and none, I repeat none, of them have a driver. A really high level exec for a Fortune 500 may have a driver, but for the most part you can expect that those drivers follow the rules, becuase they will get in trouble if they are stopped for something with the boss in the back.

msquared
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
I know three people worth ten million dollars, and all three of them have a driver and/or personal secretary.

Anecdotal evidence is not.

That said, there ARE countries out there that use a graduated system of fines according to the wealth of the offender; this kind of thing made news in a Scandinavian country a few years ago when the owner of Virgin Airlines got a speeding ticket and was fined something like $200,000.
 

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Posted by Kayla (Member # 2403) on :
 
Left wing class warfare. I love that. Do you know that I'm unbelievably conservative? I just don't think I should be telling others how to live their lives. I suppose that makes me left wing. You right wingers are always obsessing about what other people are doing.
 

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Posted by Julie (Member # 5580) on :
 
How does everyone know so many people with that much money? And you could have all of $100 to your name but if you take a taxi you now have a driver. Well, if you're in the taxi now. Never mind. I lost what my point was. Does anyone know what I was talking about? I forget. Oh well, I'm going to bed.
 

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Posted by Equality 7-2521 (Member # 5586) on :
 

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So progressive fines are bad but progressive taxes are ok?

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They wealthy don't get speeding tickets. Their driver's do.

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I actually think a driver may get fired for speeding. If I was rich I'd fire my driver!

But seriously, why not just make everyone give a certain amount of community service? Each one of us has exactly the same amount of time everyday.
 

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Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
 
Are you a new member, or an old one using an new nick?

If you're new, welcome!


I'm trying to decide if you're being facetious in your first couple of sentences, but I don't know you well enough to judge.

Hmm, I read it again, and I think you are being facetious.


 

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Posted by Erik Slaine (Member # 5583) on :
 
I am a big believer in "the punishment should fit the crime."

Speeding, eh? How about slamming you into a wall at velocity? Speed governer installed on your vehicle? Listening to the Dickies?

Welcome DanielW, Cool Thread.
 

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Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
 

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I am a big believer in "the punishment should fit the crime."

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Are you a new member, or an old one using an new nick?

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I'm trying to decide if you're being facetious in your first couple of sentences, but I don't know you well enough to judge.

Hmm, I read it again, and I think you are being facetious.

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the punishment should fit the crime

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Yup, but with speeding there is no victim, so is there any real crime? I guess it depends on your perspective. Does a crime need a victim, or is simply breaking a law a crime?
To me speeding laws serve only to protect you from hurting others and yourself. I don't know how I feel about letting the gov't protect me from making wrong choices.

Maybe we need to pass a law outlawing the consumption of too many Twinkies, 'cuz they'll make you fat, lower your self esteem, cause depression, cause heart disease, and cause you to eat even more Twinkies to make you feel better 'bout everything happening to you 'cuz of Twinkies.

Yes, I realize that was a really long run-on sentence, but hopefully I got my point across!

Equality 7-2521
 

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Posted by Kayla (Member # 2403) on :
 
I'm rather fond of speed limits as they have a tendency to make the roads safer from idiots who think they can do anything. Can you imagine the chaos without speed limits?
 

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Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
 
Yeah, I guess. But Eslaine's punishments were so unreasonable I just had to counter with that. Besides, if there were no speed limits, you could still ticket people for reckless driving. The two are not necessarily synonymous, you know.
 

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Posted by littlemissattitude (Member # 4514) on :
 

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You right wingers are always obsessing about what other people are doing.

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I like that. Actually, the left wing does, too, but that just goes to prove my theory that the left wing and the right wing have diametrically opposite goals and use the exact same strategies and tactics to try to acheive them. It's not a straight-line continuum, it's a circle, and all the radicals, left and right, meet at the bottom.

And that, my friends, is my philsophical statement for the day.
 

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Posted by DanielW (Member # 5395) on :
 

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Welcome DanielW, Cool Thread.

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Thankee
 

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Posted by Ralphie (Member # 1565) on :
 
I'm surprised you went for the blood pudding instead of the tea and strumpets.
 

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Posted by Tristan (Member # 1670) on :
 
We do have graduaded fines here in Sweden although not for things like speeding tickets and there are set min and max amounts so the fines would never be as obscenely high as the one Tom suggested. These are used for crimes that don't mandate a prison sentence but are felt to be too serious for a small, set fine. We call them "day fines" and it works so that you are sentenced to a certain number of day fines (between 30 and 150) depending on how serious the crime is, and then each day fine is set to between ~3 and ~120$$ depending on what the court consider reasonable when taking into account the income, fortune, maintenance obligations and other economic circumstances of the convicted. In special circumstances the day fines can be set even lower, but never lower than that the total amount exceeds ~50$.

I am not sure why speeding tickets aren't graduated according to the same system, but my guess is that it would cost too much to administrate such a system, that the fines are low enough that everybody are supposed to afford them and that the rich are not so over represented among the speeders as to warrant special deterrance. Anyway, the biggest deterrant for speeders is the risk of losing their license.
 

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Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
 
In the US there is one redeeming, economic leveling feature to our traffic tickets.

Insurance Rates.

If you get too many tickets, the cost to insure your car goes up.

If you drive a small used inexpensive car, it goes up less than if you drive a $60,000 Super SUV with Sauna, Tinted Glass, and Gold Trim.

There is also the whineyness factor to be added in. Are you suggesting that richer people should pay larger fines in order to be fair, or are you hoping your fine will be reduced, hence making speeding for you something much more budgetable?

Does equality under the law mean that I should be able to afford to break it as much as the rich man next door?
 

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Posted by Erik Slaine (Member # 5583) on :
 
Icarus, I'm sorry if I got ya all 'riled up!

My comments were intended as an (obviously confusing and lame) attempt at comedy. I mean, listening to the Dickies?

Sorry I offended. But I do think that speeding laws are in place for a good reason too.
 

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Posted by DanielW (Member # 5395) on :
 
*bumped because I just got back from holiday*

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Does equality under the law mean that I should be able to afford to break it as much as the rich man next door?

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I would say so, yes. If not, then, say a rich person and a poor person commit the same crime. The penalty for it hurts the rich person more than the poor person. That seems unfair to me.

I just finished A-Level economics. I was bored outta my skull for most of the time, but one concept I carried away from it was the idea of utility. Basically, something's utility is how much pleasure, use, etc. can be got out of it. E.g., a glass of water has a lot more utility for someone dying of thirst in the desert than it does for someone living in a house somewhere with water on tap, and maybe a couple crates of mineral water in the garage. Say both people commit a traffic offence ( I dunno, maybe the guy in the desert overtakes a camel on an inside sand dune ). At the moment, the law wants to take the glass of water away from both people.

(minor sermon over)

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are you hoping your fine will be reduced, hence making speeding for you something much more budgetable?

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I don't have a driving licence. At the rate I am currently progressing, I may receive my buspass first I am taking lessons, but my hand-eye co-ordination is absolutely atrocious. I went out in our car with my dad the other day. I asked him when we could go out again, and he told me to get out my advent calendar
 

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Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
 
I totally agree with DanielW. If fines are meant as a deterent, then it just makes sense that to make the system work, you have to tailor it to the individual. I mean, it's like prison sentences, isn't it? Prison sentences are all based on someone having a normal human lifespan. But let's say some people had a lifespan three times the lifespan of a lot of other people. In this instance, a prison sentence of,say, 50 years means a lot less to those with 3 times the life expectancy.

Now, we can get into a bunch of 'what ifs' and 'how to implement?' questions. (What if the person is worth a million but has debt of two, etcetera.) However, I think the idea definitely has merit.

Let me add that whoever proposed community service has a great idea, too. I think that if instead of fines you just gave out community service, I think that would be totally fair in every way that counted. So, I support that idea as well.
 

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Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
 
The utilitarian approach does have its good point: eg if a poor person can't buy a pizza cuz s/he hadda pay off a speeding ticket, then Bill Gates' speeding fine should deprive him of enough property so that he can't afford a pizza.

Sounds a bit extreme, but then there's always been idiots like the South Dakota congressman, with seven reported accidents and twelve speeding tickets issued, whose gubernatorial address to the legislature included, "Bill Janklow speeds when he drives. Shouldn't, but he does". Though not in this article, he went on, "If the penalty was two-days in jail, I wouldn't speed. But I can afford the fine, so I speed."
The total of his fines for the twelve speeding tickets was less than a thousand dollars. It pays to have political connections.

Perhaps a system like Finland, where it's possible to be hit with a $103thousand fine for doing 46.5 mph in a 30-mph zone.

Problem being that issuance of tickets is nearly random, and purely at the discretion of the police officer. Janklow probably continued speeding while governor, but "rank has its privileges" includes intimidating the police.
Visitors to Lake Havesu are regularly nearly blown off the road by SUVed locals doing their normal 85 on up, then nailed to the wall for doing 67 in a 65 zone. Not that there is any proof other than the speedtrapper's word.

[ September 01, 2003, 05:12 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
 

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Posted by Danzig (Member # 4704) on :
 
There are two ways to make speeding tickets fair- either eliminate them entirely, or make it an offense punishable by death. Pretty much anything else will screw over some people more than others. Personally, being middle class and more likely to get richer than poorer, I say screw the poor. If two hundred bucks is a problem, something is going to come up anyway. Well, actually I say eliminate speeding laws, but that will never happen because even if people were not scared, police would then have almost no excuse to stop people who look suspicious.
 

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