A Billionaire and a Nurse Shouldn't Pay the Same Fine for Speeding...

[Dashinka 24,494]

13 minutes ago, bcking said:

Dropping money on a restaurant isn't the same thing as easily paying fines and ignoring your punishment because it is inconsequential. Eating at a restaurant isn't illegal. Speeding is.

 

It is still boggling my mind how off base some people are on this thread.

You are making a big assumption that the fine is meant to be a deterrent when it is more like a tax.  Isn't this the assumption that is driving the OP to suggest higher fines for the wealthy?  The whole deterrent argument is just political spin.

[bcking 3,157]

4 minutes ago, Bill & Katya said:

You are making a big assumption that the fine is meant to be a deterrent when it is more like a tax.  Isn't this the assumption that is driving the OP to suggest higher fines for the wealthy?  The whole deterrent argument is just political spin.

A tax isn't only administered to permit who are caught doing something illegal. Fines and taxes are different things. Even if they were a tax, comparing them to eating out at a restaurant would still be a stupid example.

 

Fines are trying to act like a deterrent. I'm not disagreeing with you about the fact that they aren't effective, and I've provided at least one study that shows that. If we want them to be effective, a fine scale based on wealth is one potential way to possibly give them more impact.

 

I personally believe in as strict of punishments as possible because I like social order. I love red light cameras because I see WAY too many people speeding up and passing through them because they figure they can "get away with it". I'm all for anything we can do to keep people from being idiots. If that means fining them far more money to make it hurt more, I'd support it. I'd just want to be relative to the person, since one amount may hurt one person but not another.

Edited March 20, 2018 by bcking

[Voice of Reason 10,298]

57 minutes ago, bcking said:

Dropping money on a restaurant isn't the same thing as easily paying fines and ignoring your punishment because it is inconsequential. Eating at a restaurant isn't illegal. Speeding is.

 

It is still boggling my mind how off base some people are on this thread.

Spending (wasting?) money at a diner isn’t much different than paying a fine for speeding.  It’s all about what you have extra to spend.  We are talking about how unfair it is that poor people have to pay as much as rich people for luxuries such as breaking the law.

[smilesammich 10,727]

12 hours ago, IDWAF said:

And I doubt you ever will.

 

No.  we pay an amount of taxes throughout the year based on a tier which is typically inflated.  Then at the end of the year, we adjust those taxes based on gross income and deductions.  Many people get a refund, because they did not properly set up their W4.  All Caesar does is provide the forms with which to balance the books.  It’s up to us to pay (or not).  Some choose not to.  In the end, we pay far less than what the tiers suggest.  (Kind of goes back to that Canadian tax argument Teddy and I underwent.  My ETR is around 10%, and Canadians pay 40-50%. Big difference.)

If NB should work harder to fly first class, then poor people who get tickets should work harder to reduce the ratio of the fines from tickets.  Same thing applies.

 

Agreeing with the OP is pretty much like whining.  You don’t think it’s fair that a rich person pays the same as a poor person.  And you also fail to see that if we WERE to move to an income based monetary punishment system, the court systems would be overwhelmed and the already slow process would become even slower.

it is not up to me if taxes come out of my check. as much as i'd love for you to tell me what taxes are, how they work, and why refunds happened, i'm all set. i've been paying income taxes for 25 years. you still don't understand that when it comes to taxes, you get what you pay for. canadians' tax rate is not 40-50% to your 10%. that's still just as hilarious to me as when you tried to argue that with teddy.

 

tickets are revenue. government wastes a great deal of money collecting fines from poor people. if it hurt the pockets of rich people a bit more, i believe higher fines are a deterrent (this is my belief, not whining about poor or rich anything).  outside of causing a deterrent, it would generate more revenue for local government. i get that you are not poor and an increase in fines would affect you personally and this is why you don't like it. poor people, in your mind, should work harder and suffer more. that's a very entitled mindset. in my opinion, agreeing with the op is not "like whining", other countries use a scaled structure to impose fines. you like looking at what other countries do, right? so you're whining because you don't want to ever have to pay more for anything and you certainly don't want poor people to feel entitled to equal treatment under the law. i get it. i disagree with you completely, but i get it. it's a generational thing, i think.

12 hours ago, Ban Hammer said:

but we're all supposed to be equal under the law........

exactly.

[smilesammich 10,727]

11 hours ago, spookyturtle said:

Evidently that only matters selectively. If it was a rich black guy and he had to pay more than a poor white guy the law would be racist. 

how? if jayz gets a speeding ticket and has to pay a few thousand dollars i don't think anyone is going to be screaming injustice.

[bcking 3,157]

15 minutes ago, IDWAF said:

Spending (wasting?) money at a diner isn’t much different than paying a fine for speeding.  It’s all about what you have extra to spend.  We are talking about how unfair it is that poor people have to pay as much as rich people for luxuries such as breaking the law.

Eating at a restaurant isn't illegal and doesn't put other people at risk. Spending money on it is perfectly fine and reasonable.

 

Paying a fine for speeding is a penalty for having broken a law. Breaking the law isn't a luxury.

 

It's about as different as you can get, when it comes to spending money.

[smilesammich 10,727]

21 minutes ago, IDWAF said:

Spending (wasting?) money at a diner isn’t much different than paying a fine for speeding.  It’s all about what you have extra to spend.  We are talking about how unfair it is that poor people have to pay as much as rich people for luxuries such as breaking the law.

ridiculous sense of entitlement, 'if you choose to spend your extra $ on speeding tickets by all means speed away - you worked hard for that money" what in the world?

you are the one talking about how it's unfair that poor people can't afford to break the law and whining about how rich people have earned the right to do so..

Edited March 20, 2018 by smilesammich

[Dashinka 24,494]

2 hours ago, bcking said:

A tax isn't only administered to permit who are caught doing something illegal. Fines and taxes are different things. Even if they were a tax, comparing them to eating out at a restaurant would still be a stupid example.

 

Fines are trying to act like a deterrent. I'm not disagreeing with you about the fact that they aren't effective, and I've provided at least one study that shows that. If we want them to be effective, a fine scale based on wealth is one potential way to possibly give them more impact.

 

I personally believe in as strict of punishments as possible because I like social order. I love red light cameras because I see WAY too many people speeding up and passing through them because they figure they can "get away with it". I'm all for anything we can do to keep people from being idiots. If that means fining them far more money to make it hurt more, I'd support it. I'd just want to be relative to the person, since one amount may hurt one person but not another.

But this wasn't the meaning of the OP proposal.  Again, this is just another tax the rich plan/study/whatever with a new layer of lipstick on it.  Btw, taxes can also be a fine, and also act as a deterrent.  Remember the luxury yacht tax a few years ago.  It certainly deterred a lot of folks from buying luxury boats to the detriment to a lot of blue collar workers.

Edited March 20, 2018 by Bill & Katya

[bcking 3,157]

12 minutes ago, Bill & Katya said:

But this wasn't the meaning of the OP proposal.  Again, this is just another tax the rich plan/study/whatever with a new layer of lipstick on it.  Btw, taxes can also be a fine, and also act as a deterrent.  Remember the luxury yacht tax a few years ago.  It certainly deterred a lot of folks from buying luxury boats to the detriment to a lot of blue collar workers.

A yacht tax would still not be a fine though, since buying a yacht is not breaking the law. You can legally do so.

 

A fine is for breaking the law. You don't get taxed because you broke the law. Both can act as deterrents for behavior, but that doesn't mean they are the same. One is a legal behavior, the other is illegal. 

 

The original article touched on both aspects, the "fairness" argument and the "meaningful punishment" argument. I've been focusing on the latter mostly because I don't see fines as an issue of fairness. Taxes should be fair, fines don't have to be. At the end of the day you broke the law. I care more about whether you are going to be bothered enough to try not to do it again. 

 

A millionaire won't give a darn that they were fined 150, and so I would prefer to punish them more until it feels the same as a low income person being fined 150.

 

Though if we are talking solely about speeding tickets I think the better deterrent would be increasing surveillance so people are caught more often. I think fines in that situation fail to work because most people who get a speeding ticket speed the majority of the time and don't get caught. Even if you are caught once, the vast majority of the time you "get away with it".

 

I would support far more speed cameras, and automatic systems to identify speeding and send tickets in the mail. If people couldn't get away with it, they would be less likely to do it. So for me it would be the frequency of the fine, not the individual total amount.

[The Nature Boy 7,659]

1 hour ago, smilesammich said:

how? if jayz gets a speeding ticket and has to pay a few thousand dollars i don't think anyone is going to be screaming injustice.

My guess is BLM would hold massive protests. 

 

or is BLM still a thing now that the election is over ?

[smilesammich 10,727]

Just now, Nature Boy Flair said:

My guess is BLM would hold massive protests. 

 

or is BLM still a thing now that the election is over ?

my guess is that you don't know very much about blm or what they protest.

 

still a thing, still active. https://blacklivesmatter.com/

[spookyturtle 9,465]

3 hours ago, smilesammich said:

how? if jayz gets a speeding ticket and has to pay a few thousand dollars i don't think anyone is going to be screaming injustice.

There would be some. 

[smilesammich 10,727]

5 minutes ago, spookyturtle said:

There would be some. 

doubt it.

 

Quote

With a net worth of roughly $810 million, according to Forbes magazine's 2017 "Hip-Hop's Wealthiest Artists" ranking, Jay-Z is the second-richest mogul to rise from hip-hop, behind Sean Combs, also known as "Diddy," with a net worth of $820 million.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/j/jayz.asp

[Ban Hammer 13,335]

3 hours ago, bcking said:

A fine is for breaking the law. You don't get taxed because you broke the law. Both can act as deterrents for behavior, but that doesn't mean they are the same. One is a legal behavior, the other is illegal. 

 

 

a fine is for doing bad, a tax is for doing good.

[smilesammich 10,727]

1 minute ago, Ban Hammer said:

a fine is for doing bad, a tax is for doing good.

a fine is for doing bad, a tax is for breathing.