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Should traffic fines and other fines be based on the income the offender makes?

Should traffic fines and other fines be based on the income one makes?

  • Total voters
    76
What if...? said:
As the OP is talking about fines, not prison sentences, this is not a good example.

This is something I agree with.

Here in California a carpool or trafic light camera fine comes out to about a weeks pay for a minimum wage person. If a weeks pay is the standard of punishment for some, it should be about a weeks pay for all.
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But they're not saying "we're charging a week's pay", they're saying "we're charging X". If that fine is levied against a person below the poverty line, where it's a year's pay, are you going to argue that everyone should pay a year's pay?

It's absurd.
 
Chuz Life said:
Those of us who have cops in our familiers or who have close relationships with them,.. know very well about "non quota,... quotas."

Consider drug confiscation laws and many departments get to "keep" all the money and toys they find (and confiscate.)

Should it be that way? No.

But you can't deny the reality that the temptation is there.
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Remember though, quotas are a function of revenue devolving from tickets, and if some tickets yielded much more revenue there might be less need for them.
 
Cephus said:
But they're not saying "we're charging a week's pay", they're saying "we're charging X". If that fine is levied against a person below the poverty line, where it's a year's pay, are you going to argue that everyone should pay a year's pay?

It's absurd.
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I never said to reduce the idea to absurdity.

To say the punishment for crimes should be equal, that if the punishment is ten years then everybody gets ten years, makes sense as long as some are not "immortal" making ten years effectively nothing.

The entire concept of "fines" is economic violence. Punishment by financial means as opposed to corporal. Therefore, equal fines are NOT equal punishment. Its the equivalent of saying some should get ten years and some should get one. You pay a weeks pay, this other guy pays ten seconds pay. Not the same punishment.
 
I vote no. We already have a point system that theoretically applies to everyone equally. A law like this could encourage law enforcement to go after everyone who drives a decent car.
 
Helix said:
I vote no. We already have a point system that theoretically applies to everyone equally. A law like this could encourage law enforcement to go after everyone who drives a decent car.
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So why not just eliminate fines for traffic fines and just go with a point system?
 
What if...? said:
I never said to reduce the idea to absurdity.

To say the punishment for crimes should be equal, that if the punishment is ten years then everybody gets ten years, makes sense as long as some are not "immortal" making ten years effectively nothing.

The entire concept of "fines" is economic violence. Punishment by financial means as opposed to corporal. Therefore, equal fines are NOT equal punishment. Its the equivalent of saying some should get ten years and some should get one. You pay a weeks pay, this other guy pays ten seconds pay. Not the same punishment.
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Sure it is because the fines are not defined by pay, they are defined by the crime. Do crime X, get penalty Y. Everyone who does crime X gets penalty Y. That is equal. Unless you're willing to charge absolutely everyone who does crime X a certain percentage of their pay, from Bill Gates all the way down to the lowest bum on the street corner, then to do it at all is inequal.
 
jamesrage said:
So why not just eliminate fines for traffic fines and just go with a point system?
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while i wouldn't necessarily be against that, there would still have to be some way to pay for traffic enforcement. tickets are a user fee, but one that needs a lot of oversight to minimize abuse.
 
What if...? said:
Remember though, quotas are a function of revenue devolving from tickets, and if some tickets yielded much more revenue there might be less need for them.
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the entire concept would be thrown out on "equal protection grounds" and would cause massive problems. small towns would target wealthy drivers for tickets while letting scofflaws driving crappy cars go. The 42 USC 1983 suits would go through the roof. those who sell expensive cars would probably get into the act as well
 
rathi said:
The problem with fines is that for those with enough money to ignore them, they fail to act as a deterrent. However, speeding tickets also lead to license suspension, so I would say that income based fines aren't required.
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I totally agree. :) If one keeps producing tickets, it's the license that has to go.
 
EmpiricalTruth said:
yes it should depend on how much you make, because the fines effect rich people less and the point of a speeding ticket is to stop you from speeding

the system we have now hurts poor people more than rich people, it should be an equal percentage.
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The point of a speeding ticket is to collect money for the locality.
 
Tucker Case said:
If our system is designed where punishments are supposed to act as a detterent, then yes, the fines should be a set % of income.

If everyone receives the same percentage of fine, then everyone is being treated equally under the law, regardless of the actual monetary amount.

A person making 20 K a year gets a fine of 0.5% of their income, and the monetary value of this fine is $100. A person making 200 K a year gets the same fine of 0.5% and the monetary amount is $1000. They both received the same punishment.

However, if both people are fined $100, one is getting fined 0.5% of his income while the other is getting fined 0.05% of his income. Obviously the person being fined 0.5% of his income had a harsher penalty than the person being fined 0.05% of his income.

Thus, it makes perfect sense to start handing out equal punishments.
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What do you do with somebody that shows 0 as income for the year ( I assume you would use the last years tax return to determine income)?

He can rack up as many tickets as he wants because he pays nothing.

Is that right?
 
misterman said:
Yes. A $50 fine won't deter a millionaire.
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A speeding ticket is not just the fine, it is higher insurance rates, on all his cars, which will add up to thousands per year.

If he gets enough tickets he will not have a license.

I don't understand how anybody could be for this system, unless they are the ones that show 0 for income and will have to pay nothing if stopped for speeding.
 
jamesrage said:
That poor person who is fined $200 will not be able to buy clothes,food or any thing else or anything else he considers to be luxuries to him and that is $200 a shop owner will not be able to see. I can use that argument too. The trickle down effect is irrelevant.
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If the poor person in your story is playing so close to the vest with money they should not be driving.

It costs money to drive period. If you can't afford it, you shouldn't be driving.
 
sazerac said:
The $6.00 speeding ticket my girlfriend's rich cousin in Costa Rica got meant nothing to him but a good laugh. It sure didn't slow him down!
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According to some of the people here, they should have cut his head off for a speeding ticket.
 
RightinNYC said:
Exactly.



But then they're not driving any more, which is the optimal outcome. If they force their driver to speed, then the driver will lose his license as well.





Income taxes are constitutional because there is an amendment allowing for their imposition. Fines are punitive measures handed out by the courts. It's a lot more questionable to base the punitive punishment that people receive on an entirely unrelated factor. Unless there is some evidence that speeding is related to income, I don't think this would work.



Does he live there? Do they have a point system?
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Tehre is no point system in Mexico, that would require computers. It is also safer for the officers.

You either pay the officer 50 pesos (I don't do that of course) or take the ticket, unless you can talk him out of it, and go pay at the station, like $140.00 pesos. They will take your license plate or drivers license as a gaurantee that you will pay.
 
misterman said:
No.

Profiling happens before a crime is committed. You can't get pulled on suspicion of speeding, just speeding.

And profiling involves some characteristic of the driver that's obvious. It's hard to target high income drivers. Perhaps they are targeting Lexus's instead of beat up Volkswagens?
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You got it right. They would target cars that appeared to have an owner that can pay more. It would come to that especially in small towns and from out of state cars.
 
earthworm said:
And, as usual, our nation is lagging behind.
And, yes!, I agree with the Europeans.
In America, its the poor who are likely to be pulled over for an offense, and there are reasons for this.
These reasons must be known, exactly, and scientifically.
There should always be a positive outcome.
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Why would it be more likely that the poor would be pulled over for an offense? Do you think if a person is poor, they can't understand the traffic laws?

Why would a "poor" person be driving in the first place?
 
misterman said:
So doctors will just speed all they want because fines are like pocket change to them. Sounds "fair" to you, but doesn't stop speeding.
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If a doctor gets enough tickets for speeding he will lose his license, plus his insurance rates on his expensive will go through the roof.

He needs his car to get to work, therefore he will not do what you portend.
 
People here saying a "poor" person would have to pay more of their income for a traffic fine.

Here is the definition of poor

poor   /pʊər/ Show Spelled
[poor] Show IPA
adjective, -er, -est, noun
–adjective
1. having little or no money, goods, or other means of support: a poor family living on welfare.
2. Law . dependent upon charity or public support.
3. (of a country, institution, etc.) meagerly supplied or endowed with resources or funds.

Using that definition, how could a poor person be driving.

Driving costs money and if a person does not have the money to pay for insurance, any damage they cause or any fines they get, they should not be driving.
 
Mason66 said:
People here saying a "poor" person would have to pay more of their income for a traffic fine.

Here is the definition of poor

poor   /pʊər/ Show Spelled
[poor] Show IPA
adjective, -er, -est, noun
–adjective
1. having little or no money, goods, or other means of support: a poor family living on welfare.
2. Law . dependent upon charity or public support.
3. (of a country, institution, etc.) meagerly supplied or endowed with resources or funds.

Using that definition, how could a poor person be driving.
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You never heard of used cars,auctions or charities?
Driving costs money and if a person does not have the money to pay for insurance, any damage they cause or any fines they get, they should not be driving.
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People do drive without insurance and many poor people can afford 40-50 bucks a month for insurance.
 
It should be based on the severity of the traffic crime.

Example.. If they are going 50+ MPH in a 15 MPH school zone they should be arrested or get license suspended. 5 miles over the speed limit they should be ignored, 10 miles over they should get a warning or small fine. 20-30 they should get a large fine. Anything higher should be left to the judge to decide based on their history or severity.

Running through a red traffic light (I don't mean flooring it when it turns yellow, I mean actually ignoring the light) should get their license suspended for reckless driving.
 
Why this fascination of the rich are some of you so envious that everything to you is class warfare. No absolutely not breaking the law has no status attached to it. if a poor person pays 100.00 the a billionare that broke precisely the same law ought to pay 100.00. Get real this is utterly ridiculous.
 
This is a problematic issue. I'm going to give you two perspectives.

1) On the one hand, I'm not entirely sure that basing one's legal faults on income is a viable or just way of punishing an individual.

2) On the other hand, I used to work in the private equity division of a major US bank. The senior member of that office was an extremely rich dude who was a member of an organization that "donated" money to the CHP (California Highway Patrol). This organization received, in exchange, a card, to carry in member's wallets, that would, essentially, enable them to avoid any and all traffic penalties. I heard my boss, at one point (when talking to another rich buddy of his), brag about the fact that he was caught driving at 110 mph down a California highway in his ridiculously expensive sports car, and managed to avoid a ticket entirely because he held a membership in this organization. In short, we've managed to institutionalize bribery. Put another way, this guy, my former employer, had essentially worked himself into a position that he felt he was immune from traffic violations entirely because he was rich. People like him deserve to be punished. It makes sense that he'd be punished more than people who don't feel they're entitled to endanger the rest of us just because they've got money.
 
jamesrage said:
Should traffic fines and other fines be based on the income the offender makes?

Yes, no ,maybe?

Europe slapping rich with massive traffic fines


European countries are increasingly pegging speeding fines to income as a way to punish wealthy scofflaws who would otherwise ignore tickets.

Advocates say a $290,000 (euro203,180.83) speeding ticket slapped on a millionaire Ferrari driver in Switzerland was a fair and well-deserved example of the trend.

Germany, France, Austria and the Nordic countries also issue punishments based on a person's wealth. In Germany the maximum fine can be as much as $16 million compared to only $1 million in Switzerland. Only Finland regularly hands out similarly hefty fine to speeding drivers, with the current record believed to be a euro170,000 (then about $190,000) ticket in 2004.

The Swiss court appeared to set a world record when it levied the fine in November on a man identified in the Swiss media only as "Roland S." Judges in the eastern canton of St. Gallen described him as a "traffic thug" in their verdict, which only recently came to light.

"As far as we're concerned this is very good," Sabine Jurisch, a road safety campaigner with the Swiss group Road Cross.
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I believe that the wealthy should definitely pay more for any illegal action than the poor. It should be a percentage of your income. Of course, there would have to be built-in protections to guard against police officers going after the wealthy more frequently in order to gain more finances. Punishment for an illegal act should be severe enough to deter the citizen from doing such an act again. A $100 to $200 fine is a lot for someone in poverty, but is chump change for anyone making 250K and up. So my answer is YES YES YES ... BUT incorporate safeguards .. good poll post jamesrag
 
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