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$56,000 Speeding Ticket Issued Under Finland's System of Fines Based On Income
HughPickens.com writes Joe Pinsker writes at The Atlantic that Finish businessman Reima Kuisla was recently caught going 65 miles per hour in a 50 zone in his home country and ended up paying a fine of $56,000. The fine was so extreme because in Finland, some traffic fines, as well as fines for shoplifting and violating securities-exchange laws, are assessed based on earnings—and Kuisla's declared income was €6.5 million per year. Several years ago another executive was fined the equivalent of $103,000 for going 45 in a 30 zone on his motorcycle. Finland's system for calculating fines is relatively simple: It starts with an estimate of the amount of spending money a Finn has for one day, and then divides that by two—the resulting number is considered a reasonable amount of spending money to deprive the offender of. Then, based on the severity of the crime, the system has rules for how many days the offender must go without that money. Going about 15 mph over the speed limit gets you a multiplier of 12 days, and going 25 mph over carries a 22-day multiplier. Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria, France, and Switzerland also have some sliding-scale fines, or "day-fines," in place, but in America, flat-rate fines are the norm. Since the late 80s, when day-fines were first seriously tested in the U.S., they have remained unusual and even exotic.
Should such a system be used in the United States? After all, wealthier people have been shown to drive more recklessly than those who make less money. For example Steve Jobs was known to park in handicapped spots and drive around without license plates. But more importantly, day-fines could introduce some fairness to a legal system that many have convincingly shown to be biased against the poor. Last week, the Department of Justice released a comprehensive report on how fines have been doled out in Ferguson, Missouri. "Ferguson's law enforcement practices are shaped by the City's focus on revenue rather than by public safety needs," it concluded. The first day-fine ever in the U.S. was given in 1988, and about 70 percent of Staten Island's fines in the following year were day-fines. A similar program was started in Milwaukee, and a few other cities implemented the day-fine idea and according to Judith Greene, who founded Justice Strategies, a nonprofit research organization, all of these initiatives were effective in making the justice system fairer for poor people. "When considering a proportion of their income,people are at least constantly risk-averse. This means that the worst that would happen is that the deterrent effect of fines would be the same across wealth or income levels," says Casey Mulligan. "We should start small—say, only speeding tickets—and see what happens."
Should such a system be used in the United States? After all, wealthier people have been shown to drive more recklessly than those who make less money. For example Steve Jobs was known to park in handicapped spots and drive around without license plates. But more importantly, day-fines could introduce some fairness to a legal system that many have convincingly shown to be biased against the poor. Last week, the Department of Justice released a comprehensive report on how fines have been doled out in Ferguson, Missouri. "Ferguson's law enforcement practices are shaped by the City's focus on revenue rather than by public safety needs," it concluded. The first day-fine ever in the U.S. was given in 1988, and about 70 percent of Staten Island's fines in the following year were day-fines. A similar program was started in Milwaukee, and a few other cities implemented the day-fine idea and according to Judith Greene, who founded Justice Strategies, a nonprofit research organization, all of these initiatives were effective in making the justice system fairer for poor people. "When considering a proportion of their income,people are at least constantly risk-averse. This means that the worst that would happen is that the deterrent effect of fines would be the same across wealth or income levels," says Casey Mulligan. "We should start small—say, only speeding tickets—and see what happens."
I fail to see why this is a problem.
Social justice extremism will allow for more unaccountability
The free riders get another free ride.
Also Ferguson? The % of people being ticketed for expired plates should not be against the general pop. It should be the non-registering population.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Auf den Autobahn!
After all, rich, old, retired people speed, too.
Stop laughing.
They should just make it illegal to speed in the first place, then people won't do it.
One alternative is to abolish fines, and send people to jail for an amount of time relative to the infraction. Everyone gets about 22,000 days [source: The Moody Blues] so the punishment would be equal regardless of income, right?
John
And to each according to his need.
Scandinavia is awesome.
Whether you view the fines as a deterrent or a punishment, it makes sense that under a flat-fine structure, rich people will be unaffected by fines that are crippling for poor people to pay.
If a class of people can simply ignore the penalties doled out for breaking a law, that system needs reworking.
There are probably some devils lurking in the details (some very rich people have little income; is spending money a good proxy, some people live just within their means and others save quite a bit, etc etc), but the basic idea seems very sound.
On the one hand, a scaling punishment I think is a smart idea. On the other hand, since ticket fines generally go right back into the department coffers, this will make the police target those of means far more and kinda reverse the current situation, where you'll have the average joes being more reckless because the cops don't see it as worth their time to pull them over. This will also lead to the rich guys going for clunkers to avoid being targeted. So in the end, you might actually end up with less overall safety. Now, if the departments didn't get that income, maybe we could curb that trend.
> Should such a system be used in the United States? After all, wealthier people have been shown to drive more recklessly than those who make less money. An excellent argument for making fines strictly a function of how recklessly the offender drives. Making this about income seems like a stretch.
Speeding is a way to make money?
Much higher incidence of murder, armed robbery, vandalism etc. where they are.
Murder and armed robbery aren't usually dealt with by fines, though, so comparing them to the punishment system for breaking the speed limit is a bit off. No idea about vandalism.
We have a constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the law. Socialistic viewpoints don't work here.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Solution - don't speed ;)
Yeah, because a $200 fine is really going to deter someone who makes that much money in 5 minutes, especially if speeding saves them 5 minutes on their commute.
Except, if you read even the summary, you'll discover that they're taking half of estimated spending money, not half of your income. Someone living paycheck to paycheck would get an extremely small fine, while someone earning millions will be deprived of nearly half their income.
Nope, tickets are all about revenue. The speed limits are enforced almost entirely arbitrarily, although every so often they do actually pull over someone who's being very reckless. If they were enforced much more stringently, people would start demanding that limits be raised and revenue would dry up. If you used some technical means to prevent people from speeding, revenue would dry up (As would sales of overpowered sports cars.) Of course we can't say that, because arbitrary enforcement of a law would be unconstitutional.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I'm supportive of the income based scales. I know i'm more reckless now that I have a decent income. When I was poor I would never speed (I also had nowhere where to be at any given time.) What I would like to see is fines that are based on a percentage over the speed and not X mph over. Going 35 in a 25 is far worse than going 70 in a 60. I also wish people got huge tickets for following to close, as a function of speed vs following distance.
They don't take the full income - the article says _spending money_ and only half of that.
Social Justice = Give Me Free Shit.
It would bias the police's interests in funding their department with fines, as they often do in the US, towards stopping and arresting RICH people for one, since they would be paying the greater numerical fines. It might give the rich a bit of a taste of equality, for once... ...so naturally, they will resist implementation of 'day-fines'.
All the more reason to implement them immediately.
Hence why it says "It starts with an estimate of the amount of spending money a Finn has for one day, and then divides that by two—the resulting number is considered a reasonable amount of spending money to deprive the offender of". It's not how much money they make per day, it's how much is estimated they have left over to spend.
The idea is apply the same amount of punishment, not take the same amount of money.
If you're rich, a $200 fine is like not going out for a fancy dinner.
If you're poor, a $200 fine takes you months to recover from.
what about what about haveing speed limts that go with the flow of the road.
There are places where the posted limit is but the real enforced limit is 70.
Don't break the law then.
The most reckless drivers are the ones that pay the most insurance premiums on average....which happens to be young men, who don't make squat. Driving fast or recklessly is not the same as a study on ethics...
Given that you need a certain base amount of income to live, depriving someone of 12 days of income is terribly regressive - someone living paycheck to paycheck may well not be able to eat for a while if lacking nearly 12 half-days of income, whereas someone being fined $50k or whatever because they make a few million a year will not miss it that much... though they may well decide that spending about $200k to support a candidate to run against the sheriff in that region is a worthwhile expense.
Even when Phase 2 is ???, there's still a Phase 1, so you might want to read a bit more carefully:
CA regs said you have six months to plate your new car. He just bought a new car every six months so what he did was legal.
Now for parking in handicapped spots, I'm all for crushing his vehicle.
No amount of money should be able to excuse you for being a pillock.
If a millionaire gets fined $10, it's quite literally a joke not a deterrent. If a poor homeless guy gets fined $10, it's more than he can afford. Thus the treatment of the same crime for two people is unfair.
The alternative? You lose your licence at the same speed as everyone else. I guarantee you that in a choice between more points on your licence and a fine proportional to your income, you'll pick the fine. Because once you fill that licence, you're fucked unless you want to face the humiliation of sitting your test again.
The fine is a portion of your income. So it hurts all fairly. If you're worried about where the money goes, put it into a victim surcharge to pay towards reparations for victims of all crime.
But fuck your idea of "we should be thanking these people". I don't want a fucking idiot driving down my street too fast whether he has no money or is a millionaire. And I certainly don't want millionaires DELIBERATELY breaking the law because the consequences are so fucking pathetic to them that it will never matter.
It gets very complicated. The reason many wealthy people get low taxes, is because they know how to move the money they are not using at the moment away from being taxable. So on paper they may be earning 50k a year. While their net worth may be billions of dollars.
However you also have people with a high net worth, but do not really make a lot of money. For example farmers, They have millions of dollars in Land and equipment, However their quality of life is rather middle class. We really need to find a way to sort out The Wealthy people who look poor on paper, and poor who look wealthy on paper.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The twenty minutes on the side of the road would be a deterrent.
You have to put things in context.
The Finns are the worlds worst drivers.
The Finns think they are the worlds best drivers.
Think Masshole ^ 10
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Does anyone in Finland live paycheck to paycheck? I thought the government took care of people up there.
A better system would be to fine min(X*(daily income - daily minimum wage),Y) where X is the number of days eqauivalent to fine, and Y is the minimum fine to apply in all cases...
Actually this has been taken to account. If your income has changed drastically from last year, you can request your fines to be rated based on your current year income.
Demerit points are much more of a deterrent to things like speeding in Canada (speeding while going at the same speed as traffic although is typically not enforced as speeding - i.e. normal speed on 401 is about 120 - 130 while the posted limit is 100....) Caught for speeding 16+km and you lose 3 points, insurance goes up... and if you repeat you have to go to an interview... and at 15.... poof goes your license.
I had contemplated a system like this to make the judiciary more equitable (other ideas include collecting all money to be spent on a court case to be divided equally between the parties- you are spending money for the decision, not to increase your chances of winning), and ultimately had to discard it as it seemed to favor increased lawlessness among the poor (if you have essentially no money, you can commit crimes with impunity as there is little cost). You could make up a hybrid system of an equal chance at paying a percentage of income or a fine, but I don't think it would work that well.
I lean more towards doing away with fines altogether (no more making law enforcement a part of tax collection) and making all penalties jail time or community service. Would be a good reason to get revenue generating laws off the books, and the imposition on both the poor and rich are about equal. And if the deed isn't serious enough to deserve some time in jail, it probably shouldn't be enforced anyway.
After all, wealthier people have been shown to drive more recklessly than those who make less money. For example Steve Jobs was known to park in handicapped spots and drive around without license plates.
Neither of the things mentioned in the example amount to being reckless.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Get rid of artificially low speed limits.
I know, I know, crazy talk. Won't someone think of the revenue?
"It starts with an estimate of the amount of spending money a Finn has for one day"
It's estimated spending cash... not a days income... but what happens when that number is a negative as we know many people live on credit do they have to pay you?
It's still less regressive than fixed fines. And according to the article their system accounts for many of your objections by basing of spending money, not income. For an average Finn, this apparently works out to 30 - 50 Euro/day, or 500 Euro for an average fine.
And most parts of the world have professional police forces who are hired, not elected, so are not subject to campaign contribution bribery such as you describe.
There's this common notion that "[t]he ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force." Poor people commit more crimes precisely because the upper classes dictate what ethical behavior is in such a way as to justify and reenforce their own values and behavior at the expense of other classes -- that's why we see death sentences for ending one life, but not for making business decisions that wind up ending many more lives.
It's typical of the upper class, because it has the spare time to think about such things instead of just scrambling to make ends meet, to create an ethical framework in which they are the paragon of morality. You express this sentiment in your characterization of the wealthy as "successful and hardworking" while eliding how most working class people are successful at what they do and work hard (indeed, they do actually labor), and in ascribing the motivation to create a more equitable society to jealousy.
You can't stop idiots from spending every penny.
Also idiots typically call their government checks, 'paychecks'. They don't like to look themselves in the mirror. Pretend they earned it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The thought process behind this would also justify higher prices for food, medical care and other services based in your income.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The potential for abuse is insane. Say I'm rich. I simply hire some poor guy with zero income to break the law when I need it done (driving me around when I'm in a hurry is a good one). If he gets in trouble I give him a bonus. If he gets caught too many times then I hire some other guy. Really, this is a stupid idea, and will further lead to bias and all kinds of issues with the police. Want to bet people driving more expensive cars get pulled over more often there? Especially in jurisdictions that rely on traffic fine income to support their infrastructure. Cops have latitude in writing tickets, etc. Only going 5-10 over? It's their choice to pull you over or not. They are not *required* to by law, and because of that, the potential for discrimination based on wealth will happen. Maybe you've just a got a cop who financially is in rough shape and he wants to stick it to the man. Well, he'll just wait for a luxury car to come along and bust them for going 5-6 over the limit.
Stupid idea.
Better known as 318230.
They are some of the worst habitual offenders on the road.
Except, if you read even the summary, you'll discover that they're taking half of estimated spending money, not half of your income.
Let's not be naive - the working poor don't have any "spending money" - they have high debt and have to figure out which bills to pay this month and if it's going to be beans or Ramen tonight.
I doubt the working poor pay no fines, so @SuperKendall is right on this one. If somebody can show that this is, in fact, not true, then by all means prove the Finns to be enlightened (the article does not do that). Until then it's fair to assume that nothing is unusual here and that low-level-crime prosecution is universally used to keep the lower classes down.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
This is how it's supposed to be and this isn't even the most expensive ticket issued, so far.
The problem with this concept is that it increasingly associates law enforcement with revenue. That's unacceptable.
All the fines need to have some non-monitary alternative. So many hours of community service for example. Everyone's time is of equal value to THEM. I only have so many hours in my life and until the billionaires make themselves immortal they're going to be under the same limitations.
This way, if the government starts getting rediculious with the fines, people can fight back by just doing community service instead. That will encourage the police to keep the fines low enough that they don't encourage too many people to take the community service option.
Now, the other nasty thing they could do is set the number of community service hours to something insane. Parking ticket? 2 million community service hours or 100 dollars. So there needs to be some association there between the dollar fine and the hours. Possibly set it as some ratio of the minimum wage prior to income multipliers.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Make the fine based on the value of the vehicle at the time of the ticket. So a poor person who can't afford a nice car will pay a large fine and the rich person in a luxury car will pay more. Yes there will be some people that can afford to drive a fancier car than what they are worth. But at least you don't have to tie in the income tax system to every local police department. The officer would just have to look up the book value of the make and model of the car which could be automated when the license plate is entered. You would probably want a minimum fine for people that are driving clunkers that are only worth a couple of hundred dollars.
Stop bringing up personal responsibility in situations like this. Everyone knows one should be free to do what they want, whenever they want, without having to suffer any consequences for their actions.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
To be fair, based on the number of Finnish F1 and WDC champions, they're pretty fucking good at it :P
Good Point. If you make $6,500,000.00 in one year and spend all of it on hookers and blow, then a $56,000 ticket might indeed wipe out all your savings from the previous thirty years. Hardly seems fair.
And or declare a 1$ annual sallary. Like most rich people do.
So, where's the justice in that?
I am sure the chauffeur's union of America would agree with such a fine system. No billionaire would ever drive himself again.
No 15k/hr over the limit would result in you losing 6 days (assuming spending money per day is total income after tax/number of days in year) income for that year.
So worst case scenario you only earn't money in that year you would only lose 2% of your total income. Solution work more than 1 year of your life.
If you happened to win the lottery that year well Ok you may loose 2% of your lottery winnings, how would you cope?
Laws restricting abortions only apply to the poor as well. For the wives, mistresses, and daughters of the wealthy an abortion is just a long weekend in Paris regardless of the law.
The basic principle is sound. 6 days income for 15mph over is pretty stiff, but then again, a lot of US speeding tickets now are in the $400+ range (after court fees, etc) which is 6 days' income for a lot of people.
"15 mph/25 km/h over" is kinda a poor starting point. 55km/h in a 30km/h zone (one that really needs to be a 30km/h zone... like a dense urban center with playgrounds and schools)... to me that's pretty deserving of punishment. 125km/h on a rural road posted at 100km/h in clear weather? I'm not sure that even merits a warning. I'd put the penalties at 30%/40%/50%/60%/70% over the posted limit rather than a fixed speed-delta.
Under California law, when you buy a new car from a dealer, there is a six month grace period to give you time to get license plates for it.
Steve Jobs literally bought a new car every six months so that he never had to actually get license plates for any of them.
Poor people commit more crimes precisely because the upper classes dictate what ethical behavior is in such a way as to justify and reenforce their own values and behavior at the expense of other classes
Did you seriously mean to say that we've outlawed murder as a mere point of fashion?
Consider a fine of 4 hours of community service for driving going 10 mph over the speed limit. For greater infractions, use more hours of community service.
The community will itself benefit, but it can't be used to fund the state, the way those SOB's in Ferguson tried to do.
Wealthy people will feel the pain, but at the same time the poor, retired, students, unemployed, etc. will not be excessively punished.
You negate the argument from greedy sob's that complain about people the salary based rates 'soaking the rich' - and negate the political impact of wealthy people buying off the politicians to stop this system.
You make it a LOT less likely that the clerks will 'fix' the ticket. People go from claiming financial hardship to being the dickwad that refuses to help the community. Why would you help him?
The only real problem is out-of-towners. We can handle that with an exchange program. Speed in New York, but pay the community service in Florida, etc.
P.S. I posted a shorter version of this earlier. I thought it out a bit more and re-posted it here.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
And as far as rich people driving recklessly, I would like to see the research. Insurance research in the US points to the exact opposite. People with low incomes cause more problems on the roadways. This is obviously gov't greed. Maybe we don't have this scheme in the US because the people would never put up with such garbage.
How do they charge tourists in Finland?
Pedal to the metal, baby.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
I don't know how the traffic laws are in Finland, but in the US even google admitted that they made the decision to allow they google cars to speed for safety reasons. We have red light traffic cameras where they constantly crank down the yellow light duration to increase revenue - they could install a simple countdown system that would allow people to know when the light is about to change, but no, that would cut into revenue. I see them as a safety risk because people slam on breaks when yellow light hits (personally I adopted the slow down to almost stop even if green, then if still green, floor it across the intersection - IMHO safer approach, though once I had a pedestrian who mistaken my slowing down as chance to cross on red and almost ended up a hood ornament). I sometimes drive the speed limit just to see what kind of mess it creates, and it does. I even once got pulled over for driving set set 25mph limit through a construction zone, solid concrete barriers on both sides and a police with lights and sirens behind me for about a mile.
Start with a properly designed traffic system, then figure out how to enforce the law - right now the traffic fines are designed for revenue generation, not safety, so we should encourage the rich to get a lot of tickets, it's extra money the governments can spend on the poor. If you make the tickets high, the rich will driver slow and that revenue will be gone!
Only if they manage to get pulled over more than once a week.
No one seems to remember that multiple tickets result in suspended licenses. Driving on suspended licenses results in your car being impounded. Continue and you end up in jail.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
As previously elaborated, what constitutes murder and what punishments are meted out for different methods of deliberately of ending lives are questions answered solely by the class which is the ruling material force of society.
You mean like skin color
Demerit points are much more of a deterrent to things like speeding in Canada
Caught for speeding 16+km and you lose 3 points, insurance goes up... and if you repeat you have to go to an interview... and at 15.... poof goes your license.
Over here (Sweden Finland etc) speed enough (repeated and/or excessive) and poof goes the license as well. A hike in insurance is, just like fixed penalties, not much of a deterrent for someone with a big income, as it's diluted over the insurance collective. Not even a revocation of the license has the same effect - rich enough and you can take cabs or hire a driver. Not able to do that and you live somewhere without effective public transport might cost you your job for not being able to get to/from it.
captcha - inequity...
So you're saying it's only wrong to kick in someone's door and steal their shit because the people that have shit to steal behind doors make the rules, and somehow the thief is oppressed by these restrictive and unfair laws?
If you thought it was bad how cops were targeting/ticketing poor people, wait until the police realize they can fund their whole budget if they can ticket a guy like Zuckerberg once or twice!
Before a system like this is in place, the financial incentive for cops to ticket people needs to be removed. Any fines need to be given back to the community via some type of property/income/sales tax rebate, rather than back to the city (which in essence goes back to the cops that are handing out the fines). For example, if $1,000,000 in fines were collected for a town with 10,000 property tax assessments, they could knock $100 off of each tax bill.
The same needs to be done with civil asset forfeitures. If there was ever a clearer case of conflict of interest, I haven't seen it.
We'll have autonomous driving cars in the US before this type of law widely adopted here.
They all think they are F1 drivers. Most are drunk.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
So what happens when the speed limit drops 20 mph suddenly with no warning nor change in environment that would obviously require a drop in speed, as opposed to the arbitrary drop? Locals who know that this happen tend to be prepared for it and can follow the "don't speed" rule easily. People passing through will not necessarily be prepared for this sudden change and won't know about it until the blue lights are flashing in their mirror.
In response to you, the defense is "Sometimes easier said than done, especially in corrupt municipalities."
"After all, wealthier people have been shown to drive more recklessly than those who make less money. For example Steve Jobs was known to park in handicapped spots and drive around without license plates."
-Wow talk about Argument By Selective Observation.
You have to determine what someone's yearly income is. Some very wealthy people hide most of their income for tax purposes making this difficult.
The IRS is pretty good at this. Sure there will be some people that weasel out of some money they might otherwise owe but the it doesn't make the basic idea a bad one. In the US there are some privacy and states rights issues to work through along with a general distrust of government so I don't really see such a thing becoming common here.
It hurts revenue generation for the police force because a lot of the people pulled over are in poverty and get small fines.
Revenue from illegal activity should NEVER be used to fund policing. It simply is too big of a conflict of interest. Fines from stuff like parking tickets should be used to fund other things (education, roads, etc) but it should not be available to police.
I don't want a fucking idiot driving down my street too fast whether he has no money or is a millionaire. And I certainly don't want millionaires DELIBERATELY breaking the law because the consequences are so fucking pathetic to them that it will never matter.
I have known people who lost their license for repeated offenses, in one case permanently (is a specific state, as this is not a federal matter). The ability to pay a fine doesn't mean they can go on in perpetuity offending.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
This type of solution seeks equality, but in reality would have a difficult time achieving it. $100,000 a year allows one to live a relatively deluxe lifestyle if you are in upstate New York and own a house outright with no dependents. But someone making $100,000 a year with 5 kids in New York city has very little cash to spare. Besides location and dependents, other factors could greatly determine your actual spending power. Someone making $100,000 with student loans of $300,000 won't have much spending money. Or someone with cancer and crummy medical insurance. Sure, you can attempt to adjust for these differences, but in the end someone is going to get hosed due to a special circumstance. Far better to just do a flat rate. In the end, the real fine is from your insurance company anyways as your increased rates will likely go up several multiples of the assessed fine.
I'm all for making fines income sensitive because the current system here makes them just a tickle for some people.
BUT we need to stop fines from being used as a revenue source for government. Since fines are paid to the government this is a bit of a tricky wicket.
What REALLY different about them is that your tax returns are a matter of public record; if I want to know what my neighbour's income is, then if I lived in Finland I could find out on line... And it's income that's used to generate the level of the fine.
You lost me when you trashed SJ, no need to mention him.
everyone goes 10 miles over the speed in california. It sounds like the finns are a bunch of nazis. Dont bring their shit here.
Parking in a handicapped spot is clearly not driving more recklessly - being parked is not driving at all.
Driving around without license plates is also not driving more recklessly - though at least that actually is driving.
At least when giving examples make then actually examples of your damn claim.
The guy in the beemer may be more wiling and able to fight the ticket. If you are going to enhance revenue, do you go for a few big fish that might be able to challenge things (making you take a day in court when that happens), or a bunch of small fry that can't take the time to do so.
We were out in Arizona for work last week. Posted for 75, and that's roughly what people were driving,
perhaps +/- 5 mph.
Back in DC, posted for 55, and a lot of people are driving 70, some 75, some 50. A much
more hazardous situation.
wanted you to say?
Smaller infractions (up to 20 km/h (13 mph) over the limit) carry fixed penalties, on a scale from about $100 to nearly $1000 depending upon the actual speed and the base speed limit.
More severe stuff, like DUI just over the 0.02 blood alcohol limit will result in income/net worth scaled fines.
Another drink before that drive home and you're looking at compulsory jail time, plus loss of drivers license for two years and the need to take the driving exam all over again afterwards.
This means that the police don't need to check IRS returns for speeding or red light cameras, but only for more serious offenses.
All the fines go to the central government of course, so there is no premium for the police on setting speed traps to generate revenue.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Same system here. A soccer star had to pay 540.000 Euros for driving without a valid license:
http://www.spiegel.de/auto/akt...
(sorry, German link only)
It is already a long standing Finnish tradition to punish high earners with high fines.
Already back in 2000 this was in the news.
+ A founder of an internet portal was fined 300 000 Finnish Marks (ca 60 000 in today's US dollars)
+ Teemu Selänne (famous Finnish hockey player in the NHL) was fined 257000 marks
http://www.iltasanomat.fi/kotimaa/art-1288334829797.html
Just say that fine revenue above police administrative costs goes somewhere else, so the people issuing the tickets don't directly benefit.
Since these are local/state offenses, the obvious place would be the state general fund.
There's potential for abuse, of course - states might have to specify maximum admin costs.
I bet the enthusiasm for local speed traps would drop way off under such a system. Sounds win/win to me.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Heh, your knowledge of Finland.
Going 15 over a speed limit is a contextual issue. Going 15mph over the limit on a freeway without much traffic really isn't a safety problem. Doing it on residential streets during rush hours is really bad. I would much rather see licensing fee based on income. The more money you have to more money you pay to get a license and plates.
something about if you do nothing wrong you have nothing to fear.
With no money, how can you afford to drive?
(Are you driving your parent's car while you're still a teenager?)
Many states have a similar system. MD does. VA sortof does but you can erase negative marks by doing things that earn you "positive demerits" like taking driver improvement courses. This gets a little ugly when neighboring states like MD honor negative points from VA but MD drivers cannot earn "positive demerits" coupled with VA's infractions sometimes carrying more points due to the aforementioned "positive demerit" system and having a highway patrol well known for targeting out-of-state drivers because they're less likely to head back to VA for traffic court.
If you are retired, you aren't having a good year financially in the first place.
This isn't based on your highest income year on record, it's based on current income, so don't get your panties in knot.
I'd bet those countries are better off with how their poor are treated than ours are.
You know, I don't even have to speculate, there have been numerous studies and statistics calculated on this subject, and the USA totally sucks ass in the rankings of 1st world nations.
Actually, they are implementing mandatory GPS trackers in cars here in Finland, against the popular opinion of course.
Use a combination of repeat offences, income and net worth. As you one continues to draw fines, they become more and more tied to your income and net worth.
First offence, you get the poor person's fine, second offence draws the middle class fine, third upper middle class which starts into means testing of income and forth draws you the I'm rich and don't care fine where your income AND net worth come into play. Let offences drop off your record over time, say one a year, so if you hit the "I don't care" fine, it takes you 4-5 years to be back in the poor house fine. Also allow for jail time/community service for those who cannot pay, but that would have to be requested by the person charged based on financial need and recommended by a judge. If you don't pay and don't serve your time, you loose your license until you do. Get caught with a suspended license and you go to jail, end of report. Make it so all violations in a single stop count as ONE progression. So if you get pulled for speeding and running a red light and have nothing on your record, it's the poor person's fines for you.
Group traffic violations into categories, where those things that can endanger life and limb of others are what's subject to these progressive fines, other things like inspection stickers, registrations and lack of insurance don't count. So if you speed and run red lights or stop signs you get slammed, but if you don't wear you seat belt, have proof of insurance or fail to register your car it doesn't pile up.
This will eventually catch up with the rich people who don't care and keep breaking the law, but not make it so onerous for the less fortunate who get caught from time to time.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Printed in stone on the Supreme Court building.
Seems like the police department would develop an incentive to pull over seeming wealthy individuals.
So on top of getting bigger fines you are targeted more often because you drive an above average car? No thanks.
It would help focus peoples' minds on the harmfulness of speed if, rather than setting arbitrary thresholds, the fines were proportional not only to income, but also to the excess kinetic energy of the vehicle:
Ek = 1/2 . m . v^2
Kuisla was doing 65 in a 50 zone, so his "kinetic tariff" would be (65x65) - (50x50) = 4225 - 2500 = 1725 units. (It's the exponential nature of the velocity squared factor that yields the disincentive, but, by all means introduce the weight of the miscreant's vehicle too)
This would be a rational way of reflecting the a) the risk of injury in the event of a collision; b) the undesirable environmental effects (noise, gaseous emissions), both of which rise exponentially with the kinetic energy of the vehicle.
This kinetic tariff can then be applied to income data to calculate the actual fine for the individual.
You can never eat too much, only cycle too little.
1) The police officer determines the penalty in terms of days and then you loose half your daily net income for that many days. There is minimum of 6€ per dayfine.
Such fines are convertible for prison sentences if perp doesn't pay, for one prisonday per three dayfines.
2) There are constant fines for ultra low end offences so that no-one needs to check your income.
©God
Steve Jobs may very well have been an habitual reckless driver, but parking in handicapped spaces and driving without plates meets neither the legal nor commonsense definitions of "reckless driving."
Nothing posted to
Don't know how it works in Finland, but where I'm from only tickets issued by officers come with demerit points (that end up in potential loss of licence). Fines from speed cameras don't have demerit points - there is no proof of who is driving. The vehicle owner gets the fine.
The highway that runs through my town has had many speed limits over the years. Way back when, it was 55 mph. Then 65, 75, now 80. Guess what, the accident rate is remarkably unchanged. The revenue from speeding tickets has dropped pretty dramatically. So all the tickets written when the limits were stupid low were not to insure safety, but to collect revenue, a practice not at all dissimilar from the bandits and highwaymen of yesteryear. In fact, I would opine that speed limits are really a form of prior restraint. "You cannot drive over an arbitrary limit that applies to all times of day and weather conditions or we will take away part of your wealth, regardless of whether you cause an accident or not." Does having a single speed limit even make sense? On a clear day with no traffic in a sports car, 120 mph might be perfectly safe. Add in some snow, driving a truck, with lots of traffic, 20 mph might be dangerous. People should drive at the speed they feel comfortable and be held accountable for accidents they cause.
equals a huge deterrent. Granted it's not exactly tied to income, but it does complicate the issue given that auto insurance is mandatory in the US. This system could be interesting to experiment with, but we'd have to visit and clean up the rats' nest of insurance first. Also, an income-based fine system would have to look harder at what a person's daily spending power actually is than just yearly income/365.25 -- bonuses, dependents, medical conditions etc. all combine to make spending power a very tricky number to calculate within reason. Finally the main point of contention: 'day-fines could introduce some fairness to a legal system that many have convincingly shown to be biased against the poor.' This would only really be relevant if the harassment of poor folk was primarily in the arena of flat-rate traffic tickets; I'm pretty sure the problem goes deeper than that. Also, I'd suggest reforming maniacal bully cops as a preferable primary approach to a solution...
So people of wealth and means will be subject to the horrific process of policing for profit and be able to force change instead of ignoring it because to them the fines are equivalent to their meal that night instead of groceries for a month for a poor person.
Traffic fines are the number one most regressive system we have in the US. Outrageous fines is a huge trap for poor people because while they are generally law abiding citizens they simply can't pay them and get caught in a never ending cycles of fines/suspensions/warrants/etc. Most courts offer no alternatives to paying the fine like community service etc. The best they will do is offer some payment plan through a for profit company.
Of course, you would never see such a system in the US because the poor are the only ones who gain something in that scenario and we all know about how the ruling class feel about them.
Poor people commit more crimes precisely because the upper classes dictate...
I see. So in poor areas, where violent gangs murder each other regularly, resulting in a higher rate of murders in that "lower" class, it's your opinion that that's just rich people looking to make themselves somehow ... exempt from the same consequences? So when the rich real estate heir in NY who was just arrested for murder is ... arrested for murder ... that's ... what again? Can you please be just a little more coherent?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
There's really a short window for this type of thing - in 10 years a lot of us will be in self driving cars, and there won't be anywhere near the speeding tickets issued.
Many comments here, so maybe someone has already covered this. Follow the links if you are interested
There are fixed fines for speeding: http://www.oikeus.fi/tuomioistuimet/karajaoikeudet/en/index/rikosasiat/seuraamukset/rikesakko.html
Fines are given for more serious offences: http://www.oikeus.fi/tuomioistuimet/karajaoikeudet/en/index/rikosasiat/seuraamukset/sakko.html
So, number of unit fines (day fines) indicates the level of offence, the amount of money per unit you have to pay tries to relate the penalty to your income.
... are people just dumb, or is there an ulterior motive to this suggestion?
I mean, we already have a huge problem that the police are, in many cases, giving citations motivated much more by revenue generation then public safety. And this suggestion... would make that problem much worse.
I've got a suggestion: how about we try to address the massive corruption, spying for the government, rights violations, lack of accountability, and near-total diversion between stated goals and objective reality in law enforcement, before we worry about how to squeeze a bit more indirect taxation from the populace. Or, I don't know, maybe recognize this "suggestion" as underhanded PR for simply more taxation.
For example Steve Jobs was known to park in handicapped spots
For your reference, a liver transplant gets you qualified for parking in a handicapped spot for some time after it occurs and all sorts of time while you're waiting, as does most of the other treatments he was going through.
Steve Job's crime was not displaying his tags, not that he wasn't a handicapped placard carrier.
And if you want to be retarded about it, he could have just bought a handicapped placard, but then his personal life and medical issues would have been on public display, which he didn't want.
So we're back to ... his crime was not having tags, THATS IT.
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I've always felt that corporate fines should somehow be tied to revenue. Of course, fancy accountants would probably make it seem every company has been in the red for half a century.
Yeah, this article is guaranteed to excite slashdot's conservative base, but it isn't about technology in any meaningful way. We all know that no attempt to implement such a system in the US would be successful under the current political power structure. If you want to bitch about politics at least do so in a less obvious way.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
There is a minimum to the "day-fine" that a person without income will need to pay ($6 a day), and minimums to some specific fines. So one could say a low-income person is hit harder in some cases. Poor Finns don't have the kind of poverty that poor Americans have, though. They have decent minimum wages, and first-world level assistance programs for those unable to work. The biggest money sinks that we have in the US (healthcare and education) are essentially free in Finland so it's very difficult to go really broke.
In France, "jours-amendes" are not really sliding-scale fines. They are an alternative to jail sentence: - you can get such fine only for serious offences that can actually lead to jail - not for random traffic tickets - the sum is not based on what you need per day, or half; you are given a sum to pay and if you fail to you actually go to jail proportionaly to what you failed to pay (ex: 60 jours-amende at 10€, you must pay 60x10 = 600€. If you pay only 500€, you are jailed (600-500)/10 = 10 days)
That's a pretty grievous and perhaps willful misunderstanding of what I said. If you seek some further discourse and elaboration, look up The German Ideology, part 1, section B under the heading "Ruling Class and Ruling Ideas."
It starts at where the "working poor" in most of Europe are still better off than in the US. At least here people have a home, food and usually one to three cell phone contracts running...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, living paycheck to paycheck means here "oh damn, I can't afford the new iPhone, I gotta keep my old one longer, oh woe is me".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The problem is that for the poor a small fine may be more than a bit painful. In order to have the same effect some seriously high fines might need to be levied. For example Steve Jobs parked in handicapped spaces. I wonder if a 10 million dollar fine for a single incident would have cost him as much pain as a $100. fine does for many working people. We see the same thing when charges are filed against major companies. Microsoft has been fined as much as one half billion dollars for business violations over the years yet they still gained money by their wrongdoing. Business fines should always be far greater than the money made by breaking laws and rules.
Except, if you read even the summary, you'll discover that they're taking half of estimated spending money, not half of your income.
Let's not be naive - the working poor don't have any "spending money" - they have high debt and have to figure out which bills to pay this month and if it's going to be beans or Ramen tonight.
I doubt the working poor pay no fines, so @SuperKendall is right on this one. If somebody can show that this is, in fact, not true, then by all means prove the Finns to be enlightened (the article does not do that). Until then it's fair to assume that nothing is unusual here and that low-level-crime prosecution is universally used to keep the lower classes down.
I'm not really sure where you get the high debt from, except from the US. School upto University level is practically free (meritocracy) and the government will even give you money to study (Not much)
Houses and apartments are ridiculously expensive in high demand cities like Helsinki, but if you're a student you can apply for student housing or if you're poor, you can apply for ... poor housing. I think there's other reductions you can also apply for, if you don't have the income, but I've never been applicable and I suspect I'll never be.
Without consideration of someone's income, fines becomes negligible for affluent people. If you make 30k a month, does a 40 dollar fine that you might incur about once a month (if speeding regularly) matter to you?
Laws are not upheld by definition. Whether someone breaks a law depends on three factors (provided he is not motivated by emotions or other irrational considerations): Gain, fine if caught and chance of being caught. Morals may play a role, but let's file that under "irrational considerations".
The chance of being caught speeding is fairly low. I speed routinely ('cause I can afford it in my country's flat system) and get caught about once a month. Basically I consider that fine an insignificant nuisance, nothing else. Part of the cost of driving, essentially.
That would certainly be different if they wanted to cut away a quarter of my income (essentially multiplying the current fine by a factor of about 100).
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Your cops are quite slow, ours have way more routine. I rarely waste more than 5 minutes on a fine stop.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I am somewhat curious what the Law Enforcement / municipalities plans are about revenue generation via Moving Violations and Speed Traps if / when the shift to self driving cars becomes a reality.
Granted we're talking decades to even phase it in once we begin to deploy such systems at all, but there are some towns / cities that rely heavily on that income so I'm curious what their plans are to offset the loss.
E.g. the following 9 speeders could chose between 1 year in jail or paying a million. Also all lost their licenses. http://www.20min.ch/news/zueri... I think any fine system that does not look at how much you have is not fair.
The pain might be relative, but it's not necessarily 'fair'. Some folks work very hard to get where they are, and it's decidedly not fair to punish them for making the effort to better themselves.
If the fines purpose is to be a deterent, then the fine must be sufficient to result in a deterent effect.
If the fine is meant to compensate the public for the harm caused, then the fine should be adequate to cover the cost of the harm relative to frequency of individuals being caught.
If the fine is meant to cover the costs of enforcement, then the distribution of the fine makes sense to have it be on ability to pay.
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
We should not surrender our liberties in an effort to stop a few. Unfortunately that is exactly what we've done by classifying driving as a privilege rather than a right. We've literally turned all persons into criminals by requiring licensing plates. We should be presumed innocent and if so then there is no need for a license plate. Some of our founding fathers felt we had a right to travel unhindered.
I propose we eliminate drivers licenses, license plates, and other identification (ie social security numbers). There are solutions which can be implemented such that you can issue loans to people without identifying them (if only the government would allow it anyway). You can make arrests without identification too. If the crime is serious enough to warrant arrest then let the police work to make the arrest. We do not need to spy on the masses to achieve security and freedom.
Unfortunately we always take the easy and lazy way out and we can always come up with another reasonable-sounding excuse to take away peoples freedoms. Even if its unjustified and will only ever be misused. Ie laws that are in reaction to a single individual when in reality such acts may be getting committed all the time. However an extreme example results in a new law that can then be used to persecute people for things which shouldn't reasonably be crimes in the first place. For example a law against making fun of people that resulted from some child committing suicide gets used to hinder public speech online. For example making fund of the president for ridicules statements should not be a crime- and yet we have laws on the books which could potentially be used (and may be getting used) to punish such individuals.
So really, this should be OK if the impact lines up with the penalty. So you want to charge the rich dick who speeds in his fancy BMW more because $100 is probably how much he spends on his morning latte, that's fine. But if the guy who's barely scraping together rent at minimum wage gets nicked for doing 10 over on his way to work (late), will he also get a lesser penalty? That would only seem equitable, after all
That would also make a lot of sense - build a road, and adjust speed limits based on a three month moving average speed of traffic.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There is a minimum to the "day-fine" that a person without income will need to pay ($6 a day)
There's always a minimum, and that's going to impact someone poor much more than someone not poor.
I wonder how the chose to fine rental car drivers since they cannot know what they earn...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Insurance increases can be considerable and ongoing (not one time) [it can add up to thousands of dollars per year]. But the real deterrent is loss of points leading to suspension or loss of license. You really want to stop something, take their license away for incremental amounts of time.
Finland uses the metric system, like all civilized countries.
In Finland One also gets his Driving license suspended for a period of 1 to 6 months if you collect 3 speeding tickets in a year, or 4 in a two year time period.
Off cource, if You're speed is 80mph on a 60mph area you lose the license instantly in most cases and court decides the time you're license will be suspended. If your speed exceeds like 30mph over the limit, you also have to do the driving school all over again.
And in Finland at least, that's a pretty costly process.
I was suspended for driving for period of 4 months back in days.....
I offered the Officer my pilots license, instead of driving licence, because I exceeded the limit like 40mph
No joy...
So the smart thing for millionaires to do is hire a driver: Spending $40,000 a year on employing someone is cheaper than these day fines and the millionaire won't be able to break the road rules.
Not only does this give police a huge incentive to target people based on their income, but that does not give enough of a punishment to regular poor people. A $0 fine for a homeless person is not equivalent to a $50,000 fine for a millionaire.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
means assessing greater penalties against those with greater means. If you accept as true the claim that fines promote compliance, then surely you must accept that the deterrent effect of a $100 fine is greater for a minimum-wage janitor, than for the CEO of a multinational corporation.
To make our streets safer, we just want equivalent deterrence.
Bullshit. Do you know what it takes to get a driver's license in Finland? Months of mandatory driving school, including lessons on driving on ice and reacting to unexpected events etc. Then you get a temporary permit valid for two years, after which you have to go back and take the test again to get a real license. Here in the US it's ridiculously easy to get a license, you don't need to demonstrate competence beyond going once around the block.
Rich fuckers need to pay their fair share. Plus maybe it will make them drive less asshole-ish.
But it will never make a BMW 7 series use it's turn signals.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Less conspicuous consumption.
A speeding ticket that results in a '12 day's worth of income' (or is it 12 half days of income?) are very abusive. Think of an average person, making a comfortable, but by no means exceptional, salary - say $52K/yr as a teacher. That 12 day speeding ticket costs the offender 12x$200/day income (or is it 12x$100/day?)... Do you know many teachers that can 'afford' a $1,200 or $2,400 traffic ticket? That's approaching a half-month of pay, as opposed to the current fixed fine system. The numbers are just as cruel for low-income speeders, if not more so. What problem, exactly is this type of system designed to address? Financing the city? 'Punishing' the rich?
This is correct - its called freedom and liberty.
The only time the law ought exercise its power of force to deprive a private entity of its property is to make whole another damaged by that private entity's actions.
What a fucking moronic question. Why? U.S local, state, and federal government are by crooks anyway. Civil forfeiture law used by police on a daily basis to rob u.s citizens of their possessions(money, laptops, cell phones, automobile itself) without charge, look it up. Try to fight it in court which will take month's and you lose in the end, again look it up. Governments, civilizations, religions and laws are for suckers which we all are. We are animals(retarded monkeys), we are nomads and we should live as such.
Where do you live that has fines for murder and rape? I want to come visit... I can afford the fines.
the interesting part of such a system would be in those fine-funded jurisdictions that would then focus on targeting the rich guy who would yield a large fine.
I was on a freeway in California one day, going about 75mph. I see what looked like a caravan of three MBZs coming up behind me, as they pass by doing about 90mph, and about 5 feet between each cars bumpers, I noticed every one of them were middle eastern, and laughing like it was funny. F'ing pissed me off that they had no respect for U.S. driving laws. Where's a cop when you need one?
All fines should be replaced by community service.
This is, once more, a political problem: Do you want to concede to a completely capitalist-based system, that has been known to fail in the long run, financially, against the poor, but incentivizing a meritocracy state where those that "work hard play harder"? Or are you willing to go with a hybrid system, which the US already has to some extent compared to most countries (which will go for decades with leftist or rightist mandates depending on referendum tendency)? My opinion is: I sincerely don't know what would be better, but for starters, Finland, Switzerland and co. are not bad examples to follow. I think whatever makes people morally conscious, in a generalized, broad financial status spectrum (i.e. will keep the poor and the rich in check for crimes and traffic rules) is not that bad, whatever your political inclination. Then again, those countries have other problems derived from such a flat, even view of society (which is not communism per say, but will eventually translate in similar nuances).
Never mind that injustices perpetrated by members of the upper class are rarely considered crimes of the same degree as lower class ie street crime. Even when you're just considering the current definition of crime as established by the class which is the ruling material force of society, members of the upper class receive completely different treatment by our system of criminal justice, which is why the rich real estate heir was able to kill multiple people and commit many other serious crimes without serious repercussion until he basically flat-out admitted to a TV crew that he was guilty. Have you read into that case at all? Do you expect that your average "violent gang murderers" are allowed to walk free for decades despite damning evidence?
Finland's system is using the justice system as fund raising resource. Hide that speed reduction sign behind some bushes, allow the general traffic to speed on by giving the illusion that its acceptable, and then wait for that Bentley. Bam, pay day.
funny thing is bringing personal responsibility in to this would be that you're on the hook if you actually caused an accident. Punishing somebody because they might cause a problem isn't the definition of personal responsibility. It's holding them responsible when, note the when, not if, they cause a problem.
For those in California, we all know the game. I'm surprised it hasn't been said in this thread yet (or I might not know how to search properly). Joint the 11-99 foundation. I've heard the plates cost a $10K-$25K donation to the CHP killed in action account. Many say that it is an urban legend, but I've seen and know too many who get away with whatever they want and it seems to be because of these plates. Go anywhere in SJ to SF and in the highest end valets and country clubs you will see cars with 11-99 foundation plates. I've known enough of those people to know they get away with whatever they want. I-280 going > 100mph, not unusual, cops will pull you over but keep your docs in the 11-99 wallet thing and they will give you a normal ticket. But you can go 85 all day long on any CHP road in the state and they will just give you a stern look.
Don't forget in the United States police force members routinely admit in YouTube lectures they mostly pull people over as a (illegal) dragnet. Hoping they will smell booze or spot a stolen radio or find someone with an outstanding warrant out. They could care less about you doing a rolling stop at a stopsign usually. This is part of the reason younger people get stopped more and why minorities get stopped more. A cop tells me they can trail anyone for 5 miles and find at least one legitimate reason to pull them. It's pure harassment. And if you don't do something like change lanes were it is technically illegal, they just make something up that is un-disprovable. Such as "you were driving a little erratic".
The problem of basing fines on income is that it can be circumvented. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O... As we all know, Jobs had a $1 yearly salary, also did not take any alternative form of compensation (stock options, bonus, etc.). A fine based on that would be laughable.
MNC's use PPP to pay the same employee for the same job, more in costlier locations, and less in cheaper locations. For example a software engineer doing the same job will get paid ~1/4th or lesser in India, compared to USA. This is the application of the same. In the salary case it keeps poor countries poorer, and rich countries richer. In this case, it make the fines an equivalent deterrent for all class of people.
We already have that standard. Stop with the statutory bullshit. If you haven't harmed anyone, you haven't committed a crime. That applies equally to rich and poor. Speeding doesn't harm anyone. If you*hit* someone, harm has been done. Speeding tickets are pre-crime.
I am so sick of "american justice" and the massive economic disparity that the american systems create. Then to hear the wealthier people protest that they cant hide their money or game the system to steal from the poor makes me sick. I long for the day when the revolution comes and we can quite literally eat the rich. We are coming for you. We are legion.
If the cost is supposed to be "some portion of what you have to spend each day", the story mentions net income and the discussion threads talk about net worth, and the downsides of both. What if we simply said, "Show your bank statement, credit card and estimated cash transactions for the last 60 days and we base your fine off of the *expenditures* you have made." Thoughts?
Minimum dayFine is 6 euros. So if you speed and get 10 dayfines that's 60 euros.
Max(6, (Net monthly income-255)/60-3*numberOfUnderAgeChildren));
©God
It gets much easier to hide income than pay it for fines.
"Changing it to a percent of wealth or income would encourage more rich people to hide their assets overseas. It wouldn't fix the problem. " get real, you don't hide assets due to a fine. You do it maybe due to tax but not to fine. if somebody did not hide their assets in a fiscal heaven by now , fining them by assets will not make them do so. Furthermore hiding money in fiscal heaven has the problem that you have to turn back the money locally to buy stuff. And that's when the pointed question starts. That's why you only hide *part* of the money in fiscal heaven.
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If as an handicapped you are forced into another place not ready for you, in some case meaning you block the car circulation or get out where a lot of car go, then you are *effectively* putting somebody in danger by taking the handicapped spot. As for being an asshole due to not having plate, why not use the european system ? You just get given a "I just bought the car" temporary license plate easily recognizable by anybody (given by the car dealer), and you have to put one within time. We have no car whatsoever without licence plate here around.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
If I have no money I can do whatever I want, and race through every city/village.. LOL....
Ugh, this tired story again. I see it pop up now and then on various news sites. The fines are completely fair and just. Earn $20k and do 10km/h over the limit? Pay 2% of your income as a fine, or goto jail for 10 days. Earn $20m and do 10km/h over the limit? Pay 2% of your income as a fine, or goto jail for 10 days. The entire point is it removes the personal income factor to make the penalty equally painful for everyone, and yes there is also special conditions for unemployed.
Homeless limo drivers appear! "Home, Jeeves; and keep it above 90!"
Which means all those drug user don't get to suck at the teet of the taxpayer when they want to break their habit.
If you can afford to buy drugs, you can afford to pay for your own treatment.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
It protects low-income violators from a Ferguson-like nightmare, and holds the wealthy accountable. The opposite of how we currently do things.
Seriously, what is with this place. I really dislike to use the new SJW buzzword but this is a shining example. Why is it that so many people feel the way to income equality is to take from the haves and give to the have not's at every turn instead of instilling the good old concept of working hard to get what you have. This place turns into more of a liberal, SJW wank fest every day.
Not at all. Murder was (initially) outlawed across the board, not because the nobles didn't want to see the peasants killed, but because the upper class didn't want to get killed themselves. (For example, regicide was a capital crime long before killing a peasant was codified as a crime.)
It may be true that people with wealthy parents will become wealthy via inheritance, but it is far from being the more prevalent manner in which wealth is attained.
Check the real statistics on this. The number of "self-made" millionaires or first-generation millionaires is much much larger than the number of inherited millionaires. Forbes estimates that 70-80% are millionaires are first-generation millionaires who earned an invested their way to wealth, compare to 20% who inherited significant portions of their wealth.
For billionaires...Forbes:
"Over the past 30 years, the origin of the wealth of the richest people in the United States has shifted away from old, inherited money...In 1984, the first year for which we have crunched the numbers, we found that nearly one-fourth of the members of the Forbes 400 inherited their fortunes and weren’t doing anything to grow them...At the same time, only 2.5% were ranked as 10s, or absolute bootstrappers...The trend began to break down in 1994, when we saw an equal number of inherited and self-made billionaires...Already in the 2000s, our data finally showed a greater proportion of self-made billionaires. In 2004, we had 59% of the Forbes 400 having made their own fortune, as opposed to 41% who inherited it...Thus, the most encouraging results come from this year’s Forbes 400. For the first time in our data set, we see the number of self-made billionaires who rose from nothing, and overcame various tough obstacles, outpacing those that just sat on their fortunes. A total of 34 billionaires, or 8.5%, scored as 10s, or more than three times as many as in 1984. The number of 100% inherited fortunes as a percentage of the total fell to 7%, with 28 billionaires in the 1 category, compared to 99 back in 1984.
Forbes defined a 10 as "To qualify as a 10, a member of the Forbes 400 had to have been raised in a poor household, and have endured extreme duress. Oprah Winfrey, who endured sexual abuse, and George Soros, who survived both the Nazi and Communist occupations of Hungary, are great examples." OTOH, a 1 was someone who inherited wealth and has done nothing with it.
I would have driven about 200 MPH through the middle of a nursery school when I was 16. My "day fine" would have been about $5! YEEHAWWW!!!
Finnish has 2 "N"s
Which for "progressives" often appears to mean "he got more than me! it's not fair!"
Ronaldo makes $80M per year kicking a ball around a field. I can kick a ball around a field, why am I not paid what he is paid?
Nancy Pelosi once said "Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance." I *really* want to be a professional basketball player, it's my life-long dream. Alas, I am a meager 5' 10" and have a shooting percentage measured in single-digits. But by Nancy's notions, I should not be denied my dream just so I can have health-care (and presumably lots of other things).
of public safety laws.
Where is there there a jurisdiction where libertarians have a majority of legislatures needed to enact these laws?
Well with money from the rich bastards, there would be money to fund more enforcement. Also, if the rich folks know they are being targeted... they will start (OMFG) actually being really good at following the rules. Rich drive perfect to avoid tickets and now the rust buckets are targeted. It would be a war of attrition... with safety being the victors. win-win.
Give community service. For every single ticket. Don't allow government agencies with an obvious conflict of interest (e.g. the police department) to accept this community service. Now there's no police conflict of interest, safety isn't being used as an excuse for fundraising, and penalties are effectively equalized regardless of income / net worth.
In the United States the wealthy have a "Get Out of Jail Free Card" and always will.
This system of fines would NEVER be implemented here. If anything, a bastardized version would be; such as a multiplier with a $2,000 cap. Thus the wealthy would back it because they want the middle class to FUND EVERYTHING in America, and with a "cap" they would never be touched.
Pointless discussion in the U.S.
more than it is worth, just think of all the extra government expansion and prying powers required to enforce this nonsense, I'd rather have more speeders on the road than put up with that bull shit.
As if speeding is the major cause of accidents. Clue: It isn't. It is however a major source of revenue for the majority of local police forces across the U.S. Take those fines away, and start issuing community service summons, and we might just start seeing police targeting dangerous drivers instead of eating donuts while they wait for their radar guns to buzz.
Just another day in Paradise
You're not even close to the worst. http://apps.who.int/gho/data/v...
Just another day in Paradise
On a bike you can probably out run the cop. Also, if you're rich then you have a money to get a good lawyer.
Just think how many officers will be directed solely to traffic enforcement. Here in Arizona on the freeways the traffic flow is routinely (outside of rush hours) 10-15 over the posted speed limit. Think how many cops will be on the Loop 101 in Scottsdale. Think how many beater-mobiles will zoom past before the Jaguar or Mercedes is ticketed for 5 over. The small fish aren't worth catching. The big fish will become big game trophies.
If the big money goes to the local law enforcement this would become as corrupt as the civil forfeiture laws where old ladies get handcuffed and the homes pretty much destroyed because of an anonymous tip on the wrong address and payoff is too great to pass up.
Real constitutional issue with equal protection under the law, too. "You did the exact same 'crime', but since you're an Evil Rich Dude you pay a $50,000 fine instead of $100." What business is it of Law Enforcement how much someone makes?
Socilist BS
at 56,000 if i got 1 ticket a year on average it would be more cost effective to hire someone to drive me wherever i want to go. And if he gets pulled over he gets to pay the fine. Hell i'm sure i could even convince him to speed all the time for a 50k a year job.
So long as the poor don't get paid to speed like they get paid to live here, then good idea.
I believe we all are our country.
We do not have to be looked down by super rich, who take the safety net of cheap living and punishment for their taking-advantage-position.
Let's not discuss any longer, and (http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/) let's start asking this our representatives.
I wonder if anyone here could redact a letter that would be politically correct, and to adopt those obscure laws (in some cities in USA) or take completely the law from Finland system and adapt it to someone's networth (related with the IRS paperwork), instead of the yearly income.
Let's stop discussing and let's take action!!!
"That person just made me realise I'm a terrible person, so I'll just call them a SJW and lie to myself that I'm good"
Fines are always used for corrupt politicians and police for their selfish use. Cronies make money off the fines.
Sooooo, what if a chauffeur gets a speeding ticket driving around some rich dude/dudette? Who's income/net worth would you use? The owner of the vehicle or the driver? This law is so wrong in so many ways. Finland must be full if idiots...
Karma: Bad
The issue has nothing to do with a "ruling class". Plenty of poor neighborhoods of "non-ruling" class (construed to be defined either by income or ethnicity) don't have those crime issues. Lack of proper upbringing including teaching respect for life and property and self-worth, makes the difference.
Don't break the law then.
Yes, this attitude works perfectly and there are never unintended consequences of such.
Is it good? YES.
Is there a better way? MAYBE.
Casteism
That is essentially what they do, in California at least. Limits are based on the 85% rule, the speed that 85% of the drivers don't exceed. That base speed can then be adjusted down, based on surroundings (e.g., hidden hazards or high accident rates). Traffic surveys (speed zone surveys) are regularly carried out, and radar tickets are only valid if the road was surveyed within the past 5 years. (Radar tickets can still be issued; it is up to the accursed to fight it.)
This would be devastating to the budgets of Ferguson, MO, and most nearby municipalities in North St. Louis County.
That alone is reason enough for me.
Might as well extend it to "failure to appear" fines and such, while we're at it, and really defund those scoundrels.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
I am incredibly surprised that nobody mentioned what will happen when self-driving cars are here!!! It seems certain news attract certain audience.
But, in 10 to 15 years, when cars drive by their sensors and the network infrastructure of things ("internet of things") we will be questioning if the owner of the newest Tesla X, that has no seat at all, will be fined the same as the VW-Sedanbot (a very affordable self-driving car). I wonder how it is going to b e measured?
But, in the meanwhile, we all together should push our Governments to make the penalties proportional to the amount of money each has, which by the way it will help in transforming into a smart-Government !