Comment by dsfyu404ed | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dsfyu404ed | Hacker News Reader

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So now that I've "made it" I can get screwed back to square one because I rolled a stop sign at 1am and the cop doesn't like my attitude during the following game of 20 questions they always want to play when they're fishing. Screw that.

Edit:

I would be less not ok with fines that scaled by income if they were reasonable for the infraction. Fines in the US are not reasonable (with a few state by state exceptions) unless you're upper middle class. If we scaled fines in the US so everyone got screwed as hard as poor people get screwed that would be very, very bad. If we were to scale fines by income then the middle or upper middle should be the point where there's not much difference (i.e. those people pay the same under the current system and some hypothetical income based system) because that's the point you need to be at for fines to be roughly proportional to the offense. I have zero faith that that could be implemented. What would likely happen is that the poor would still get screwed and everyone else would get just as screwed which is worse than the current situation.

Are you implying that having "made it" grants you the right of "rolling a stop sign at 1 am"?

If not, I don't see how this would be a problem. If your income is X times higher than mine, you will be fined X times more. Given your income, you can afford it, but it is still a deterrent (I, on the other hand, would go back to square "minus one" if I had to pay the same amount as you).

>If not, I don't see how this would be a problem. If your income is X times higher than mine, you will be fined X times more. Given your income, you can afford it, but it is still a deterrent (I, on the other hand, would go back to square "minus one" if I had to pay the same amount as you).

The way this is likely to work in reality if that you go to square minus one if you get fined and I go to square minus one if I get fined. So we've gained nothing except screwing more people and making the state more dependent on revenue from fines. Fines never go down, only up. An income based system would mean we all get screwed.

I have no problem with income based fines on paper. I have zero faith in their ability to be used properly in the US. Better to just lower fines across the board. It's not like the threat of a fine is what's keeping the vast majority of people from driving at triple digit speeds or littering.

> An income based system would mean we all get screwed.

You forget that the people who have "made it" hold disproportionate political influence. If you think a 0.1% fine on your annual income is too high because it is $100+, then you would fight to reverse this policy.

Meanwhile the people who are living paycheck to paycheck and have very little influence don't have to worry. 1% is very little for them, maybe $20 or so.

Yes, deliberate abuse of the laws would be the main problem and nobody could be trusted to run such a lucrative fine program. It would just be another excuse to treat people like piggy banks and to rob them as often as possible.

With the exception of Denmark, social mobility is low in Scandinavian countries, but wealth inequality is also low, so the idea of getting screwed back to square one is very American. Breaking the law should hurt equally for the rich and poor - unless you think the poor are inherently worth less.

Fact check - Mobility is actually high in nordic countries:

https://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobi... shows that sweden, finland, norway also have good mobility (behind denmark though).

edit: see also https://www.oecd.org/centrodemexico/medios/44582910.pdf - it's in the 1st page abstract.

Will check these out, but I was basing my comment on this.

https://gavinkellyblog.com/where-has-income-mobility-been-ri...

So this picks the short term income mobility, the picture is titled "Share of people remaining in the bottom fifth of incomes after four years". It's interesting for sure, but it takes some thinking to interpret in relation to usual intergenerational mobility measure. For example: UK is known for its thin social safety net, so income drops and hikes are hard and steep, and Denmark is known for its short but generous unemployment compensation - again leading to steep short term income changes.

(Also, the OECD's own press release on the article's source publication doesn't raise the same points and points at the Nordic countries as good models: https://www.oecd.org/newsroom/action-needed-to-tackle-stalle... - maybe economists, or OECD economists in particular, think that inter-generational mobility is a better measure?)

The whole point is that the fine scales with income to be fair. It doesn't impact people who have "made it" more.

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