Hacker News Reader

Comment by Nouser76 | Hacker News Reader

> The standard penalty for a violation is $5,000, which is a fraction of the value of the bonus space developers receive from the agreements. For example, the owners of 325 Fifth Avenue have been assessed a total of $54,000 in penalties since 2015. By contrast, the bonus floor area that the developers gained could be worth approximately $80 million if used for residential space, based on 2022 sales prices provided by Jonathan J. Miller, a New York City real estate appraiser.

When the penalty is this much lower than the benefit, it's just the cost of doing business. I wonder if this same problem would happen if the fine was scaled to better reflect the increase in value.

View on HN

There was a comment a few years ago from the parking violations commissioner, when people were complaining that parking tickets were exorbitant, that they had to keep raising the fines to keep above the price of parking n a lot.

This is exactly why fines ought to scale with the offender’s income, e.g. the €120k speeding ticket given to a millionaire in Finland [0].

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/06/finnish-busine...

For individuals, maybe that works.

For a building company getting ready to add on several million dollars worth of floor space, you can bet that they will engineer their books so if they have little to no income.

They do that already for income taxes....

For property I might mildly suggest basing fines off the property tax.

Don't fine them, just take ownership of the illegal portion of the construction.

The city can sublet it, the developer derives zero revenue.

On the other hand, there is an "equality before the law" point worth making.

Precedent being an odd mother, the capacity to morph violations into stealth taxation might not be a power one wants to grant to a government.

What's not equal about applying the same percentage? No matter your means, the fines are the same percentage, which to me is pretty danged equal when the point is to punish certain behaviours.

Same problem as a national VAT: turning the tax base into an ATM empowers myopic polixy.

Wouldn't it be more like a VAT where you pay based on your means, not what the product costs?

That and I don't really have a problem with making the rich the country's piggybank.

You'll not have a problem until the rich eject, take their wealth with them, and crash the tax base.

See: NY, CA, &c.

Make it federal, and have a steep 'exit penalty' for renouncing citizenship if you're over a certain wealth threshold. Make it so that if you try to renounce your citizenship to avoid the taxes, you're left to start from zero again, and if you don't renounce your citizenship, you owe the taxes no matter where in the world you are (and in most of the world, Uncle Sam can absolutely get to you if he wants.)

As a personal example, I left the military reserve because, inter alia, the joy of serving my country mattered less than the tax beating I was taking for being bumped into a higher bracket.

That is: (dis)incentives matter.

Maybe we can agree that our tax system is a Byzantine train wreck in need of reform.

Well then if applying the same percentage is a principle, how about we apply it to taxes?

If taxes were applied based on total wealth and not income, the two would be comparable. But the taxes you're talking about, income taxes, aren't taxing wealth but the rate of change of wealth, and I can accept that we need to apply slightly different principles in that case.

and prison terms should be in proportion to life expectancy. 15 years for arson if committed by a 20 yr old, and 2.5 if committed by a 70 year old. makes sense to me. oh wait ...

Something I've noticed is America is extremely lax with taxing and penalties vs Europe. America would rather incentive via tax breaks to encourage than fine things to enforce an outcome like a lot of European countries.

I've noticed the same. Someone once explained it to me that many European countries have a cultural acceptance/expectation of a strong centralized state (France, Germany, etc.), which implies strong norms where strong punishment is therefore legitimate/expected.

In contrast, the US was founded in rebellion, and has a cultural acceptance/expectation of a weak state, preferably de-centralized (federal). Rural independence and freedom is more highly valued, so governmental norms/regulations are always seen as slightly suspect/illegitimate. People prefer fines/punishments for "breaking government rules" to be more of a slap on the wrist, because it's more accepted to see what you can get away with, without the government catching you.

(But keep in mind this is really only in the realm of "regulation", like in this case, or in speed limits, etc. Violent crime is a whole other story, where the culture is far more punitive.)

I'm not an expert on this, but I'm pretty sure Germany has a federal model, similar to the US.

There are numerous problems with this thesis, not the least of which being that all of America's ideas about a weak state and personal liberty originated in Europe (particularly Revolutionary France,) and the current Federal model of government under the Constitution was an attempt to centralize authority after the failure of government under the Articles of Confederation.

Or at least scaled in repeat offenses.

First time 5k as a warning.

Second time, you knew what you were doing 50k

Third time, fuck you, if we can do third strike laws for citizens we can do it for businesses. 50m fine.

Bet there'd be a lot fewer repeat offenses

"What do you mean second strike? This Limited Liability Company was never fined before!"

Fines should be a ratio to total profit and there should be mandatory jail time. We need to stop letting these rich crooks take advantage of us.

Have you earnestly looked into anarchism as a practical solution to this? Because a tendency to say “this rule ought to exist” and then waiting on delegates to enact that speaks nothing to the material power incentives at play

I just noticed they want to siphon as much as they could from the majority - The ones with less richer thank them

Or actual, physical, personal consequences. In some places this kind of self enriching dishonesty means sleeping on a concrete bed.

I just noted the same. Incentives, or in this case disincentives are powerful. I think it will at least make some change.

I think the reasoning for the low fines was the expectation that compliance would be pretty good, because honestly building owners and residents don’t want a gated eyesore next to their luxury construction and keeping them nice and open is in their own interest.

I have worked in at least 2 of the buildings on that list (both of which had 0 violations) and honestly the plazas were lovely, well maintained and a great place to eat lunch on a nice day. I think it was the desire to attract and keep tenants which kept it nice, not the fear of fines.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com