The reality is somewhat different.
Why not a fraction of the current value of gross assets at the time of investigation? This a much better reflection of someone's financial standing, is a greater deterrent, ensures that the fine is actually payable, and deals with the issue of the rich not having much in the way of income.
While this theoretically allows the rich to drive said $500 car in order to minimize their liability in the event of a fine, it also means the rich have to drive a $500 car if that is what they are trying to optimize for, which is a decent social tradeoff.
Though it hurts poor people who prioritize their car over other essentials.
I'm not sure what factor we should use but I think that it should quickly become economically infeasible for anyone to keep reoffending because the cost of separate instances of doing so quickly escalates. Maybe exponentially?
People are free to do their own personal cost benefit analysis when they decide whether or not whatever personal circumstance they're in is worth breaking the law, and the law isn't there to give them a pass because their personal analysis on this resulted in them deciding to break the law.
Is there any evidence of egregious behaviour from Swedish and Finnish law enforcement in the manner that you describe?
Its like robbing a bank and when caught you need to give 10% back. And also you will be given stern warning to not do it again.
Keeps your income private from cops + uses existing mechanism of determining your income.
That is, for justice rather than just retribution, I think the real nominal cost of tailgating is probably not closely linked to wealth or income of the offender
I also think that, if you wanna critique the efficacy of fines in metting out justice, you need to go further than you do here. Scaling the fine tries, imperfectly, to match the punishment to the circumstances of the offender. We could imagine an even better system that more perfectly reacts to misbehavior, but exactly what that would be seems hard and this is a sensible adjustment to an existing system.
If the goal were only to ascribe economic harms to certain actions and reclaim those costs, it would be called a tax or a fee, not a fine.
The argument being if fines for breaking rules are not proportional to wealth, then wealthy people will become disdainful of those rules.
https://slate.com/podcasts/decoder-ring/2024/09/how-if-you-g...
For example, many crypto-bros are insanely poor on paper.
Companies can spend on behalf of a person, etc.
A more fair system is to be able to pick between jail or community service.
Time is equally precious to all humans and giving some of your time to repair your mistakes is the best you can do.
Wealthy people don't break the law any more than less wealthy people even though the naive view of the economic costs of crime would have you think they would.