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Comment by tylerflick | Hacker News Reader

> It is too bad the rates could not be set based upon the income level of the driver. Make it hurt for everyone.

I wish traffic fines worked like this as well.

There’s actually a formal term for this—it's called a day-fine system. Switzerland uses it, and fines are calculated based on the offender's daily income, with the number of days determined by the severity of the crime. It ensures penalties are proportional to income, making fines meaningful across all income levels.

Germany does this for all kinds of punishments

All financial fines should be this way.

They do in some places - Finland and the UK, for example.

Careful what you wish for.

All sorts of fines and fees and many underpinning laws would evaporate overnight if the HN and up tax brackets got hit as hard by them as the people who are usually targeted for selective enforcement get hit (and they will because there will be huge revenue potential in doing so).

Seems fine (no pun intended) as long as it's proportional to income, no? Plus a small fixed amount (maybe proportional to minimum wage?) so that nobody gets away for free. Ultimately fines should be based on time, not money. If your time is worth 3x someone else's then it only seems reasonable that you pay at least 3x as much. If they disproportionately turn that into 300x, yeah, higher income brackets might get mad. But that doesn't have to be the case.

I agree. But a heck of a lot of people are gonna be pissed off when petty stuff like rolling a stop or smoking where you shouldn't, fishing without a license, or being loudly drunk or other stuff that's on the order of low hundreds now stays low hundreds at the high end and just gets discounted for the poors. Sure, some things might get more expensive, bug a great many of the petty things will get a lot cheaper.

Yeah but it's not really a discount, is what would have to be drilled into people's heads. Presumably the fine is in place of other punishment (like jail time, or having to spend time at least in court, etc.), where you spend the same time regardless of how poor or rich you are. Ergo the fine should normalize against that.

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