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Very true, bond amounts on a sliding scale would prove just as ineffective.
In the long run, treating crime like the rest of the planet is a better/less expensive solution; more restitution, less incarceration.
I agree but the obvious problem is that many criminals are funding drug abuse and thus no longer have the funds that they stole available for restitution.
If it scaled, traffic enforcement would go after people they thought were "rich." And that would be discriminatory. If they could pull over a whale worth $100,000 vs a normal Joe worth only $100, they'd meet their quota for the year in one shot.
No it is not. There is no nexus between property tax and income. Zero zilch nada.
The tax is the tax, whether you make a million dollars a year or 10,000/year is immaterial.
So you think that a guy earning $20,000 a year lives in a $500,000 house and a guy who earns $500,000 a year lives in a $20,000 shack. Oh. Okay.
No it is not. There is no nexus between property tax and income. Zero zilch nada.
The tax is the tax, whether you make a million dollars a year or 10,000/year is immaterial.
The tax RATE is the tax RATE. You're right that property tax is not based on income but on the assessed value of the property:
Property taxes are calculated by taking the mill levy, like we determined in the previous example, and multiplying it by the assessed value of your property. The assessed value is a yearly estimation performed to decide the reasonable market value for your home based upon prevailing local real estate market conditions.
However, there is certainly a high correlation between both income (and wealth in general) with the value of a purchased home, especially if it is your primary residence. The rate is the same - it isn't a progressive tax like income tax, if that's what you're getting at. Now, back to the topic.
In most cases, traffic fines aren't expensive for the middle income driver; it's the increase in insurance rates that get them. In my highest income years, I owned 6 or 7 vehicles, mostly only a year or two old. If I got two or three $100 speeding tickets, my insurance would easily have increased $500 to $1000 per year for several years -- say $2500 to $5000 for the 5 years before they dropped off. The guy driving a $400 beater, his only car, probably carried minimal liability insurance for one car, so his insurance isn't affected that much. (If he even carries insurance!)
On top of that, new/nearly new cars are safer on the road than old beaters. Old, cheap cars often have worn out tires, poor brakes, burned-out lights, loose steering, leaky shocks, etc., etc. Many aren't safe at any speed, let alone at speeds exceeding the posted limits, while new sports cars/sports sedans are built for high speeds. Yet the OP wants to increase fines for those driving the best cars and lower the fines for those driving older, unsafe cars. (Of course this is a generalization, but overall it's an accurate one.)
No. Makes no sense. It's only another way to force those who have worked and succeeded to support those who haven't. A person's income and assets should not be used against him in assessing traffic fines. If you can't afford to pay the fine, don't speed.
I agree but the obvious problem is that many criminals are funding drug abuse and thus no longer have the funds that they stole available for restitution.
Wish I had an answer for the broken system, yet every possibility brings up more legal issues; such as making jails/prisons akin to Russia.
Why not. I already pay more insurance for those that go without or with minimums. I help support the state assigned risk pool for habitual bad offenders. Why not pay more than the guy in the lane next to me that get's hung out a car length or two in the intersection on the way home from work when it turns red.
I subsidize peoples rents, I subsidize their utilities, I subsidize student lunches as well as college educations for those that get need based reductions, grants etc.
But hey, I have it coming I guess because since neither of my parents went to college and I grew up in a house that clipped coupons, had a giant garden and often wore hand-me-down clothes I got from the doctors family my family cleaned house for on occasion for extra money...us silver spooners need to pay their fair share.
At some point it gets annoying....but you keep rolling out those Bill Gates examples because like you said, you want it to be "scaled" oh wait.....it scales onto people like me too like everything else these days.
Aaaahhh - but you forget the point that getting a ticket is largely a voluntary choice - unlike insurance or taxes! All ya gotta do is obey the law - and now you have more incentive to do so.
And it would be based on current income - if you were once rich but lost all your money think of the break you'd get.
However the general concept is correct, a $500 fine is much more of a deterrent to someone making $15K a year than to someone making $250K, but it is not nothing to either person. Actually the person making $15K may have less of a deterrent because they just wont pay it.
When I was broke, I got a hospital bill for one of my children for $380,000. I thought it was funny. I called and offered them half of my net worth - they now owe $1400 a month. Now, a $380,000 hospital bill woudl freak me out. I would not laugh at all.
There is a lot of freedom in being judgment proof.
That is a good point. You can't bleed a stone, and people who have nothing are effectively judgment proof. Once you have some money, then you have something to lose.
Generally speaking, if you're driving badly and dangerously, traffic fines are the least of your problems. The bigger issue is what could happen if you injure or kill somebody, and the judgments against you in that case. Insurance only covers so much, and that's why some people of means carry supplemental umbrella policies (I do). OTOH, many people with no money drive like complete idiots with no insurance, get tickets frequently, never pay them and couldn't care less. This proposal would do nothing to address people like that.
There's also the issue that regardless of how much money they have, different people simply have different thresholds for the amount of punishment that it will take to alter their behavior. I know people with plenty of money who wouldn't want to shell out $150 to pay a speeding tickets, while others with similar wealth or less money couldn't care less about higher fines. This is true of people at every stage of their lives -- penalties that are significant to some people mean nothing to others. This was true all the way to back to my days in school.
So I don't think that scaling fines to income necessarily makes the impact of the penalties equal. It does add in a significant amount of additional administration and red tape, and opens up the possibility of cheating the system. It's generally better to keep things simple, IMO. I don't see that the potential upside to this exceeds the downside.
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I used the word try. Perhaps you should befriend Merriam-Webster.
