# Should a Rich Speeder Pay More? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 21, 2011, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-rich-speeder-pay-more/600311 "2011-10-21T00:28:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2011, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-rich-speeder-pay-more/600311/181 "2011-10-25T04:22:35Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > I’m also surprised to see people claiming that personal time has equal value. If someone’s working a 45-hour week on an hourly wage, paying someone to look after their kids and finding it hard to do so, and doing all their own housework, then it’s going to be harder for them to take a weekend out to do community service than it is for someone on a regular salary with a nanny they can well afford and a housekeeper. Which is exactly the same as why no one is talking about using a person’s _level of expenses_ as a bar. An hour of a person’s time is an hour, and how someone would choose to use it has no bearing on it’s “worth”. It’s worth whatever value a person ascribes to it, but society isn’t responsible for that valuation. > [@SciFiSam](#): > > If anything, personal time would be far harder to judge - the rich person might also volunteer a lot, or the poor person might look after an elderly relative, or the rich person might work 90 hours some weeks but 20 hours others and get told to do their service in the 90-hour week, or the distance to the place for community service might be a lot more (in money and time) for either. Again, that doesn’t give that person’s time any more valuation than they themselves ascribe to it. If they like helping the poor or the elderly, well, this week maybe they can’t because they got caught speeding. They’ll just have to spend 8 hours this weekend cleaning up highways and thinking about all the help they won’t be giving to the poor or the elderly because of the bad choice they made to commit an infraction. The fact that they volunteer doesn’t make their time any more valuable than it would be to some guy who just likes to goof off and read comic books: the point is they are punished by being unable to do the things they would wish to do. For my part, I still think fines should be set as a percentage of income, not as a set dollar amount. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2011, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-rich-speeder-pay-more/600311/182 "2011-10-26T20:25:27Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > Which is exactly the same as why no one is talking about using a person’s _level of expenses_ as a bar. An hour of a person’s time is an hour, and how someone would choose to use it has no bearing on it’s “worth”. It’s worth whatever value a person ascribes to it, but society isn’t responsible for that valuation. > > Again, that doesn’t give that person’s time any more valuation than they themselves ascribe to it. If they like helping the poor or the elderly, well, this week maybe they can’t because they got caught speeding. They’ll just have to spend 8 hours this weekend cleaning up highways and thinking about all the help they won’t be giving to the poor or the elderly because of the bad choice they made to commit an infraction. The fact that they volunteer doesn’t make their time any more valuable than it would be to some guy who just likes to goof off and read comic books: the point is they are punished by being unable to do the things they would wish to do. > > For my part, I still think fines should be set as a percentage of income, not as a set dollar amount. I don’t think you can so easily shrug off caring responsibilities (childcare and looking after elderly relatives) or losing money and possibly even your job because you can’t work. They’re not just ‘things that they would wish to do,’ but ‘things they need to do.’ I mean, a parent of a severely disabled child would obviously find it a hell of a lot harder to spend 8 hours cleaning the roads than someone with no dependents. ---
**Author:** ![bengangmo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@bengangmo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bengangmo)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-rich-speeder-pay-more/600311/183 "2011-10-28T00:53:58Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Five dollars is worth just as much to a rich man as a poor man - it’s not like a rich man can buy more with his five dollars than anyone else. It’s just that he has a whole bunch more five dollars than anyone else. > > Similarly, a young man and an old man could spend a year of their lives doing the same thing, but a young man has many more years left to him than an old man. By the logic of this thread, a year in jail to a person expecting to have another fifty of them is not as harsh a punishment as a year to a man who only has ten or so left. > > Judging by the examples in the OP, the fines appear to be linked not just to wealth, but to the degree of reckless driving. The two examples given are driving 85 through a village (which, I’m guessing, has a pretty low posted speed limit) and doing 185 mph on a freeway. It doesn’t appear that the laws in Europe are set up to allow six-figure fines for going ten over the limit, so it seems that should be the model we’re arguing over in this thread. Although presumably, even at low speeds, a rich driver would still pay more, but not to the extent that one collar makes their entire budget for the year. I think your argument still at least partially applies, though - expensive cars would still be targeted more often than cheap beaters, possibly to the over-all detriment of public safety. In europe, the antipodes and parts of Asia, police budgets do NOT come from fine revenue - fines go into the government’s consolidated budget (your federal budget in the US?). There are some very practical considerations and differences you would all need to consider before implementing such a system. First and foremost, the fining authority would have to have access (even if it is blind acccess) to income information - such sharing is anathema in the US context. Secondly, it would (most likely) need to be implemented on a national, rather than a state or county level. Here in Singapore, such a system would work well - as everybody has a national ID number, so the information to implement would be readily avaialable. But here also, as much as we have fines, the points on our licence are more of a deterrance than anything else. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-rich-speeder-pay-more/600311/184 "2011-10-28T07:25:12Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > I don’t think you can so easily shrug off caring responsibilities (childcare and looking after elderly relatives) or losing money and possibly even your job because you can’t work. They’re not just ‘things that they would wish to do,’ but ‘things they need to do.’ I mean, a parent of a severely disabled child would obviously find it a hell of a lot harder to spend 8 hours cleaning the roads than someone with no dependents. We are trying to punish transgressors, right? In such a way that they (and others) are deterred from committing infractions? ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2011, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-rich-speeder-pay-more/600311/185 "2011-10-28T20:58:43Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > From [this article:](http://money.msn.com/auto-insurance/should-a-rich-speeder-pay-more-carinsurance.aspx) > > I am against this system, and I rather suspect there will be at least some support for this scheme here. > > Why? Without having read a single reply post that might convince me otherwise, I think it’s brilliant. As it stands, petty violations of any and very kind that have only financial consequences actually do function to restrain or punish only those parties to whom $20 or $200 or $2000 is meaningful. If a person is so wealthy that $200 has no more impact on them than a nickel has on most other people, why should they care about following the law if it isn’t convenient for them? the first time I even thought about that was when I heard some guy who was trying to sell some kind of get-rich thing say that when you’re making $1000 an hour, taking the risk of a $256 ticket by illegally using the carpool lane to blow past time-wasting traffic is a logical decision. And he’s right. So rather than give the wealthy yet one MORE way they can, via their wealth, live by different rules than the rest of us, tie fines to a person’s ability to pay, and make it hurt. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-rich-speeder-pay-more/600311/186 "2011-11-01T00:45:15Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > We are trying to punish transgressors, right? In such a way that they (and others) are deterred from committing infractions? Yes, totally. Do you think that someone with lots of time on their hands is punished to the same extent by community service as someone with multiple caring responsibilities? It’d be just as regressive as fining someone the same amount of money regardless of their income. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-rich-speeder-pay-more/600311/187 "2011-11-01T00:52:26Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > Yes, totally. Do you think that someone with lots of time on their hands is punished to the same extent by community service as someone with multiple caring responsibilities? It’d be just as regressive as fining someone the same amount of money regardless of their income. I disagree. They chose to do those things with their time. If that makes their time more valuable to them, because they chose to accept these other responsibilities, then perhaps the loss of their time will serve as a greater deterrent than otherwise. Your argument, to me, seems to be along the lines of “well, that’s a lot of money for him, despite his huge income, because he has lots of bills to pay what with the yacht and the university library he’s funding and his G4 payments”. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-rich-speeder-pay-more/600311/188 "2011-11-01T17:23:21Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > I disagree. They chose to do those things with their time. If that makes their time more valuable to them, because they chose to accept these other responsibilities, then perhaps the loss of their time will serve as a greater deterrent than otherwise. > > Your argument, to me, seems to be along the lines of “well, that’s a lot of money for him, despite his huge income, because he has lots of bills to pay what with the yacht and the university library he’s funding and his G4 payments”. They choose to look after their children and relatives? Only in the sense that they choose to eat and breathe too. What are you arguing? That people are equally punished by having their time taken away? That’d be a really daft argument to make, so surely it’s not that. Or are you arguing that it doesn’t matter whether or not people are equally punished, even though this thread is about, er, punishing people equally and you’re in favour of that when it comes to money? Actually, yes, if someone had a big income but also huge outgoings (due to a large family or debts, maybe) then, yes, they’d also be more affected by a fine than you’d expect purely based on their income. That’s pretty obvious. But it would be impractical to have a system that took such details into account.(Like I said WRT community service in my original post on this thread). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-a-rich-speeder-pay-more/600311.md?page=9)