Why do people confuse the original offense with non-compliance follow on penalties?

Great Debates
141

You do claim that you are somehow better than others who do those things, but cannot afford the fine.

And if it is also a fine for obstructing traffic? What are your options now?

Why would I, I am not levying a fine at them? They are also completely voluntarily in my employ. I cannot levy anything on them above terminating their employment, unlike the state. Ultimately, my discipline has the intent of making them more productive employees, so that I can pay them more. What is the intent of levying fines that can’t be paid?

I thought your counter was that, if they couldn’t pay, then they could spend time in jail. What with your repetition that life is not fair, I must have missed when you agreed with my basic premise that fines should be proportional to income, rather than arguing that proportional fines somehow let poor people get away with things, and then implying (with your kids comment) that I said that there should be no punishments whatsoever. I believe you did, but skimming the thread, I am not seeing the post, could you remind me where that was?

142

It’s not disproportionate though; no more so than having everyone pay the same fee for getting a drivers’ license, car registration, gasoline, safety inspection, etc…

You drive a car, you have to pay X amount for registration. You drive over the speed limit, the fine is Y.

We get it, it sucks to be poor. But I doubt the point of the fines is to make it easy on the rich, or hard on the poor. In all likelihood, they set them such that they are a pain in the ass to the middle of the bell curve. In other words, the vast majority of people find a $200 fine to be enough of a pain in the ass to not want to actually commit the offense, but not enough to actually cause them any serious hardship.

But that’s totally situation-dependent. A single person making $60k a year can probably support a $200 ticket a whole lot easier than a family of four living on $60k. Even that’s dependent on the circumstances- if that family of four owns their house outright, that changes things. So does the single person having crippling debt. There’s also assets vs. income; many “rich” people don’t necessarily have incomes commensurate with their assets, so they’d be paying less than you might expect.

The other thing to consider is that courts WILL set up payment plans and/or work with you if you’re having trouble paying your fine, or will reschedule your court date if you need them to. They’re not out to deliberately screw anyone, but they’ll blithely let the weight of bureaucracy land on someone who doesn’t work with them.

Like I’ve said before, the real issue here isn’t whether fines are appropriate punishments, but rather whether a lot of these things should be considered criminal offenses or just administrative infractions. I suspect the reasoning is that people can and will ignore civil offenses like traffic tickets, especially if they have no assets to be taken in the first place. And I suspect people would bitch and moan just as loud around here if someone making minimum wage got their wages garnished because they didn’t pay their parking tickets, because you know, being poor sucks and apparently absolves people of having to be responsible or obey the law.

143

I get that your goal here was to announce that you’re smarter than the idiots who speed, but my takeaway from this was different. My takeaway is that you’re saying that that staggering amount of money is enough to act as a deterrent for you, while the current fine isn’t.

Whereas if you made, say, 5% of your current income, it probably wouldn’t take quite as large a sum to make you so careful about speeding. And if you made a million dollars a week, then even that astronomical fine might not slow you down.

I’d say that that demonstrates the point that the deterring effect of fines is not equal for rich and poor drivers, and if we’re trying to achieve an equal (read: existing) deterrent effect against rich drivers, then we really ought not to have fixed fine amounts that don’t account for wealth. Well, that or we switch to a punishment method that’s not as vulnerable to being rendered irrelevant by wealth, like say incarceration.

144

I’m curious what discipline you give to your employees then?

145

No, I’m smarter than idiots who speed when they know they cannot afford to pay the fine if they are caught speeding. That’s just dumb.

I’ve already said I agree with proportional fines. I’d be cool with jail time too. Although I suspect the usual people will still be whining that poor people get screwed because they cannot miss work to go to jail.

146

Big deal. I’ve been going 80 and still being tailgated. It has nothing to do with what speed you are driving.

147

I really, really wish that I could cast the first stone at people who sometimes do dumb things.

Well, it almost certainly is a harsher burden on the poor - I know that if I suddenly had to take a few days off work to chill in jail I could absorb it in vacation time better than many. (Living it down might be a problem, though.) But at least from a deterrence angle, jail time is still at least somewhat of a problem no matter how rich you are. The same can’t be said for a $100 fine.

148

You’d run out of stones really quickly.

149

You can register your car for 3-4 years for the same price as one ticket. You can budget the upcoming fee, as it is known exactly when it will come up.
We get it, it sucks to be poor. But I doubt the point of the fines is to make it easy on the rich, or hard on the poor.

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the point, maybe not, but the effect, yes. And that the effect does cause some level of disproportionate pain to those who are considered “lessor” is a feature to many who defend the status quo.

So, what is the intended effect of this law? Is it to prevent people from speeding?

If so, then it fails, as I see people speed every single day, sometimes even excessively to the point of creating true danger to those around.

It is certainly not having its intended effect, but it seems to be having a negative unintended consequence.

Is there a reason to advocate for the status quo, when the status quo does nothig to improve the safety of the public, but does do harm to vulnerable and marginalized populations?

I have no idea what your point is here, except that you are reinforcing the point that arbitrary monetary payouts for traffic infractions is a poor idea.

Depends on the court, every single court in the country is different. Some will be lenient and work with you, some will toss you in the clink until you pay.

And rescheduling court dates? Not really. You can sometimes get a bit of an extension, but that means that they set a new date, not that you get to pick it.

That’s a whole different situation. Now, you are determining the punishment to be levied upon someone based on their ability to navigate a bureaucracy effectively.

No, the reasoning is so that they are able to press criminal charges against people if they are not able to pay the fine.

Bitch and moan, eh? That’s what it is called when you question the results of a failed public policy? Nice.

And that last little throw away line there, are you really going to stand by that? Yes, being poor sucks, but when has it ever, ever, ever, in history absolved people of obeying the law? Now, being wealthy has had that effect since being wealthy was invented, but being poor, not so much. That statement is so far out of touch with reality that I’m not sure that it was intended to be taken seriously, was it?

150

Well, it does seem like you are advocating for a system of punishment for breaking a minor law that poor people will just disregard. Sort of like “A small fine? One that, if I don’t pay, won’t result in my going to jail? Well, I can’t afford that, so I’m just not going to pay it”

151

Nearly all of my discipline has to do with attendance, and when it comes to attendance, it is their choice as to whether they want to get paid or not.

But, I have a variety of things to do. There are preferred shifts and hours, and people with less infractions get the choicer shifts.

If that doesn’t work, then I may move to cutting out a day from someone’s schedule. I’d rather not, but as I explain to them, I need to know when people will be here, at least now, I know that you won’t be here.

I usually give them the option to call on their days off, and if we need them, I let them come in.

Only for serious infractions, mostly involving violence or theft, will I actually fire someone.

As I said, my goal is to create a workforce of productive employees, not get my revenge for infractions by firing people. I do the least harm in punishments I can in order to get the compliance needed to run my store from them. I consider that a good policy.

Curious as to what type of discipline you give to your kids then.

Like I said, I’ve only been there a few times, and I’m pretty sure it was always on a weekend. I didn’t want to do much more than 10 over, as having an out of state ticket is a real pain in the ass.

So, what you are saying is that the current method of traffic enforcement is a complete failure. Why are we defending the status quo here?

152

It only seems that way because you keep insisting that it seems that way, but it is not what I have said, not at all.

The fines should be smaller, or they should be able to make them up in other ways. I have no problem with the fines being much bigger for the wealthy.

Lets say a $200 fine is about a day’s wage. So, that level fine should be about .5% of annual income. For minor speeding tickets, let’s call it .1%.

Ultimately, I do not believe that incarcerating someone over their ability to pay does any good to the person, to the prison system(except those who profit off of it), or to society as a whole, and it still doesn’t actually keep people from speeding. It fails entirely on every single front. There is nothing to defend here, just inertia that you refuse to let go of.

153

Do you think cutting a day from someone’s schedule disproportionately affects your poorer employees?

154

Yeah, I said I was cool with that. What other ways did you have in mind? And when they don’t actually DO those other ways, what then?

155

On the contrary, I believe they are doing an adequate job of keeping speeding and reckless driving in check while allowing people to go faster than the dumb 55 MPH speed limit.

156

I am not levying a fine against them for something arbitrary. I pay them to be productive, and if they are not productive, then I am the one who is disproportionately effected, along with the other employees.

For instance, if they get a traffic ticket, I would not cut their hours. It would only be things that directly affect the operation of my business that would give me reason to do anything.

Do you see that there is a difference at all between and employer paying employees for work, and the state levying fines for punishment?

If, not when. There would be many more willing to pay their fines or otherwise make their penance if it were something that they were able to actually do.

Yes, at a certain point, people refusing to recognize their responsibilities does require some level of force for compliance. I am just saying that we jump to that point far too quickly, while expecting people to be able to come up with money or take off time that they simply cannot afford to do.

First, you see if your demands are reasonable, before you start punishing people for not meeting those demands.

For instance, I have an attendance policy that does require people to show up for the work, but, for the occasions when someone is unable to make it, they receive points towards a sanction, rather than a punishment immediately. If they get enough points, then I start cutting hours, suspending them, or ultimately terminating them. It is not that they made a mistake that I “punish” them, it is that they continue to make mistakes that are disruptive to my ability to run my store.

And that is what we are talking about here. If someone makes a single mistake, or the occasional mistake, they should not be severely punished. It is only when they have demonstrated that they refuse to learn from their mistakes that it makes any sense to start doing things that can cause harm.

Personally, I wouldn’t have a fine at all for the first ticket at 15 mph or less in 2 or so years, just an officially recorded warning, and I would not issue tickets at all for 5mph or less. My insurance actually doesn’t go up if I have a ticket less than once every three years, so if my insurance doesn’t think that that single mistake is enough to consider me a higher risk to make me pay them money, then why should the justice system?

I already talked about garnishing wages, if someone refuses to pay reasonable fines. I talked about taking away their car, if they refuse to operate it safely. What else do you think is necessary to protect the public from unsafe drivers? (Other than replace them all with self driving cars, which I think will happen eventually, and make all this traffic stuff no longer relevant.)

I disagree. I see people driving rather recklessly on a daily basis. I see very few people driving the speed limit, and those that do, are the ones that are most disruptive to safe traffic flow.

That you feel that the legal speed is a dumb limit means that you don’t actually think that someone going a few miles over that limit is actually being unsafe. So, how is fining someone for going over that limit making the roads any safer?

157

If you cut the hours of a person who has a rich spouse, then they don’t care about the lost income. But a single mother with 4 kids, a days pay being cut means her kids can’t eat. If you have the same policy towards rich workers and poor workers, then you are hurting the poor workers because the cut hours affect them more. It’s not fair.

I’d be cool with this.

But a poor person cannot afford to have their wages garnished. A rich person can. It’s not fair to the poor person. Also, if you take the license of a rich person, they can just get an Uber or something. What is a poor person supposed to do without a car to take them to their job? It’s not fair.

And I disagree with your disagreement. Perhaps you need to drive here for a while to see it.

I never said it was unsafe. I don’t write the laws. I would make the speed limit 75 on the beltway with rigorous enforcement. But I’m not in charge.

158

In the case of fines, tie the fine to the income of the finee. What is not onerus on 100k a year sure as hell is on 10k a year.

And, in some cases at least, what you term “refusal” to pay is actually inability to pay.

159

No, he fucking can’t. He outright said that the judge pointed out that it was strict liabilty. Fuck sakes chum, read the fucking thing before pusilanimously whinging “cite”. Fuck.

160

And shorter than, “Stupid tourist fails to adequately research laws of an authoritarian pseudo-theocracy and furthers fucks herself by arguing with authority.”

Harsh lesson to learn the hard way but thems the breaks. And she did, in fact, go to jail for drinking the wine. She got CAUGHT because of the heated argument.

Tourists are not immune from the laws of the country they visit.