Posted on 02/10/2004 4:16:02 PM PST by presidio9
Finland's sausage king, a 27-year-old millionaire, set a new national record when he was served up a 170,000-euro (216,000-dollar) fine for speeding, it was reported.
Jussi Salonoja was caught last Thursday motoring along at 80 kilometers per hour (50 miles an hour) in a zone limited to half that speed, the Finnish tabloid Iiltalehti said on its internet site.
The price of the fine was scaled to his income, in conformity with Finnish law on traffic violations.
Salonoja, heir to a sausage empire, was already fined 40,000 euros back in 2000 for cruising at 200 kilometers per hour on the motorway, the daily Helsingin Sanomat said.
This week he dethroned record-holder Jaakko Rysola, an internet millionaire, who had to pay 80,000 euros in 2000 for a traffic violation.
Anssi Vanjoki, another Finnish millionaire and a former board member at mobile telephone maker Nokia (news - web sites), nearly scooped the record in 2002 when he was slapped with a 116,000-euro fine for speeding on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
But Vanjoki successfully pleaded that his income had dropped after the bust of the telecom sector, leaving the former high-cost record intact.
And what I said is that the way the current system works is that a rich man serves a proportionately shorter sentence for equal crimes. Compare any number of high-profile "Court TV" cases against any local unknown non-rich person's case. Or read Bridges and Crutchfield, 1988; Myers, 1987; Walsh, 1987; Zatz, 1987 who all have determined that the poor will get longer sentences for the same crime than the rich (who can simply afford better attorneys).
I'n not defending it. I said your argument against it is not valid because one can make the exact same agrument from the other side. I can take that stance and still not support sliding scale fines -- or are you incapable of understanding that?
Of course not. Is the role of law enforcement to equalize "pain," or to discourage unacceptable behavior? No matter the size of the fine levied on the "evil rich guy," it won't get his attention as much as a suspension or revocation of the applicable license or permit. That's closer to equality.
This is a slippery slope. Would you really advocate the government determining how much you could "afford"? To me, the implications are scary.
Thank you yet again for your kind words.
I believe that any reasonable person would interpret your post #22 as doing exactly that. If you wish to back away from that stance, I would encourage you to do so.
How can you separate those things?
This is a slippery slope. Would you really advocate the government determining how much you could "afford"? To me, the implications are scary.
Every honest government will do it. That is why Bill Gates pays more taxes than you (hopefuly). Scary is when you get all the "justice" you can afford.
Have I stumbled into some sort of bizarro-world reverse-angle FReeper page? Do we really have defenders of the Scandanavian way here? Have we been hacked by DU?
Where did I advocate sliding scale fines in #22? I was explaining the intent of the law as you didn't seem to understand it.
If you wish to back away from that stance
I haven't taken a stance to back away from. Like I said, your original argument was invalid and easily refuted. After I pointed that out to you, you still seemed unable to comprehend the intent of the law therefore I explained it to you. I didn't advocate adopting such a law at all. I still sensing you have a comprehension problem with what I've written. I didn't defend the law, I explained it.
Uh huh. Have a good evening.
I understand. You're viewing the fine as a form of punishment. I'm not; I see the whole thing as a system of economic incentives designed to get people to modify their behavior. For some things, like DUI, we would indeed throw people in jail and take away their license to drive. But for parking in the white zone?
I think if you treat fines as a form of punishment, you're basically telling Leona Helmsley that "laws are for little people."
How many times have we seen the Wall Street crook get fined $750,000 after he's already banked $60 million in ill-gotten gains? What signal does that send to the up-and-coming Wall Street crooks?
It's got nothing to do with people of modest means. For them the fine would be what you would consider normal. It's the people of abundant means that the fines target. To a millionaire, there is no reason not to speed. A couple hundred bucks is nothing to him. Better for him just to drive 100 mph everywhere and look on the piddling speeding fines as fees for his time.
But when you scale the fine upward, this starts to get his notice.
Again, it's to keep the ultra rich from out-right flaunting the same laws that the people of modest means have to obey.
We do the same in America with progressive fines. Rich people are fined much more than poorer people just for being able to produce more. It's called income tax.
Worry about yourself. A system to vary my punishment for a driving offense based upon how well my business did last year is insane. Makes all the sense of beating your kids according to the weather. I don't care if it'll gouge people richer than me even worse, all I need to know is that it's capricious to me. Nuts to that.
Ideology aside, in practical terms traffic tickets are already at least as much about revenue as they are about safety. If pulling over the well-to-do is made a multi thousand dollar jackpot, every cash strapped municipality will give their cops a Beemer quota and it will no longer be possible to drive while affluent. Hire a chauffeur.
Rich people get points on their license that add up to suspension or revocation the same as everybody else does. That's plenty of reason not to speed, and it works fine.
Yeah, that's the trouble with liberals. They can't just stop with law enforcement, they have to use the same tools to make everybody eat their spinach. Some day I expect the government to have little machines hovering over the sidewalks. They'll speak in my Aunt Alice's voice: "Don't run, you'll fall."
You bring the accusation - PROVE IT!
sure, now that Randall Simon is safely behind bars...
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