From Each, According To His Ability

goofyfish

goofyfish

Analog By Birth, Digital By Design
Valued Senior Member
Don’t our judges do something pretty close to this already when they set higher bail for the millionaire than they do for the janitor?
alonoja, the 27-year-old heir to a large sausage business, has been fined $216,000 for driving 50 miles an hour in a 25-mile-an-hour zone in Helsinki, the police said. The fine is believed to be the largest ever given for speeding in Finland, where traffic offenders are penalized according to their ability to pay. Mr. Salonoja’s 2002 income was $8.9 million, Reuters said. The Finnish Internet millionaire Jaako Rytsola held the previous record for a speeding fine: $101,700. (Full text here)
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The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that the Finns may have something here. If the purpose of a fine is to deter, their system is more likely to slow Jussi down than ours is. If it’s to raise funds for the treasury, ditto. If the purpose is to express society’s disapproval or to exact retribution, ditto and ditto again.

:m: Peace.
 
But is it justice if this person gets a more harsh penalty than smone else would just because he has lots of money? This seems like the Finnish government is acting like a thief. The are abusing this poor man to get at his money. I dont think a car can go fast enough to justify a 200k fine. Punishment should be appropriate to the crime.
 
Its supposed to mean that someone gets hurt the same by the fine, whatever their income. So if your income is 150 pounds a week, surely losing, say, 20% of that, ie 30 pounds, will hurt you as much as someone whose income is 5,000 pounds a week losing 1,000 pounds. roughly speaking. I dont see any particular problem with it.
 
SpyMoose said:
But is it justice if this person gets a more harsh penalty than smone else...
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Do you think that a $1000 fine would punish someone making
$20k a year the same as someone who makes $500k a year?

:m: Peace.
 
You know, the funny thing is I know you are right a punishment should be a punishment; this guy just pulls out his money clip and problem over, if the laws are uniform. But all my life the American definition of justice, which includes "Lets not be too hard on the wealthy... after all, you might be one of them some day" has been pounded into my head. There needs to be mechanisms for keeping the wealthy obedient to the rule of law as well, and if that means raising fines on them, I can't really drum up any conviction that that is wrong.
 
This is simply giving the Govt. license to steal from the financially successful. Criminalized socialism.

If a man starts a business on his own, busts his ass for seventy hours a week to build his enterprise, sacrifices security and pleasure to build toward a larger future, and at the end of the first fiscal year has made $1,000 of profit, that $1,000 is his gold. Ten years later, through patience and careful money management, he has turned that $1,000 in to $1,000,0000, is that first $1,000 any less valuable to him? Did he work any less hard for it?

The Fins are nuts. This law makes me want to vomit.

People who have never had anything as a result of their own blood, sweat and tears have no respect for those few self-made individuals who have taken a risk and worked for their wealth.
 
Luckily, the United States usually upholds EQUALITY, not proportionality before the law.

I'll admit, Americans, by and large, are becoming more and more socialistic, but, for now, I can yet be glad that I don't live in Finland. :cool:
 
But both hypothetical transgressors have worked for their money. The poor so and so may only ave been washing dishes at a restaurant all week, but hes still only got 150 pounds left. And the rich guys been slaving away at his desk all day to make a few million more. But in the eyes of the law they are both guilty of the same offence, speeding. Then they both need punished, but if the fines are the same, the rich person isnt really punished. Its got nothing to do with state sponsored theft from individuals, its about appropriately hurting people who have transgressed social laws. Ideally of course they both would have had a proper say in the drawing up of these laws.
 
Without a law like this then you'll have a society in which some people aren't making enough money to speed, where as other wealthy individuals are making enough money to break the law all they like. If the law is designed to uniformly deter all people from speeding, then the punishment should be proportional. The rich shouldn't be exempt from justice.

In other words, if we're all equal in the eyes of the law, and all perpetrators of the same crime are to be punished equally, why should one man potentially have his ability to feed himself taken away while another hardly even notices the loss? Which person is more likely to learn his lesson, and which is more likely to figure that he’s successful enough to be above the law?

I'm a fan of Ayn Rand, normally I can see the merit of protecting the rich, and think that others are too quick to try and spend their money. The idea of tax brackets make me feel a little sick, but in this instance I think the higher penalty according to ability to pay is well justified.
 
MYSTECH, I could not have said it better. It is quite different when issuing punishment, and issuing tax responsibility. PMT
 
The law and its punishment should concern the crime, never the criminal.

Justice is blind. It sees no distinction between rich and poor; it weighs and knows only the crime committed.

The punishment must fit the damage done to society, not the purse of the perpetrator.
Fines exist so that criminals may repay society. They exist for only this.

Justice is neither morality nor efficiency.
Justice is not necessarilly in agreement with one's conscience.





In this case there is an inadvertent reward to the rich.

If that is too terrible, the alternative, that used in Finland, does exist, but it seems highly communistic to me.
 
Taxes are higher for the wealthy, so their fines should be as well. That is equality.
 
Another disgusting aspect of this type of law, that should be obvious to all who understand law, is the ease with which profiling can occur. If the cops want to they can very easily only pull over speeders driving new, expensive vehicles, while letting the speeders driving less expensive cars skate on past. Now if you want to make the argument that there is nothing inherently wrong in profiling by LEA, then you must make it across the spectrum. You cannot pick and choose which types of profiling are wrong. So I guess if you agree with this law, you obviously support racial profiling too. Racist bastards. :D
 
Rappaccini said:
The law and its punishment should concern the crime, never the criminal.

Justice is blind. It sees no distinction between rich and poor; it weighs and knows only the crime committed.
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Well that's a beautiful ideal, but when it comes to the point where the two criminals genuinely are not equal, it's sort of ignoring a crucial factor isn't it? I agree that the crime, when committed by any person, rich or poor, it is equally as wrong. However, when the punishment deals solely with monetary compensation, then it matters very much how much money that person actually has. Otherwise it's a scenario where a man can end up becoming rich enough to essentially be above the law, and we simply can't have that. If the penalty did not directly deal with money, then I would not be in favor of a stiffer penalty on those who have more money, you see. I don't favor punishing the rich more, I just favor giving every man an effective punishment, and a reason to obey the law even if he doesn't agree with it.
 
My goodness, I like the way you think. A very important phrase; that is, not believing in rendering "more punishment," but equitable punishment.

Further, you folks who would condemn Finland, are you aware of any facts regarding that country? Taxes are high, but health care is not. Their successful birth have a high rater; their air is just about the purest and the Finns I have met, I have loved. So, learn something about their way of governing, if you want to make a fair deduction about the way they do things ova' there. PMT
 
goofyfish:
Amusing isn't it, that the phrase "from each according to his ability" is Christian in origen?

15ofthe19:
Socialism is the crutch of the weak of spirit.
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Socialism is an economic system that has proved highly effective in dilute form - take Scandinavia or Canada as examples. It has nothing to do with crutches, weakness or that favorite of hysterical moralists; "spirit".

I'll bet you drive on public roads. Take advantage of public schooling. Are glad for the police and fire safety systems, and I'll bet money that you're quite happy to have a military.

That money comes from taxes.
You hypocrite, you hear all this shameless banter about "justice" and "equality" and silently agree, yet you try to play the bad-ass "every man for himself!" role.
You've the same ideology as a socialist, yet you deny socialism.

Rappanici:
Luckily, the United States usually upholds EQUALITY, not proportionality before the law
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No it doesn't. Equality is a myth, and the U.S' attempts to codify this myth just lead to silliness.

Justice is blind. It sees no distinction between rich and poor; it weighs and knows only the crime committed.
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Dollars to dimes you couldn't give me a working definition of 'justice'.
You're of 15ofthe19's kin, you pat yourself on the back for being so far from the socialists and yet you share their basic ideology - equality, justice, fairness and "rights".
 
Xev said:
goofyfish:
You hypocrite, you hear all this shameless banter about "justice" and "equality" and silently agree, yet you try to play the bad-ass "every man for himself!" role.
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Haha, Xev, that was beautiful and eloquent. You’d better be careful with phrases like that or I might just have to start quoting you while making arguments in real life.

It seems to be all too common a view among die-hard conservatives that socialism = wrong. They tend to ignore the fact that our own nation (Well I’m talking about the US, of course, but this is only all the more true in Canada, but I don’t think liberal is a dirty word up there) is full of socialist conventions, organizations, and policies which really do make the nation a better place.
 
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