March 17, 2018
It is amazing how otherworldly seemingly intelligent people can sometimes be. The NYT ran a column by Alec Schierenbeck arguing that fines for things like parking and traffic violations should be progressive.
The point is that a $150 speeding ticket is no big deal to a high-priced doctor or lawyer, whereas it is a huge deal to a mother working at a near minimum wage job. This fine may be an impossible for burden for the latter, possibly leading to eviction or even imprisonment in some cases for failing to make court appearances connected with non-payment.
Schierenbeck is 100 percent right in this basic point, but in a country where the justice system is already so unbelievably tilted to favor the rich, the idea that we would make fines income-based is hopelessly utopian. Perhaps Schierenbeck is not old enough to remember the housing crash and the resulting financial crisis. This literally cost the country trillions in lost output, as millions lost their jobs and homes.
People in the financial industry committed serious crimes. They passed along mortgages they knew to be fraudulent in mortgage-backed securities. The credit rating agencies blessed these mortgage-backed securities as investment grade even though they knew they were garbage. No one went to jail because our country doesn’t put rich people who commit financial crimes in jail.
And, this wasn’t a one-off event. Let’s see Donald Trump or Jared Kushner’s tax returns. I would be willing to bet that there are bogus deductions that rip off more money from the taxpayers than the amounts that many convicted small thieves are sitting in jail for. And, this is a bi-partisan story. I’m sure there is lots of garbage on Robert Rubin’s tax returns or Tony James’.
We live in a country where it is standard practice for rich people to get away with breaking the law in really big ways and facing, at worst, a slap on the wrist if they get caught. So yes, it would be fairer if the fines for minor offenses were income-based, but we don’t live in a country where fairness between the rich and poor is taken seriously, and it is an insult to NYT readers to pretend we are.
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