In Finland the fine is based on the yearly income and the latest case sets a new record @ EUR170,000.00
I guess people don’t drive too fast in Suomi land.
Here’s an English one because Rascal can’t be bothered to translate it for us :x news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3477285.stm
Seems he was doing double the speed limit, not something you tend to do accidentally, so could be fair enough.
“Heir to a sausage empire”? :shock: Prince of the sausage people ?
Actually you are right, I was a bit lazy. But then I did make an effort to google for an English report but all that came up were the older ones …
Basing a speeder’s fine on the amount of money he/she makes is unfair and, actually, quite strange. Everyone who violates the law, whether by speeding or some other offense, should be subjected to the same punishment. If rich people are forced to pay a larger fine simply becuase they have more cash, then they are being punished not for having committed the offense, but simply because they are rich. Anyway you look at it, it is unfair!
Well if I have $1,000,000 and you have $1 and the judge takes away $1 each, that’s not exactly fair and equal punishment, is it? I’ve still got $999,999 and you got shit.
Some people have more money, better looks, more brains, more talent than others. That’s not fair. Life isn’t fair. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to make it fair.
That is why I advocate corporal punishment instead of fines. The rod prejudices against no flesh; all butts are equal. Bring back the public stockades, I say!
While I would agree that a fine of say EUR5000 doesn’t hurt the rich guy as much as people who work hard for a normal income it is not fair though to ask the rich guy to pay more, people should be treated equally before the law - regardless of income.
[quote=“mod lang”]That is why I advocate corporal punishment instead of fines. The rod prejudices against no flesh; all butts are equal. Bring back the public stockades, I say![/quote]In the UK he would have lost his licence for a while for going that speed above the limit. And lost it for a year if he does it a couple of times. Maybe that hurts everyone more equally than a fixed fine ?
You’ve got that quite wrong, Cableguy. It’s a fundamental principle of sentencing that punishment should reflect the circumstances of the offender.
For example, if you visit the Great Marlborough Street Magistrate’s Court on a typical morning, you’ll see a string of people being hauled before the stipe on shoplifting charges, mostly for lifting stuff from the big department stores in and around Oxford Street. In my law student days when I used to watch the entertainment there, a high proportion of those caught and charged fell into one of two categories: Middle Eastern women, dressed in expensive clothing and found to be carrying hundreds of pounds in their handbags when apprehended; and impoverished students from Third World countries, often struggling to feed a wife and kids while working their way through college. The fines meted out to the former were generally at least ten times as high as those imposed on the latter, and I would have been very surprised to hear anyone suggest that that was unfair or inappropriate.
The same principle explains why repeat offenders get punished much more heavily than first-time offenders. And it’s also consistent with the principle that the amount of damages a defendant will be ordered to pay in a tort case will be assessed according to the harm and loss suffered by the plaintiff, so that, for example, if your tortious act causes someone earning a million pounds a year to lose a year’s income, you’ll have to compensate him for the full million, whereas if the victim happens to be unemployed, you won’t have to compensate him for any loss of income at all.
So one of the luxuries of being rich is being able to afford to break the law? Punishment by income level isn’t fair, but a poor man swiping an apple to feed his child is a bit different than a rich one swiping it for fun. Is there a fair way to punish crimes?