A new column in the New York Times suggests that fines for speeding, parking violations and other minor offenses should be much higher for the rich than they are for poor or middle class people.
So called “progressive fines” would allow authorities to lower the amount fined for lower income people, and raise them substantially for the rich, who currently don’t feel the impact of a few hundred dollars.
“Does this mean we should slap [Facebook CEO Mark] Zuckerberg with a $1 million speeding ticket?” Brooklyn lawyer Alec Schierenbeck asked in an op-ed for the Times.
“Finland would,” he wrote. “In 2015, it handed a businessman a $67,000 speeding ticket for going 14 miles per hour above the limit.”
“But the United States doesn’t need to go that far,” he wrote. “Other countries typically cap the size of fines to guard against astronomical sanctions. We should do the same.”
He predicted that authorities would collect more revenues with progressive fines, and help ease the impact of these fines on lower-income people.
“Government revenue could even rise, all while the lowering the burden of criminal justice debt on the poor,” he wrote.
