Someone should call John Boehner and let him know they have found his funding plan.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Infrastructure (HBO)
Fucking Socialists!
Oh wait, or is this Marxism? Maoist?
Goddammit! This has to be some kind of âismâ that I donât like!
HmmâŚ
âFrom everyone to whom much has been given, much will be requiredâ
Sounds about right.
But thatâs not fair! It punishes the rapid!
Jokes on them. They will just start having themselves be driven around by slaves and will be able to go as fast as they want.
Check and mate.
Thatâs brilliant! Class warfare! Punishing success!
That sounds low.
Zero punishment for being a financial success. Fair punishment for endangering lives in spite of individual financial success.
Fixed amount fines are inversely effective as income increases. On the other hand, fines of equal percentage of income pinch much more evenly across the wealth divide.
So if you make 50k euro a year, the speeding fine for 23km/h over the limit would be 428 euro in Finland? Yikes, remind me not to speed in Finland.
Sweet! That is a major problem in the US, very glad to see some countries realizing that minor traffic offenses (and other minor offenses) are unfairly leveraged against the poor and for the rich for exactly this reason. (Though, there is an additional reason, as well. Court dates are far more difficult to make for the poor then for the wealthy.)
Though, a concern about âthis being the solutionâ is that too often local governments rely on such fines for their economy, and either directly or indirectly profit from it. Which encourages excessive ticketing via such things as quotas and other commission based systems, as well as, obviously, dishonesty.
That might be solved if, federally, there was much stronger investigations and enforcement against such localities. As it stands, it is very much hit or miss. And by far and large, very much miss.
Punishing success!
Err no actually.
A few years ago I was nearly knocked over on my cycle by a guy speeding down the bus lane in a Mercedes. When I caught up with the idiot at the lights, his response to me was,
âI donât care itâs a bus lane, I can afford to pay the fineâŚâ
Go figure.
Wonder if he could afford to spend the rest of his life in jail for death by dangerous driving?
54K?
Could be worse.
He probably couldnât, but itâs not really an issue since drivers are rarely prosecuted for killing cyclists.
Itâs not a fine, itâs a fee.
I spoke to a jerk parked in a clearway, causing massive traffic problems as buses had to merge to get past him, and he shrugged and said the $150 fine was worth less to him than the hassle of finding a legal parking spot.
Mind you, weâve recently introduced tow-away for clearways, and I suspect the hassle of having to retrieve his expensive car from the impound lot might have changed his ways!
Hit over 80 in spots of Virginia and you spend time in jail. Just hope itâs not a weekend.
I know. I was joking. Look closely, youâll see a secret message.
This seems appropriate as traffic offences have such a localised range and scope. Thus a âfederalistâ (not specifically a US concept) approach - where local problems that can be dealt with locally should be treated locally - appears to be completely correct.
But it does lead to the concerns you mention. At its worst, it invites corruption. Is this because the economy itself is not local? So possibly an indication that a belief that youâre dealing with it locally is, in fact, an illusion?
Thus youâre forced (by the ârulesâ of the federalist game) to pass it up to the next structure up the food chain which can competently deal with it. The economy is usually national, so there you go. Get a whole bunch of income from fines at the national level and distribute the proceeds locally according to some agreed scheme.
Either that, or make the economy more local of course, with some kind of value-tokenisation of transporty-roady-parkingy related âwealthâ system so you can keep the solution local. The parking/speeding officials could each then run their own little independent empires.
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