In one downtown area i lived in, a private tow company would tow illegally parked cars from allies, street side, etc… Unless the car was a real beater and the owner would be unlikely to pick it up. One of my friends bought a super beater 2 door work truck for 300 bucks, that was his downtown car. He would drive downtown and park it anywhere, and it never got towed.
Proportional to income and wealth
Based on current value, or value at time of sale though?
If current value, who determines that value?
A data analyst could easily compile average prices from the top 10 online car marketplaces, or whatever lawmakers want to set as the baseline. More likely they would just use blue book and maybe weigh it against the market area.
In the UK we have https://www.parkers.co.uk/car-valuation/select-manufacturer/
In the USA I think there’s an equivalent.
In the US it’s https://www.kbb.com/ which I always thought was a household name.
I drive a wheelchair accessible minivan which is stupidly fucking expensive but not because it’s a good or a luxury car. Modifications for the wheelchair access roughly doubled the total cost of the car.
I love the idea of penalties being proportional to income, but we all know cunts like musk will never pay a dime, while regular people will get fucked or ultra-fucked if they are poor.
Why not simply make fees proportional to income? For parking and other traffic infractions.
Because the real asshole money hoarders don’t make a big income and store their funds as wealth and are living off interest.
Still, this would be a step in the right direction and as others said, some places do it.
Realized interest is supposed to count as income, but there are so many tax loopholes that it’s crazy
This is why it has to be their time, not their money.
Some places do. Wish more did though.
This is the way. For a lot of things, not just parking fees.
That would require the city to know your income.
That would require the city to know your income.
Easy enough. The city asks you when you pay the fine. If you lie, your tax return the following year shows you lied and then you get a felony charge.
The rich here in Norway have no income and no fortune if you look at their tax returns. But they own huge companies, have multiple houses and cars, etc. Not to mention the ones who have moved abroad who doesn’t have tax returns at all…
I have to be honest: It does confuse be a bit how they’re able to get away with this. There’s this uproar now about the wealth tax (1), which I partly understand, because if your business isn’t turning a profit, and you’re forced to pay taxes based on the value of the shares, you have a problem. However, some people are apparently capable of buying houses, boats and cars, as well as living a lavish lifestyle, while still having a “zero” in their income. My guy, how are you buying food and houses without having a taxable income?
I think the wealth tax is a good place to start, but as of now it seems to me like it isn’t specific enough. We need some way to ensure that
- If you want to buy something, you need either income or a loan.
- If you want to pay your loans you need income.
- If you have income, it is taxed.
so that we can ensure that the money these people are getting from somewhere is appropriately taxed, while avoiding hurting people that own a company with millions in assets (e.g. in equipment), but aren’t cashing out anything from the company (e.g. aren’t buying expensive shit for themselves). Of course, “benefits” like getting a house, meals, or a yacht as a “gift” from your company should be taxed appropriately.
(1) For non-Norwegians: We’ve recently introduced a tax based on your current wealth, rather than income
The rich here in Norway have no income and no fortune if you look at their tax returns.
No income after deductions or no reported income at all? And yes I understand the concept of getting loans against assets that doesn’t show up at taxable income. Do they not report income to their country of residence if it isn’t Norway?
I haven’t looked into it directly, but when the media looks into it every time the tax lists are released (yes, anybody can look into anybodys tax returns) then many are shown with zero in both columns.
Others move to different countries to get away from our taxes. I guess it is because they are’nt rigged in such a way that they can hide their assets or do deductibles like that. But I don’t know how the countries they move to work taxwise other than that it pays off for them, or they wouldn’t keep doing it.
Not every state has income tax.
Those people still pay federal taxes
Do you think the federal government is going to answer the phone for your local municipal traffic cop tracking down a parking ticket?
They do. You pay taxes.
To the federal government. No income tax in WA.
That’s what they do in a few countries. It works, lol.
Dumb question but does this not just allow people with little to no income Park wherever they want? Including red zones or in front of fire hydrants?
These fines are not zero at zero income.
Why would it? It would still be expensive for them
This is actually pretty smart
Probably wouldn’t work in practice
Steve Jobs worked out a system with the local Mercedes dealer where he’d get a new car every three months.
Why every three months? Because that was how long you could drive without a license plate, and he liked to park in handicapped spots and they couldn’t ticket him without a plate.
so glad he’s dead
I’ve never understood that about America. How can you leave the dealership without a license plate. In the UK if you don’t have a plate you’re not on the road.
I think now they give you those paper plates? Not ideal, but I see them a lot, flapping in the winds.
At least until a couple years ago, California you could drive without a plate for a couple months. I’m not sure how that really worked tbh, like what would happen if you were pulled over ECT.
Now you must get a temp paper plate right as you leave the lot.
Vermont has (or had?) handwritten paper plates. Like if you imagine dealer plates, just messily written in sharpie and taped in the window.
As fake as they look to begin with, if you get close enough to read them, they’re almost always expired.
You get the paperwork folded up and taped to your windshield. Thats what you would present if you got pulled over to prove you owned the car.
I’ve never heard of this speaking as an American. I’ve always seen temporary plates used.
I hadn’t heard that, so I looked it up. It’s true, although it was every six months, not three, and California has closed that loophole now (dealers now issue and register temporary plates for new sales). I didn’t see anything saying he’d parked in handicapped spots outside of the Apple car park.
I didn’t see anything saying he’d parked in handicapped spots outside of the Apple car park.
This makes it no less egregious.
The ultra rich don’t matter in this equation. You could charge Elon Musk $10 or $10 million…it’s practically the same to him.
They are anomalies. There are plenty of just-as-entitled, less-filthy-rich people.
But the $10 million would sure help the community that ticketed him
I’m not saying we shouldn’t. I’m saying this to counter the Steve Jobs anecdote above me. He exploited a loophole to avoid some fines because of his exorbitant wealth. Obviously that’s a bad thing and he should’ve paid, and exploiting the loophole to park in handicap spaces, even at Apple (where he could just reserve a spot for himself), is just a sign of his narcissistic psychosis. But to point it at him as an example of why it wouldn’t work is missing the forest for the trees.
I feel the same way about UBI. Who gives a shit if Musk gets a check for $2000 every month or whatever. He doesn’t, and that’s a drop in the bucket of the whole thing, especially considering he (should/would) be paying way, way, way more in funding such a program. He’s a distraction. I care way more about everybody else getting it.
This this this.
If we are afraid the ultra rich person doesn’t care, guess we are in for another 10 mil next week.
Could finance alot of things in a society.
They should increase exponentially over say a 5 year period. Anyone can not see a sign or accidentally overstay a meter now and then, starting with a “Hey jackass” amount of money that to most people would merely be an annoyance but escalate relatively quickly.
That could bankrupt poor people. It needs to have some wealth or income component or it will never be fair
Income should be the exponent. Lets say that the fine you pay on your n’th infraction within a 365 day period is
f = I f_0 exp( (I / I_0) (n - 1) )where
f_0is some reasonable fraction of income for the first fine (say 0.1 %),Iis your income, andI_0is some appropriate modifier (say 100 k EUR / yr). That way, people with incomeI < I_0pay an essentially flat fine until they reach very many infractions, while people with large incomes will reach massive fines very quickly.
My car is worth negative money. I could become a professional parking ticket getter.
Parking fines follow the costs-by-cause principle. Thus, qualifying them makes their size dependent on their damage.
Parking in a fire department safety zone resulting in a delayed fire response can be costly, but even if no fire response was delayed, there’s an opportunity cost for the fire department, because they need to buy way-clearing devices or extended fire response tools, if there is high likelihood of blocked zones or passage.
There is a whole department of economic science dealing with this, the internalisation of external costs into economic activity (carbon tax is an example).
While this is true, it is also true that fines that are small relative to your wealth essentially mean those activities come with a convenience fee for the wealthy. Having fines that scale with income or similar maintains the severity of the infraction for people of all incomes.
Fines in general should use the day fine system.
