Quote:
Originally Posted by Hesla
Really ??
Why should one person receive a stiffer punishment than the next for the same offence ?
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Playing devil's advocate here...
The argument in favour of this is that a flat fine for all offenders is, in practice, a lighter punishment to someone who is wealthy. Consider fines for littering, for example. In Calgary, the punishment for littering is a fine between $500-1000. If you make $24k/year ($2,000/month), a $500 fine is 25% of your gross monthly income. Someone in that financial position will definitely notice the loss of $500 and will almost certainly have to make sacrifices to pay the fine (this, of course, is the entire purpose of the punishment).
If you make $192k/year ($16,000/month), a $500 fine is 3.1% of your monthly income. You'll probably think twice before littering again, but the punishment won't have the same affect on you as the other guy who's now struggling to pay the bills because he just lost 25% of his income for the month,.
Now imagine you're an NHL player making $7.5M per year ($625k/month). You probably won't even notice a $500 fine. Even if you were to get a littering ticket every single day for an entire month ($15k), you're paying less money as a percentage of your overall income than the guy making $192k/year who only got a single fine. Your wealth has allowed you to ignore the law because the punishment is effectively meaningless to you.
I'm not saying I agree with sliding scale fines, but that's the logic behind them.