Facile Fining Fisk

David Farrar has provided a damning post, mocking Labour’s Darien Fenton for suggesting the rich be fined more than the poor for traffic offences. Full of magnificent mockery, the post however completely ignores (either willfully or accidentally) the real argument behind such a fining regime.

Firstly, you have to ask what is the purpose of a fine? Is it (a) a price on breaking the law, or is it (b) a deterrent against future breakings of the law?

If it is (a), then Farrar is right. You shouldn’t fine the rich more. We as a society have said it is acceptable to speed in exchange for $X. However, this patently isn’t the case.

Rather (b) is true. It is a deterrent against future offending. As such, it is clearly less of a deterrent to be fined $50 for someone on $100k than someone on $30k. I don’t think anybody can argue against this. This is the rationale behind indexing fines to wealth and / or income.

Farrar says

I look forward to Labour revealing more of its thinking for its 2011 election manifesto. What other proposals might we get:

• Longer jail terms for rich pricks
• All Govt owned companies (such as power) to introduce a rick prick tariff where you pay more if you earn more.
• Primary and secondary schools to be able to charge compulsory fees to children of rich pricks
• A&E Departments to refuse treatment to rich pricks unless they sign a statement showing their net wealth and hand over a credit card for 5% of it
• Supermarkets to have two prices for every item – one price for those earning under $60,000 and another for those earning over $60,000

However all bar one of these totally miss the point. Healthcare, Education, Groceries, and energy, are matters where the Government or firm has set a price and is offering you the service / product at that price. Even if that price may be free. None of these are a matter of deterring against future purchases of Healthcare, Education, Groceries, or energy.

In jail terms, where we are seeking to deter, actually the argument may be the opposite. Time is worth more to the highly paid than the lower paid, so we may want to give shorter sentences to the wealthy. However, they may feel this loss of income less, so there would be a corresponding lengthening of sentence for the wealthy. Overall, these effects may cancel each other out, or come close to it.

I’d love for David to actually confront the issue here rather than just trying to mock it. That’s the same argument that 90%  of the economic left use for arguing against privatising, and I resent that. So the right must be held to the same standard. However throwing out what amounts to non-sequiturs isn’t the same as arguing against something, and we should never mock people simply for suggesting we consider something – after all, remember this isn’t Labour policy yet!

By the way – if anyone from The Standard sees this post, “See! I’m not a partisan right winger!”