How far can the loony left obsession with equality go? A story from Red Alert Politics hints at an answer:
Take a speeding joyride in Portland and you could be slapped with a $100,000 ticket if City Commissioner Steve Novick has a say in the matter. The Democrat has a progressive take on how to tax Portland residents in the future — income-adjusted fines.
During Portland’s city council’s debate over an arts tax, Novick brought transportation fines into the mix. According to him, having the Internal Revenue Service determine the amount of a speeding ticket would be the ‘ideal’ approach.
‘Everybody pays the same for parking, everybody pays the same in parking tickets. Logistically, right now, it’s impractical to change that, but I wish it were otherwise,’ Novick said during the work session. ‘I wish we had a system like Finland, where the Highway Patrol’s computers are linked up to that of Finland’s IRS, and if you’re a chief executive at Nokia and you’re caught speeding you pay over $100,000. I think that would be ideal.’
A sane person would realize that $100,000 would be an excessive fine even for Stephen Elop, Nokia’s CEO. Elop’s “pay package” in 2012 amounted to $5.63 million. Thus, a $100K fine would be equal to approximately 2% (1.8% to be exact) of his income.
Consider that the median household income in the U.S. was $50,502 in 2011, the most recent year for which census data is available. An equivalent speeding fine for a motorist earning exactly that amount would be $1,010.
Oregon already has a fairly obscene “automatic” fine on its books of $1,000 for drivers who clock in at 100 miles per hour or more. Earlier this year, a motorcyclist clocked at 130 m.p.h. in a 55-m.p.h. zone on a brand-new Ducati motorcycle, received a ticket in the amount of $1,103.
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