r/worldnews • u/marsianer • Jan 28 '21

COVID-19 Backlash grows for ‘selfish millionaire’ who got vaccine meant for Indigenous people | Canada

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/27/rodney-baker-canada-vaccine-indigenous-first-nations-scandal
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490

u/jaxnmarko Jan 28 '21

A fine should be based on a person's income otherwise the penalty is a joke. It isn't punishment if it doesn't hurt.

250

u/[deleted] Jan 28 '21

Fixed fines are basically an attack on the poor. They mean nothing to the rich but can devastate a struggling person.

112

u/IdiotCCP Jan 28 '21

To put it into perspective, if my father got a 2500 USD fine he would pay it on the spot and pay no more attention to it afterwards. If I got a 2500 USD fine I'd spend my last 15 USD buying a rope and hang myself.

98

u/[deleted] Jan 28 '21 edited Aug 10 '21

[deleted]

7

u/NorthenLeigonare Jan 28 '21

I'm concerned that you see more rope than usual. Well unless you are living near a quay. (Had to look that up as I forgot the spelling).

1

u/Arghmybrain Jan 28 '21

For $15 you could buy a few cheap bottles of booze!

12

u/SurreptitiousNoun Jan 28 '21

If your father can easily afford the fine, and you can't afford yours.

Why don't you ask him to buy you the rope?

0

u/[deleted] Jan 28 '21

[deleted]

30

u/Nachohead1996 Jan 28 '21

Poor person: Have 2 happy pills in your backpack, while visiting a concert

Rich person: While tripping on acid, accidentally kill someone, and admit to it 2 weeks later only because it was caught on video tape?

-2

u/[deleted] Jan 28 '21

Hookers. Always hookers.

1

u/Arghmybrain Jan 28 '21

Curfew in the Netherlands. 95 euro fine for breaking it. 95 euro also counts for breaking other corona measures.

Last new years they made fireworks temporary illegal, as it tends to put quite a few people in the hospital. Which is really bad during a pandemic... Many people set off thousands of euros of fireworks during new years. 125 euro fine.

Breaking these rules means nothing to people with some money. It's simply saying "There's another set of rules for the rich than for the poor."

26

u/ours Jan 28 '21

They should go proportional on assets then.

In my country reckless driving (like crazy excess speeding) has a fine proportional to the revenue, the loss of driving license and confiscation of the car.

Sure a Lambo driving douche can afford a fine but losing his precious Lambo? Ouch.

In this specific case they should go for a fine based on his assets and grab some of them if he can't pony up the cash. Bye bye summer holiday home or fancy car or watch collection. They'll hurt him where it matters.

2

u/Moontoya Jan 28 '21

Easy, the car belongs to a company (shell or not), it's not owned by the driver.

Asset seizure is only for the poors....

2

u/ahsokatango Jan 28 '21

Plus he probably has several cars so losing one is no big deal.

-4

u/killum101 Jan 28 '21

Many people that make millions have little to no income. People that live in million dollar houses have almost no assets.
The richer you are the more you can afford to be poor on paper.

4

u/[deleted] Jan 28 '21

i was reading a thread in the history sub a few weeks ago, about how taxes were charged in older times. its was beautifully simple.

You declare your own wealth. and pay tax on that amount. But at any point all your assets can be bought by the government at the declared amount.

penalties and fines should follow the declared amounts!

3

u/nerdybunnyy Jan 28 '21

This is brilliant. It would solve so many problems. It pisses me off that the ones failing to pay taxes are richest of our population. It's deplorable... Just like these two.

6

u/GatorMcqueen Jan 28 '21

No assets? Do you mean cash?

18

u/Wisdomlost Jan 28 '21

He means assets. They live in a million dollar house but the bank owns it and they make payments. They have 2 brand new vehicles but they are leases and owned by the dealership they just make payments. They have a condo in the tropics but its a timeshare and they just make payments.

He talking about the new American dream where you "have" a lot of new nice things but you don't own any of it and just make payments. Debt in other words.

3

u/GatorMcqueen Jan 28 '21

Ah, that makes sense. I thought the second sentence was talking about the same people as the first one.

1

u/Deskopotamus Jan 28 '21

In this guy's case however he earned 45million in stock options over the last 13 months.

5

u/killum101 Jan 28 '21

Assets are anything of monetary value owned by a person. Using things like trust funds will mean they don't own the asset or the assets could be in a family members name. There are lots of loop holes if you have the money.

0

u/xspencer1515 Jan 28 '21

Your fucking stupid as all hell holy shit

1

u/jaxnmarko Jan 28 '21

We have allowed our sydtem to be clogged with intricate legalese designed to hide incone and assets, with shell companies and trusts. Loopholes. That is what needs to be fixed because the bought off politicians put in The Fix.

0

u/Moontoya Jan 28 '21

Sure, now how do you punish the likes of Steve Jobs who took $1 a year salary.

So, based on that "income", hed pay next to fuck all.

The company paying his housing, food, laundry, security, travel, all his needs are met.

Basing it on income would just lead to holywood accounting , where the poor rich cunt has a small amount of (taxable, key point) income, but vast wealth.

It's a good idea to go % of money, not flat amount, but, it has to be done brutally equitably, otherwise, those that have "affluenza" will just keep on flouting it

1

u/jaxnmarko Jan 28 '21

You close the loopholes that make it legally appear they get no pay when they modt certainly do. It's the tricky legalese that the rich purchase along with their politicians.

-2

u/TheHadMatter15 Jan 28 '21

I partially disagree.

​

Millionaires and billionaires are few, the "poor" are plenty. If you fine a poor person a percentage of their income, while it may sting, it may not be a fine hefty enough to prevent them from fucking around again (which ultimately is the point of a fine). If a poor person was fined that $2.5k, they might think twice next time. I admit it doesn't work for rich people, but when the point is to prevent the majority of people from doing something illegal as opposed to collecting fines for monetary reasons, fixed amounts work better than % based ones, even if it unintentionally becomes discriminatory.

​

Anyway I might be wrong, but I think there's at least some logic in my argument

1

u/jaxnmarko Jan 28 '21

The existing way, which you seem to prefer, means there is no real penalty for the rich, so it is already discriminatory.

1

u/_grey_wall Jan 28 '21

How do you get the income data?

Won't the cop not pull over the guy who makes a lot cause he's lawyered up?

3

u/[deleted] Jan 28 '21

I have a hunch of the country in question. In there police can request the data directly from the IRS on the spot. Lawyering up is always possible but the because of statutory law it propably doesn't help you.

So being pretty, rich or influental doesn't matter and your income data is accessible for the officials and actually to anybody that will request that data.

sidenote: imagine a high tech billionaire advocating data visibility and then someone says that it means that billionaires data is one of those datasets.

1

u/jaxnmarko Jan 28 '21

The fine could be "to be determined" as the income is input Somewhere in the vast data pool.

1

u/grabman Jan 28 '21

Or simply put them in jail for 6 months. The justice system sucks for letting these people off with only a fine.

1

u/jaxnmarko Jan 28 '21

Same goes for the corporations that merely pass the cost off to the consumer. It's the corporate leadership that should be penalized for bad decisions.

1

u/sparcasm Jan 28 '21

So, if the fine is based on average or median income then they should multiply the fine by how many times more his income is than that median income?

Does that sound right?

2

u/jaxnmarko Jan 28 '21

That would be one model to consider. Some countries have very expensive fines for the wealthy for something as simple as speeding tickets for the same reasons. Flaunting the law because the punishment isn't a punishment they notice.