A couple of weeks ago, I saw a Roll Royce was parked near Opera House in Sydney in a No Stopping area.
I parked in commercial paid parking near by to attend a social event at the Opera bar and was walking back to my car nearly two hours later and saw that car was still there. (Not sure if it was moved and was returned to the same spot, but looking at the way it was parked I don't believe that was the case)
When I first saw the car I thought driver must have been in a hurry (not that it was an acceptable reason to do this), then when I saw the car in the same place nearly two hours later, I thought the owner of the car doesn't care about the fine. More over there was plenty of available parking where I parked my car and also at the Opera House car park. It was so obvious that the owner of this car didn't care about money and has no respect for the rules.
So, I remember reading an article on a news website a while back where a driver copped a massive fine driving well over speed limit in a foreign country (can't remember which one) where fines are income tested.
I know this scenario doesn't exactly fit as above (as that was speeding related fine) but thought what our fellow ozbagainer's think of income testing fines.
Edit 1: All scenarios will have a min fine (so people who don't earn money e.g. some students, get to break the law for free)
PS: Yes, there is another argument about many people dodging tax including major corporations. Let's talk about that in an another thread.
Edit 2: 29/01/2016 I think this thread has served its purpose in getting opinion of fellow Ozbargainers.
At the time of writing 105 people are against the idea to 292 who are in favour of charging more to those who earn more. Though I acknowledge that enforcing this idea might be hard but I strongly believe that law doesn't affect everyone the same, in the end law makers need to consider what it is that they are trying to achieve when they write the law. Is it the behavioural change or is it just a money grab. May be it should be a balancing act which is not quite balanced.
Thanks for all the opinions to date.
From an economics point of view, the reason why we have fines are to internalise externalities (i.e. a Pigouvian tax, for all the economists). If you were to income test fines, that would be, essentially, a subsidy on poorer people doing the wrong thing. This will lead to more poor people doing the wrong thing and, ultimately, we won't be any better off than before because the point of a Pigouvian tax is to reimburse society for harms caused. It doesn't matter if a rich guy or a poor guy is parked there, it's still the same disruption to traffic flow or whatever.
Yes, it is an income redistribution problem and yes, I hate rich (profanity) who think they can do what they want because they're rich. Yes, I want to punch them in the face. However, economically speaking, it doesn't make much sense to do so. Socially, you might have a point in that it acts as more of a deterrent, but that's a different issue, in my opinion.