A fine is supposed to discourage people from breaking the law. Is it fair that wealthy people can ignore the laws because they do not feel any real consequenes?
I have heard drivers who constantly break the rules, because they can easily afford the fine. To them the occasional fine is just the price they have to pay for easy parking, or saving a minute on their drive.
1. Given a problem with people continuously ignoring the law, a simple serial-offender system should deal with it fairly. We already have that up here, with you having three "marks" on your license. Some offenses take a mark, with 3 marks costing you your license. Driving without a license has increasing penalty for repeated offenses, including jail-time after the first or first two offenses. We do not have the absurd concept of "bail", and with lifespans being roughly similar, poor and rich end up with similar pains if they are repeat offenders.
2. Given that very wealthy people being able to ignore laws appear to be outliers, with the average person not being able to do this, I would say that you could create special cases for these outliers. For example, average/rich brackets. Or even poor/average/filthy rich.
3. Just not designing laws that govern entire countries to deal with a few outliers. There will always be outliers, and people with enough money to get out of any situation, whether that is paying fines or paying good lawyers to wiggle their way out. There will also always be people parking illegally, or speeding. Hell, if I recall correctly, the Finnish government had stated that the speeding fines are important income, so you also suddenly end up with fines being necessary, rather than them being only a tool to stop an offense, which is absurd.
(And for reference, for #3, I am talking about outliers within those that violate traffic laws. A serial killer is obviously an outlier which laws should be designed for, but I consider this a very different case.)
Make a fine time/labor focused not monetary. Some community service when you accumulate certain number of points will solve it. Another alternative is public shaming, I think we are too quick to reject that mechanism as society.
What I say is that accidents should not be more expensive the harder you work. Repeat offenses are still covered by jail-time, which is universal for all incomes (we do not have bail up here).
I'm pretty sympathetic to the idea that two people with the same hourly wage should get the same fine. Why do you think pay-per-year is a better basis?
