The effect of a file is strongly dependent on your income, so if fines are to have any deterrent effect, it must also be dependent on your income.
As said, I can't imagine a moral justification for not implementing some similar scheme.
Compensating someone for damages, be it for the victim's health or possessions, is then supposed to follow the real inflicted costs and does not include a deterring component, thus monetarily equal regardless of the perpetrator's income. I'd suppose this is the same almost everywhere?
Edit: so to clarify, compensation paid to the victim isn't based on your income, only the fines part that is paid to the state as a deterrent is.
And there are multiple jurisdictions. Imagine Arizona giving a California resident a $50000 speeding ticket. Or L.A. (city) levying income based parking tickets on Beverly Hills and Orange County residents (neighboring communities with ultra wealthy people).
Example: speeding tickets in Switzerland. A guy driving his Lamborghini through a village at 60mph had a ticket for several hundred thousand dollars handed to him while I was living there.
"Fine the rich because they're globalist pedophiles" is also an argument of sorts but not to the standard I'm talking about.
Otherwise, wealthy people can flout fine-based laws with virtual impunity, while poor can't. That doesn't seem fair, that seems like justice for the poor, lawlessness for the rich.
Exactly! The _intent_ of the action is one of the most important aspects. If a group is disproportionately being penalized (the poor in this case) then the action (the fine) isn't actually fulfilling its intent (to prevent all who receive the fine from breaking the law).
This is why "points" where introduced in numerous states to create a demerit point system. Even if a driver can afford 1,000 speeding tickets in a year they will lose their license after receiving a specific amount of demerit points.[1]
There are also jurisdictions which charge filing and handling fees on bail, which you never get back, which can be up to 10%. For 10k bond, which is pretty normal many places, that means 1000, just gone, not even accounting for the bond.