Municipal Violations: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Here's the John Oliver version of the same story: [VIDEO] (Also, incognito mode is your friend when cookies conspire against you.)

This is so sad. This has got to stop. (repost from below) bsimpson 2 hours ago Here's the John Oliver version of the same story: [VIDEO]

Even more relevant is his piece on municipal violations and how they can unfairly steamroll the poor with escalating fees. [VIDEO]

>How much can the government be stealing from you if you have no money? John Oliver did a good breakdown of how municipalities do pretty nasty things when you can't pay your tickets. [VIDEO]

Well, I can give you a simple example. Where I grew up, you'd hear a gunshot every so often. No one paid it any mind - we knew it was the neighbors hunting out of season. Technically a crime. But we all knew they and their children needed the meat. If everyone did it, the deer population would collapse and no one could hunt effectively even in-season. If someone had called a wildlife officer they could have certainly made the trek down. But no one would think to call the wildlife officers on them, because we knew it would lead to their children going hungry. I think the thing people from rich neighbourhoods miss about that sort of thing is that when they hear stories of that nature [1], people's children going hungry over a minor infraction is seen as a failure of empathy on the constabulary's part. It's not. It's a failure of the law, and the constabulary's job is to uphold the law, not play social worker to people who break it. Hence our community's collective judgement that it was in everyone's best interest if the wildlife officer never found out about our neighbor's poaching activities. [1] Joe Oliver has a great rant about a similar situation, lest readers think this only works in rural settings: [VIDEO]

That's the problem though -- there is not equality is possibilities. Analysis [1] of a study from the Pew Research Center on economic mobility [2] found that you are 10x more likely to be in the top 20% if you're born there than if you're born in the bottom 20%. Someone born in the top 20% who doesn't go to college is still 2.5x more likely to have an income in the top 20% as an adult than someone from the bottom 20% who does go to college. Moreover, it's worsened because life is more expensive in subtle ways as you move down the income bracket. [3] Even municipal fines -- as emphasized by John Oliver recently -- contribute to the problem. [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK] [3] [LINK] [4] [VIDEO]

At this point, anyone "joining the call" are simply attempting to hop onto the right side of history. This problem is so egregious that taking any other position is simply absurd. Or just f-ing evil. [0] [0] [VIDEO] Edit: what, did I piss off some people that like imprisoning an unbelievably disproportionate percentage of citizens, especially minorities, for crimes as mundane as an unpaid parking ticket? Well, you do you, I guess...

fairness is a horrendous choice of words, but the one this article chose to use there are many unfair side effects of current economics look at taxes.. recently i read a major corporate entity paid 4k pounds in taxes in 2014(o). The top comment says: TIL our small UK startup pays 10-20x more corp tax .. Doing things honestly and by the book is expensive in both money terms and time terms (paying accountants) Big corps .. make me feel like a fool. though these corps are seen as equals in buraecratic lines, the expectations and avenues of utilising those regulations seems unfairly balanced or look at fines.. if i get a parking ticket(i) for 100$, i may be unable to pay it right away with my zero savings and my 12k/yr income, someone making 80k+ a year will just pay the 100$ grievance and be done with it i will have to start budgeting myself to make enough to pay the 100$ fine, but it will take time with bimonthly paychecks and in that time i will be punished with late fees only increasing the financial burden and time needed to accrue the funds even if trying to do the right thing people punished further simply for economic circumstance so though the two violators are seen as equal, the expectations and avenues of how to rectify the violations seems unfairly balanced people making less end up paying more for the same violation due to the bureaucracy maintaining the violations or i could use a payday loan(ii), another damning option these are only two examples of areas where a c