Both news stories appeared under the "odd" heading. In one, a defendant got a 10-year sentence for stealing an $80 slab of meat. In the other, a driver was fined $290,000 for speeding. "WTF?!" you ask. As the late Paul Harvey would have said, here's the rest of the story:
In Orangeburg, South Carolina, a 51-year old man tried to walk out of a store with this big bulge under his shirt. When a store employee ordered him to stop, he ran away, virtually into the arms of a police officer in the parking lot. The prosecutor opened his comments to the jury with the proverbial question "Where's the beef?" How witty. This was the defendant's ninth such case, so he got ten years to contemplate his transgressions.
That will cost the people of South Carolina approximately $240,000. To prove how tough they are on crime. To protect themselves against one meat thief. I have a word for that: STUPID.
About 9,000 miles away, in St. Gallen, Switzerland, judges at the cantonal court imposed a fine of $290,000 on a driver who was exceeding the 50 mph speed limit by 35 mph. Also an incredible sentence, except that the taxpayers get the windfall, not the kick in the groin. And yes, this driver was also a repeat offender.
One more factor: The driver is very wealthy, with more than $20 million in the cookie jar. European laws increasingly allow fines proportionate to a person's resources. This is still a stiff fine. Take a middle-class American whose net worth, after paying off debts and liquidating assets, is about $200,000. This would be the equivalent of fining that person nearly $3,000. But if lesser fines haven't made an impression, and the person is in the habit of driving 85 miles per hour on twisting, dangerous montain highways with a speed limit of 50 mph, others who drive those same highways with carloads of kids would say that the stiff fine is appropriate.
I have to agree. The word in this case is FAIR.
Switzerland has the Alps and South Carolina has some hills that locals call mountains. That's about where the similarities end. The politics of the two places could hardly be much different. Nor, judging from these two cases, could their grasp of economics.
Small wonder that Switzerland is one of the most financially secure nations of the world, and South Carolina is one of the poorest American states.