Mining Fines Among Smallest
MariettaEcon
During the 2004 Super Bowl Janet Jackson had a wardrobe malfunction in which her breast was exposed. As everyone knows there was a large fine of $550,000 for the mishap. When it comes to being fined, it is common sense that a mishap resulting in death should be more consequential than a mishap resulting in indecent exposure. Although this does appear to be common sense, it is not. In 2001 13 miners were killed in an Alabama mine and the consequence for the terrible malfunction resulted in only a $3000 fine. Though the fine did begin at a price of 435,000 dollars, it was reduced to $3000 because the problem was fixed. As a result, many investigations have been made to strengthen the consequence of low worker safety at mines. A minimum fine of $10,000 has been proposed but if we are going to charge hundreds of thousands of dollars over a wardrobe mistake then we need to rethink what we are focusing on because death is obviously more important!
1 comment:
I think that in this situation it is important to look at several different points. I do not know the situation of the mine but you need to charge a fine that is actually going to make the person being charged the fine think about the marginal costs and benefits of doing the same thing again. For example if the cost of going 20 mph over the speed limit were only $1 a lot more people would say that taking the risk and the consequences only being $1 would be beneficial situation. They get where they are going faster, so maybe there time is more valuable than the $1 fine. The benefits outweigh the costs. I think that a similar situation is occurring here. Janet Jackson had to be charged a huge fine or it wouldn't have meant anything to her. She is a very wealthy celebrity a $3,000 fine would have been like a penny to us, if not less. The fine imposed needed to outweigh the benefits of doing something similar in the future. I mean she did get a lot of benefits from the "malfunction"...publicity, record sales, interviews, etc. Now on to the mine, as Americans we depend on this mine functioning and depending on what the mine had to pay to "fix" the problem they were being fined for it may of cost them more than the original fine anyway, so that isn't necessarily easy to judge...but I digress. We need the mine to stay open so charging them more than they could have ever paid was harmful to you and I, they may have gone out of business.
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