If you think I am going to zap the richest of Americans or the corporations, you’re wrong. There is nothing wrong with being rich. If you earned the money legally, why should you be given burdens you don’t deserve?

I was driving back to East Lansing when this idea hit me. It occurred when a car passed me doing well over 80 mph. For the next two hours, I kept my speed at 70 mph and counted the number of vehicles that roared past me. I gave up at about 500 cars because I was exhausted from counting.

Then I started to envision a situation where we went after the lawbreakers instead of the people who live out their lives doing the right things: paying taxes and obeying laws.

Why should the burdens of today fall on the shoulders of the good people? Forget that! Let’s go after the habitual lawbreakers and let them bear the weight of a ruined economy.

Let’s take those 500 speeders on I-94 and I-69 and hit them with hefty $500 fines for their unlawful behavior. We come up with a good mechanism to verify their transgressions and give it to them right between the eyes. Make it a misdemeanor speeding infraction. If they fight it — even with all the pictures to prove they’re at fault — make it a felony and really raise the monetary bar.

Think of it, $250,000 minimum for the public schools and MSU tuition in a single two-hour span. If the speeder is from another state, have the Michigan State Police meet them at the border and hit them with a higher fine — Canadians use this strategy when someone fishes in their waters without a license. The fines are unbelievable.

At Mount Hope and Okemos roads — where people habitually run stoplights and stop signs — let’s add a little fine onto their illegal behavior — let’s say $1,000 for not stopping at a big red stop sign or an equally visible stoplight. With the number of times I see that during a normal day, I think we can clear $1,000,000 a day just in the tri-county region.

Gather in the rest of the state, and we are starting to fly away from our bruised economy. And where does the burden fall? It falls where it should: on the shoulders of those characters that are a burden to the state and society.

Continue the practice of raising fines to unbelievable heights and truly penalize those who can’t seem to exist in normal society. Keep hitting them where it hurts most — in their pockets — and help salvage the state’s economy.

Although this idea might seem a bit crazy, in the long run it might make most people start to obey all the given laws. Would that be so bad?

We get a needed influx of money up front, save the schools, take the burden away from the good citizens and ultimately make the roads a safer place to drive.

Maybe these are a number of slightly off-the-wall crazy ideas that on their own could be disputed, but if you think about it, why shouldn’t we look at ways to eliminate monetary hardships by dumping the burden on the backs of people who arrogantly careen through life providing nothing good to society?

Break the law and pay the price. Pay the price and save the economy.

Craig Gunn is a State News guest columnist. Reach him at gunn@egr.msu.edu.