It can also mean more-expensive prices to wealthier people, or lower-quality scam products for people too poor to complain (poverty can significantly decrease one's energy and available free time) once they get them.
It's not discrimination, it's price discrimination.
The range of coffee, and the range of prices, that Starbucks has is often used as an example of price discrimination. You take your basic product, add a cheap to provide option, and charge more. This allows rich people to give you more money.
Technically that is discrimination. Discrimination applies any time two different groups get two different outcomes. It's a term that is used in economics without the negative connotation of things like racial discrimination.
Senior discount at the diner? That is literally called price discrimination, look it up.
Maybe, but if you search for "trumpet" you will still probably see trumpets, so compared to other forms of discrimination, maybe it's not so significant?
One area where poorer people do get charged more is for loans.
This is naive. There are an infinite number of ways to legally discriminate. Not all discrimination is bad. When you buy a five star product over a one star product you are discriminating.
Phrased differently, it is just plain discrimination.
If they applied this to "black people are more likely to cost us X" then everybody would be against it. But if they apply it to different discriminators (age, gender, neighborhood), then suddenly it is ok?
I partially agree with the first class ticket being a bad example, but the basic idea stands, normally price discrimination just benefits the rich.
As for your last point, I'd be against fixed definitions (as you are I think), but i have seen the argument that discrimination against the rich is just as bad as discrimination against ethnicities, poor people etc., often in the context of progressive taxes, wealth taxes, inheritance taxes, discussions about billionaires.
And it's at these contexts my (flippant) rhetort flies. If you want the poor person price really badly instead of someone trying to fleece the rich guy (still mainly guys), then become poor. If you don't want to pay a high tax rate above X million income, I'm sure someone else will want to. Etc. The exact threshold is always defined by something else and will vary, and there are of course limits. But in this instance, iff the majority of people benefits from radical transparency (which I'm not 100% on, but sure enough that I'm arguing for it) by being able to negotiate wages and properly asses the financial situation of the country, as well as helping to detect tax evasion via community tipofs(controversial I know, my opinion, not universal etc.), then I'm okay with sacrificing the ability of the wealthy to get good housing deals or hide dynastic wealth. They can always give away that wealth if they want to get better deals, pay less taxes etc. something you can't do with ethnicities, upbringing etc. So discrimination based on wealth is inherently different than those other instances in my eyes and this is what this remark was about
It's worse than gameable; it continuous to contribute to "discrimination" based on socioeconomic class.
Your exact example: If you were born into a wealth area, your family likely has extra space for you to live, and you will continue to be paid highly due to living in an "expensive" area.
If you were unlucky enough to be born into a poor area in a poor part of the country, you may have to move home to support your family due to a pandemic. They likely don't have extra room for you, so you have to find and pay for your own place. On top of that, you get your salary cut 50% as an "adjustment".
It is a side effect of a system where the already-well-off will be treated better.
A lot of people ignore the cost of discrimination to the person who is discriminating. When you discriminate against someone you are eliminating the profits you would gain from doing business with them. In highly competitive markets with low profits you have limited ability to discriminate as your company will go out of business if it chooses to do so. In less competitive markets (monopolies) you are more likely to see discrimination since there is less of a cost paid by the discriminator.
There is no magic wand to end discrimination entirely, but encouraging highly competitive markets is the best way to bridge the gap.
If you want more detailed information about market discrimination, I suggest you read "Product Market Structure And Labor Market Discrimination"[0] The same principles apply to the housing market.
I agree with your train of thought, but I disagree with the specifics.
Though, that's in part due to my own definition of discrimination in this context to be "placing a label to tell 2+ groups apart and taking action using that label".
Taking money from the rich and giving to the poor is inherently discriminating between the rich and the poor with a follow-up action to remove resources from one group (the rich) and give to the other (the poor). The action is there regardless of the reason or ethics of the context (i.e. why someone is rich or poor).
If someone really doesn't want to discriminate, sure. But I think the argument of "labelling it discrimination is wrong" is wrong in the sense of my own definition of discrimination. For me, a more useful argument would be "well, let's figure out the metrics we're optimizing when we discriminate like this".
The cost of discriminating can be negative, for example, if the wealthier group that you allow in prefers your establishment if you keep the group they dislike out.
Discriminations original meaning is to tell the difference between things. Op is recognising the difference between things that are unlikely to cause them a problem, and things that are going to cause them a problem. This is just common sense actually, though in the world of wokeness plain common sense is not common enough.
The discrimination cuts both ways.
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