Some of the discrepancies sighted are neither surprising nor unfair. For all loan categories (mortgage, car loans, financial services), the poor pay more because they are higher risk clients. Lenders must be able to make more on a high-risk client to justify doing business with them.

Many of the other discrepancies are due to the leverage a more affluent buyer has over retailers (choice due to mobility, repeat business potential, loss-leader items, etc). This discrepancy does not necessarily imply unfairness. Certainly, if a consumer has such leverage, they should be allowed to wield it.

Remember: a measured discrepancy does not always imply some sort of conspiracy.

This is an example of using bad data to justify good things. Utilities have to charge more because poor people are more likely to stiff them on the bills. Same with landlords and financial services.

The study should be re-done with all of the economically-justified "poor taxes" filtered out. Then we could concentrate on the situations where there are actual market failures or predatory/illegal practices.

Floating these bad numbers around just undermines our credibility.

Actually, I believe that both of these studies ran controls, where possible, for just the varibles you indicate.

One of the things found in these and other studies was that people who were poor, but who had worked hard to establish good credit, were still penalized.

And middle-class and upper-middle class blacks tend to be penalized, and victimized by predatory lenders, at a far greater rate than their white counter parts.

You don't honestly think that rent-to-own stores or payday loan outlets can rationalize 400% interest, do you? The damn mob doesn't charge that much.

And nobody's arguing that it is a vast whitey conspiracy, just structural unfairness. I guess the inherent question is do you believe that the market alone leads to a better society, or do you think that the market is amoral. Not immoral, just amoral, and what we want is a moral society.

For another, far more knowledgeable voice than I on this, read:

www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2005/12/smith_darwin.html

"Utilities have to charge more because poor people are more likely to stiff them on the bills. Same with landlords and financial services."

Fair enough, but that's somewhat beside the point. Regardless of whether it's "economically-justified" (whatever that means), poor people -- even those who do pay all their bills on time -- still get charged more for various services, which makes it that much harder to lift themselves out of poverty. Obviously one way to alleviate the problem is to figure out what's illegal (or an actual "conspiracy") and crack down on that, but the larger problem would still remain and it would still deepen existing inequalities. What the answer is, I don't know, but the situation's certainly worth pointing out in full.

Gary, you should really read the report before making such comments.
1. Higher costs of doing business w/ the poor is cited as reason #1 for these higher prices and
2. lowering these higher costs are the first set of recommendations listed to lower these prices for the poor (including a CA shared risk-pool).

What really hurts "us" most is flinch reactions, rather than thoughtful, well-considerd reactions.

The same goes for you Manhattan Man. You clearly have not read the report, otherwise you'd recongnize that your critique is misplaced.

Another small point, perhaps made more completely
in the report:

I remember reading (although I don't remember where)
a comparision between prices of groceries in low and
high SES neighborhoods. The price of staples: milk, bread,fruit tended to be higher in low income areas.
In addition, the poor shopper's need to control costs
may mean buying smaller quantities, which are ultimately more expensive. The truth is, if you have little money,
and no way to get to a cheaper store, you are stuck with what is offered. - Assuming you want to eat. There may be other reasons for that dynamic of higher pricing, but the fact remains that we all need to eat, and it should not be more expensive for people who are less able to deal with that added cost.

I am well aware of the higher costs of food, loans, services for the poor. There is no justification for this.

During the last six years, while jobs have been more difficult to find, prices on food, clothing and gas have gone up. Large corporationas are paying the poor less with fewer benefits (such as health care) while raising profits on food, shelter and clothing. Sounds greedy to me. Carolee Wood

Yes, because the people who don't have "leverage" and thus cannot "wield" should be charged higher prices for things. We shouldn't look at equalizing things for all people, regardless of SES.
Sorry, I'll get my tounge out of my cheek now.

Forestlady, I also read about the higher food product costs. In addition, the mag article also discussed how a majority of people in one of the NYC boroughs get food from bodegas and that less than half of those bodegas carry fresh fruit and low-fat milk.