Reply #13: not quite [View All]

[iverglas]

"The last time i posted this thread all someone could come up with was that gas costs more in non white neighborhoods."

You tried flying it in Civil Rights etc., and that's not what I said.

I pointed out that if we are looking at disparate impact, i.e. what things cost as a percentage of income, I, personally, would start by looking at the prices of necessities. Surely it's racist for food to cost the same for the average black family as it costs for the average white family. And hey, wot about those regressive sales taxes?? Pure racism, I'd say. Apart from being pure make-the-poor-pay-ism.

Firearms, despite your attachment to them, are a discretionary purchase for the vast majority of their owners. Expenditures on food, utilities, housing and sales taxes, in at least a basic minimum amount, are not.

Higher education is another discretionary expenditure. Given the positive correlation between amount of education and length of life, that seems to me like a more sensible place to focus one's outrage at unequal access, if we're going to be getting outraged about the indirect ("adverse effect/impact") discrimination operated by pricing structures.

People forego all sorts of things to get a higher education (income, discretionary purchases, leisure time) and postpone others (childbearing, home-buying). It's one of those personal choice things, even though the choices are indeed distorted by unequal opportunity. So ditto for firearms. In a user-pay system, which seems to be more or less what you're talking about (fees for what in this case are mandatory services associated with the purchase, which are mandatory for perfectly good reasons), the would-be user gets to make up his/her own mind -- to use his/her own discretion in making those discretionary purchases. And no one else is required to cover the costs of that choice without having any choice in *that* matter.

Freedom of choice, what a wonderful thing, eh?

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