What laws (federal or state, I’m in CA for reference) might prohibit businesses discriminating based on age?
This occurred to me yesterday when I was in line for some food, and a particularly annoying old man was repeatedly questioning the price of everything, then at the end asked if they had a senior discount. This particular business didn’t, but the movie theater next door as well as plenty of other businesses do, and I felt a little perturbed at the idea that this guy might be allowed to pay less than me just because he’s old.
If there were price schedules for the “Black price”, “Jew price”, “Gay/straight price”, that would almost certainly be illegal, no? So why can businesses freely set a “Young price”, “Middle-aged price”, “Old price”?
(there’s also the student discounts, which is slightly different since anyone could theoretically be a student. My father went back to school to work on a PhD in his mid 40’s and freely took advantage of student discounts. :D)
I would venture to say that because of the inherent difficulties faced by seniors, we give them a break the same way we give the handicapped a break by building them ramps and allowing them to park in the front
With race, it is racist to suggest that one race is better than another, hence no “black price” or “white price”. With seniors, they are old, they are going to die soon, and generally are seen as less healthy and abled than the young. This is a stereotype that they, for the most part, buy into and take advantage of
Now of course this question about no racial preferences in price brings up the thorny issue of affirmative action, which is similar. I suppose if one wanted to, they can make a case that the motives of affirmative action to equalize and eliminate racial advantages and make up for the mistakes of the past is comparable to if they simply set a white price and a minority price
What makes things illegal is the laws we pass. The most influential US federal laws about age discrimination (in employment and housing) provide favorable treatment for people above a certain age–protection from employment discrimination at 40 or older and ability to live in housing communities targeted to seniors and discriminating against children after reaching certain age requirements. Some state employment laws prohibit any discrimination based on age. Remember, we all have the potential to be old or disabled someday. Discrimination in favor of those groups is fundamentally different from discrimination in favor of a race.
Retail sales discrimination is only illegal when it is prohibited, as it is in the case of race. A gay/ straight price would actually not be illegal many places, if anywhere in the US. Sexual orientation legal rights are not very extensive.
Agreed. It’s one thing to offer a benefit (a discount) and another thing to say “We won’t do business with anyone over 60 years of age.”
The movie theater the OP mentions giving a senior discount likely gives a different price to children under 12, too (not to be confused with a student price).
I’ve read theories that senior citizen discounting is really more like a non-young-person price hike, rather than a real discount. Seniors are generally more price-sensitive than we busy kids these days and are therefore more price-sensitive. Same thing with coupon clippers. If anyone can buy laundry detergent at $0.50 off or whatever, but not all of us do, it’s more like a surcharge to the lazy and busy than a discount to the frugal.
We regularly have threads on younger people complaining on the price of car insurance. (“Just because I’m 21 doesn’t mean I’m in a higher risk of having an accident!”)
Generally senior citizens are on Social Security and have a fixed income that is smaller than their previous working income, but increasing costs such as inflation and medicine. When the minimum age for social security went up, so did the age for a lot of places that giev senior discounts. In some cases, discounts are given not based on age per se, but by showing an AARP card which although is technically age based is more of a promotional thing.
Not precisely true. There’s nothing illegal in asking your interviewee his age or birthdate. What’s illegal is using that to determine whether or not he gets a job offer. So most businesses will make it against company policy to ask, because that way they cannot be accused of age discrimination; if they don’t know the age, then they obviously couldn’t use it to determine hirability. Company policy, though, law.
I’ve never worked anywhere that would allow this, for the same reasons above. IF they graduated, sure. But not when.
ahem Soon? Even if senior discounts kick in at 60, my father and father-in-law are both 93. That’s like saying a baby will be graduating college soon.
A suspect a lot of the discounts are for load balancing, like early bird specials. If you can get retired people with more time than money into your store or theater in the mid-afternoon, you get additional revenue for little additional cost.
Was there a time when businesses offered different list prices for blacks versus whites? I’m not talking about blacks being told the selling price for a house is a million dollars, while whites are told it’s just $100K; I mean real advertised prices.
In college, when I used to deliver pizza, there would be the occasional call from a student asking for an “African American student discount”.
No, it would be illegal, just like a “white discount.” I’m assuming the callers were making a joke.
While I’ve never heard of separate price lists by race, the real problem was segregation (think lunch counters). The law took the approach of saying you have to treat customers equally, which implies how and where they are served as well as what you charge them.
Anecdotal: in my trip to the Copan Ruin in Honduras, there was an official price difference between locals and gringos. It might have technically been a citizen vs tourist thing, but they based it purely on physical appearance in practice.
Age is a changeable characteristic, unlike race (in before Michael Jackson joke), and is therefore not subject to the same level of scrutiny. However there is one slight nuance… you can only change upwards. As such, discriminating against someone young isn’t looked down on as discriminating against an elder is (without good reason, obviously). Because the old aren’t going to get younger and hit that magic age, but young people WILL get older.
Does anyone have any reputable statistics that support the ‘old people have less money’ argument? It’s never made much sense to me - someone who’s 35 has had ten, fifteen years or so of a career. Someone who’s 60 has had forty or so years in a career during which to save - it doesn’t seem logical to me.
