In the USA, that gender thing is illegal.
Honestly, I'm a little confused by some of these equality laws. I'm pretty sure that the law can't compel you to make a loan you don't want to make, whether there is a good reason on not. I think you just can't say the denial was for a racial reason or gender reason or whatever. But even if those things were at the heart of your decision, so long as you don't say it, is that even illegal?
And in this case, I'm talking about private companies who don't have connection to US government. (ie: I think if you're government ensured or whatever, they have more power to compel specific behavior.)
http://www.occ.gov/topics/consumer-protection/fair-lending/i...
Yes, absolutely.
If you want the right to set up a business to serve the people of the nation, the people have decided that you can do so, so long as you serve them without regard to color, gender, etc.
Our forefathers made these laws because they saw that given the opportunity, entities with a profit motive will pursue profit over all else, to the detriment of society as a whole.
It was seen that when discrimination occurs, society as a whole suffers.
I don't want my neighbor to go broke and let his house fall apart because he married a black woman from a hellhole in detroit.
Half of our "forefathers" built fortunes on the backs of slaves. They got plenty of other things right, but many of them missed the mark on racial and gender equality.
In abolishing slavery, lawmakers in 1865 made it clear that regardless of how profitable slavery was for slave-owners, it was bad for mankind and would not be tolerated.
It's now illegal in some nations to discriminate pricing based on gender.
>It makes even less sense if the the insurance company is allowed to consider other factors that are correlated with gender (e.g., age, profession).
Agreed.
Look at it the other way around. By not taking it into account, 100% of men would be suffering because of the 80% of women.
In any case, this isn't any different with all other factors. Age and profession for example. There are really good 16 year old drivers, why should they have to pay higher insurance? By your logic making any predictions is wrong if they aren't 100% accurate. Gender is just a subcase.
Nothing about this damages society or perpetuates class divisions and I haven't the slightest idea where you got that from. We aren't talking about arbitrarily discriminating against a group of people, but charging them slightly more because they cost slightly more. Or less. And for the most part, other factors like past history and the like will vastly outweigh that information, unless you actually believe it makes a difference. In which case why shouldn't it be used?
>Because human lives are more important than maximizing profit.
This is the stupidest expression going around the internet. Obviously human lives are more important than maximizing profit (well not so obviously, as almost everyone risks their own lives and often the lives of others for money and convenience. Driving cars for example.) This adds nothing to the conversation except to make it seem like the other side is against human lives which obviously aren't. No one has ever said "maximizing profit is more important than human lives."
It's interesting you've assumed that it's the women who are paying the higher premiums. Contrary to the stereotype about women being bad drivers, it's men who pay the gender premium on car insurance.