There is a fundamental hypocrisy at the heart of left-of-center progressive thought. Progressivism claims to seek the betterment of the poor and the middle classes at the expense of the wealthy. But in the name of "fairness" and "Democracy" it eliminates every standard of merit that it can save one: wealth.
So it is that I today I receive notice from my insurance company that my insurance rates will be increasing. Have I had tickets? No. Accidents? No. Filed claims? No. Then what's the problem? My state passed a regulation preventing insurance companies from using credit ratings to assess risk. This is a major emphasis of progressive domestic policy right now. Credit ratings are "bad," because poor people tend to have lower credit ratings. So, it is reasoned, if we eliminate credit ratings, poor people will not be as disadvantaged. Right?
Wrong. What this does is cause insurers, banks, finance companies, and all others who have utilized credit ratings to essentially presume that EVERYONE is now a higher risk. So insurance rates go up for everyone. Lending rates go up for everyone. The wealthy aren't remotely inconvenienced. In the name of "fairness" and "Democracy," Democrats have essentially taxed everyone BUT the rich. There's a word for this - "regressive" - and it's the opposite of what Democrats claim to be.
Utter hypocrisy.
Wrong. For any auto insurer, there are many factors that go in to determining your rate (for a company that compartmentalizes your factors as much as we do, it could easily be 20 or 30). If credit is one of them (as it is in most places), then that factor will simply be removed from the calculation. They won't assume everyone is higher risk, because that would be bad for their overall business, because let's face it, there are more lower- and middle-class families than there are wealthy ones.
So what happens now? The people with good credit (and I include myself in that category) will pay more because they're removing a factor that was helping their rate, and the lower-class will pay less, because a factor that was hurting their rate is being removed.
Now, I'm not saying this change is right or wrong. I will also pay more if something like this is passed here. Statistics show people with lower credit ratings are more likely to get in accidents, which is why companies were allowed to use that as an underwriting factor in the first place. But to say that everyone's rates will go up because of this is fundamentally incorrect.
