How State
Lawmakers Can Stand Up to Dystopian Pricing Schemes
What does a fair price look like? What should a person earn for their work? Who gets to decide what we pay — and what we’re being paid — and why?
Across the economy, those questions no longer have clear answers. Prices and wages are becoming disconnected from fairness, transparency, and predictability — core tenets of an open market.
Instead, they are being shaped by the quiet power of corporations that exploit new technologies to surveil, manipulate, and hide the meaning of a price tag to squeeze as much profit as possible.
After decades of unyielding increases in the cost of big-ticket expenses—housing, healthcare, groceries, education—alongside a stagnation in real wages, Americans are already stretched thin. But with the rise of opaque, technology-enabled tricks and traps, the situation is becoming dystopian. The result is not just a crisis of affordability, but of dignity, too.
Online stores charge different prices for the same goods based on a user’s geographic location. Price fixing algorithms are used to hike rents amid a generational housing crisis. Consumers are being nickeled and dimed with a laundry list of fees. Rideshare companies analyze drivers’ financial stress and work history to determine the lowest amount they’re likely to accept.
State lawmakers have the power to step in to protect their communities—and many already are. Across the country, a growing movement of local leaders, workers, and advocates is pushing back against the most dangerous corporate pricing schemes of our time: surveillance pricing, algorithmic price-fixing, and junk fees.
The Fair Price Fight is an initiative that combines rigorous research, policy development with strategic communications and organizing to help reclaim economic freedom and restore the idea of a fair price. Join us!
Click below for a set of interactive maps of state and local bills that we’ve been working on and tracking across these issues, along with more information, policy briefs, and model legislation.