The week that was for 02/05/12
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J.C. Penney is reinventing its retail stores with a fresh look and a new marketing strategy it calls "fair and square pricing." Instead of sending out masses of coupons, the retailer says it will offer three types of prices: "Everyday price," "month-long values" and a "best price," for items that will be reduced on a regular schedule the first and third Friday of every month.
As for those "full price" signs from the past? The company admits that nobody ever ended up paying those prices anyway.
The nation's poorest drivers (not bad drivers but those with the least money) are being punished because of unfair and discriminatory auto insurance premiums, according to the Consumer Federation of America.
Too many factors unrelated to driving records -- such as where people live, their occupation and credit ratings -- are being used to jack up the rates low-income people pay, and the advocacy group wants state insurance regulators to reduce or eliminate the "poor" tax.
The consumer group estimates a person with an MBA living in an affluent neighborhood will pay $558 a year while a high school graduate living in a city ZIP code with gaps in car ownership and insurance coverage will pay $2,095.
For now, the Pennsylvania Insurance Department has no comment on the report.
Many working families in this state are more vulnerable than ever before of being downsized, outsourced or laid off because they don't have enough saved to even live at the poverty level for three months.
Pennsylvania ranked 10th in the nation overall in a study done by the nonprofit Corporation for Enterprise Development, which ranked financial data from all states to determine residents' ability to weather a severe economic storm.
Hawaii's residents were the most financially secure. Only 22.8 percent live without adequate savings. Nevada ranked lowest, with 45.2 percent of its residents on the edge of financial disaster.
All counties in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area saw unemployment drop in December, with the region as a whole showing a two-tenths of a percentage drop to 6.9 percent, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry.
Meanwhile, new national numbers showed unemployment fell in January to 8.3 percent from December's rate of 8.5 percent, the fifth straight month of increasing employment rates.
First Published February 5, 2012 12:00 am
