Delta has a long-term strategy to boost its profitability by moving away from set fares and toward individualized pricing using AI. The pilot program, which uses AI for 3% of fares, has so far been “amazingly favorable,” the airline said. Privacy advocates fear this will lead to price-gouging, with one consumer advocate comparing the tactic to “hacking our brains.”
The wealthy have more time to shop around and more money to choose another option so companies think they need to provide extra incentives to get them which means better treatment and prices and etcetera.
The poor? Ehh gouge for all they are worth and hope they die so you don’t have to hear them complain.
Which is insane cause that means the poor are the profit margins allowing for the deals of the wealthy.
The higher a percentage of your income is the price of something, the more reason there is to allocate time to find the best price - if something costs you an amount which you earn in 5 minutes, it’s not really worth it to spend time looking for the better price, if it costs an amount which you earn in 2 months, it’s definitelly worth to spend at least several hours looking around.
Granted, as you say, many don’t have the time to do this (though often the Maths for literally taking time of work to do it, do add up), and in my experience most people don’t really make the mental connection between an amount they’re considering spending and how long do they have to work to earn it hence don’t really look around enough when it’s financially logical to do it.
That said, for the reason I gave above, the rich don’t really care about things that “just” cost a couple thousand of dollars, which is why they casually just rent a private jet for a trip - there’s a whole industry for that - or even own one and employ a pilot for it fulltime.