Thread by @doctorow

If you're lucky enough to have stable employment and good credit, you're living cheap. Poverty is far more expensive than affluence. Take check-cashing: even the sleaziest bank doesn't charge you to give it money - but what if you don't have a bank account?

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For millions of Americans - the poorest, working the hardest jobs, for the longest hours - getting paid is expensive. When a bank won't do business with you, you need alternative arrangements, like visiting one of the check cashing places that are all over poor neighborhoods.

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Providing high-priced financial services to poor Americans is a $18.2b/year, Made-in-America industry, built high fees charged to the people with the least ability to afford them - $15 to cash a $500 check.

ibisworld.com/industry-stati…

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It doesn't have to be this way. We could follow the leads of many other countries and open public banks that provide financial utilities to everyday people at reasonable costs, wiping out the whole exploitative industry at the stroke of a pen.

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The most ambitious version of this plan is something like the @publicbankla, which would also provide payroll services for city and county workers, as well as issuing loans for public projects and local businesses.

publicbankla.com

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We should pursue that dream. But while we chase it, let's do something right now about predatory financial services - something like a postal bank, where check-cashing is cheap and ATMs are free.

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That's not just a plan - it's reality. @USPS is trialing it right now, in four locations: Brooklyn, DC, Falls Church and Baltimore.

prospect.org/economy/usps-b…

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The Postal Bank pilot is limited and kind of convoluted - because its lacks Congressional authorization, the "check cashing" is structured as a "gift card sale" - you hand over your check, the postal clerk hands you a no-fee Visa debit card for its face value less $5.95.

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This could be expanded through no-fee ATMs, and the cards could be reloadable, avoiding the $5.95 fee for each check - that is, it could be turned into a postal bank that fulfills the core functions of the postal banks that USPS offered until 1967, to the benefit of millions.

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The bank trial owes its existence to @APWUnational, the postal workers' union, which included the bank pilot in its collective bargain, and whose leaders personally sold Postmaster General (and archvillain) Bill DeJoy on it.

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As @ddayen writes, a national postal bank would be hugely consequential for millions of Americans - putting more money in the pockets of the people who have the least.

Image:
Tony Webster (modified)
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chec…

CC BY:
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.…

eof/

ETA - If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2021/10/04/avo…