May 8, 2018
The Hell of Postal Banking
A Liberal’s Lament
I t is a big problem in this country that banks do not adequately service the poor. Many liberals want to address this problem with postal banking. I am a liberal, so I want to support that idea. But I can’t. Because (and it gives me no pleasure to say this) the post office is a nightmare.
The Problem of Banking for the Poor, Which Now Includes About One Half of the United States
This country has a problem. Actually it has dozens. But one important one is that the ever-consolidating banking industry essentially ignores households making less than $100,000 a year. Ten million households in the U.S. do not have a bank account (the “unbanked”). Tens of millions more (the “underbanked”) are unable to maintain a bank balance sufficient to avoid paying usurious overdraft charges and “maintenance” fees, which add up to billions a year sucked out of the pockets of the working poor and lower-middle class directly into the coffers of the insatiable financial services industry.
“Free” checking accounts were rarely ever free and are now disappearing. Minimum balances keep increasing. So do “maintenance” fees, even though the cost to banks to “maintain” an account in the era of online banking continues to plummet (ask anyone who used to be a bank teller.) When 47% of Americans can’t meet an unexpected $400 expense, what percentage do you think can afford to keep $1,500 in their checking account at all times to avoid a $5-$30 monthly maintenance fee on their account? 30%? 20%? How many can afford a $45 charge whenever they get overdrawn? For them, why is banking worth it at all?
Yet it is important to have a bank account to participate fully in the economic life of this country. To rent an apartment without a cash deposit, for example. Or to get your paycheck direct deposited. Or to avoid carrying around lots of cash or keeping cash at your home, making you at risk for robbery or burglarly. Being unbanked or underbanked is a real problem.
Yet in addition to exorbitant fees unaffordable to most, physical bank branches are closing apace, especially in lower-income and rural areas. Those physical branches that remain are largely in middle-class and wealthy neighborhoods and are focused on exclusive “private client” services for the well-to-do. They have plenty of loan officers and financial advisers, but few tellers. Lines at the few bank branches in poorer areas are long, especially at lunch, which is the only time most working people can go.
Even mobile e-banking can be tough if you lack high-speed internet at home, or a phone capable of handling the increasingly complex banking apps, or a good data plan, or are disabled, or elderly, or just not tech savvy.
The banking industry in the United States is simply not interested in servicing households outside the top half (or ideally the top quintile) of the income scale, except to suck fees out of them.
The banking industry in the United States is simply not interested in servicing households outside the top half (or ideally the top quintile) of the income scale, except to suck fees out of them.
Accordingly, the unbanked and underbanked then are often driven into the arms of the check cashing, payday loan, car title loan, and short-term personal-loan industry, which can charge hundreds and even a THOUSAND percent interest once fees are added in. It becomes a circle of debt from which escape is impossible. Bankruptcies follow, which further block access to credit and now in many cases jobs and housing as well.
The unbanked head to check cashing stores every payday, forking over steep fees to cash their paychecks. Even if they had a bank account, there’d likely not be a branch near where they live. But check cashing places are on every corner. And while you’re there, in five minutes you can borrow $200 against your next paycheck. That would be nice, right? Just pay a $45 fee, and then another if you don’t pay it back in full next week, plus 38% interest…
In sum, lack of access to banking is a huge problem for those in this country who don’t have iPhones with Starbucks apps, affinity credit cards, and humblebraggy conversations about rising real estates values at dinner parties.
Obviously, as long as the GOP controls Congress nothing will be done to help the unbanked and underbanked, and no regulations will be imposed on payday and other predatory lenders. Nothing will be done either to cap banking fees or to require banks to have low- or no-fee services in exchange for the implicit guarantee that the government and taxpayers will bail them out the next time they crash the economy. It just goes without saying that this Congress and the Republican Party has no interest in helping the poor whatsoever.
But if the Democrats were to take the Senate or (we pray) both houses of Congress, that could change…
A Possible Solution: Postal Banking, Pros and Cons
To address the widespread problem of the exclusion of many in this country from the banking system and their resulting trap in the high-fee and usurious world of small-time lenders, many Democrats in Congress, led by liberal stalwart Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, (and, not surprisngly, the American Postal Workers’ Union) are now proposing that basic banking services be provided by the United States Postal Service!
It’s called postal banking. A lot of other countries have it. The United States used to have it for many decades.
A Brief History of Postal Banking in the United States
Postal banking was instituted in the U.S. in 1910, when unbridled capitalism had created vast income inequalities and financial speculation that led to several financial disasters, much like today. Also much like today, banks then weren’t interested in serving most people, especially in the country’s vast, newly settled, rural interior and its poor urban areas. (The latter wasn’t as much of a problem as cities were dense and walkable then and had better public transportation than we have today.)
In the Panic of 1907 hundreds of banks collapsed, taking with them the savings of hundreds of thousands if not millions of people. This was the proximate factor in postal banking’s creation. Balances in such accounts were capped, as was interest payable, all to avoid luring profitable, middle-class customers away from commercial banks.
Postal banking flourished among the poor and working class in the U.S. (i.e., the unbanked and underbanked.) It lasted until 1965, by which time the New Deal had worked! Banks were regulated, stable, and safe, and incomes were so broadly distributed that banks catered to the vast majority of people because it was just good business to do so. Also, the capped interest rates were outmoded and led many in the new postwar middle class to abandon postal banking for higher rates paid on savings accounts and CDs at commercial banks. These widespread and good economic conditions made postal banking unnecessary. Those were the days. Yet the postal banking system had played a major role in helping Americans weather the Great Depression and World War II, a role that would soon be largely forgotten.
Postal Banking: Hit It or Forget It?
Postal banking seems like a great idea. The Post Office already has thousands of physical branches around the country, including in low-income and rural areas. They already have a website and employees. It would be fairly easy to require the USPS to provide all people with access to basic checking and savings accounts, as well as small loans (>$1,000 or so) at affordable and fair interest rates, secured by those accounts (which would take direct deposits of paychecks). The USPS bank could also issue no fee debit cards and perhaps even small-limit credit cards as well.
There’s a lot to this idea.
Liberals like it because it seems like a simple idea that would massively and immediately help poor, working people in this country. It would have an immediate positive impact in their lives by getting them out of the grasp of predatory lenders. As a side benefit, it would likely get those people to vote more enthusiastically for Democrats in the future.
Postal workers love postal banking because it gives voters a bigger stake in postal workers’ jobs by giving those jobs a more direct and positive impact on more Americans. Thus, it will make Americans more supportive of the USPS generally and Republicans will then be less able to sabotage or otherwise destroy it in favor of FedEx and UPS and other private couriers and, soon, Amazon itself.
Postal workers love postal banking because … it will make Americans more supportive of the USPS generally and Republicans will then be less able to sabotage or otherwise destroy it in favor of FedEx and UPS….
Obviously, Republicans hate it because it would help poor people and possibly cost some money, though the program would likely pay for itself. Mostly though, they hate it because it would undercut the payday lending industry to a huge degree, cut banks’ fee income, and bolster the role of the USPS in American life, which is a problem for them because the post office is a symbol of government and the government must die. The NRA and other right-wing nuts (who increasingly are the right-wing mainstream) hate it because they think the government will someday just seize or restrict everyone’s money in USPS bank accounts to pay its bills, like Argentina and other countries in fiscal crisis have dabbled with doing. (Never mind that the government could do that with money in regular banks if it really, really wanted.)
But there are some technological and philosophical aspects to postal banking that might give liberals some pause too. For one thing, mobile payment services like Paypal, Google Wallet, Venmo, Apple Pay, Stripe, Square Cash, Samsung Pay, and dozens of others are gaining acceptance rapidly and provide a safe place to store a few hundreds bucks and also the ability to use that money to pay for services and to make interpersonal payments, all without charging egregious fees. Liberals might ask themselves, are we really going to create a new banking system based around brick and mortar in 2018? Might the tech sector solve the underbanking problem?
Well, yes and no. For one thing, physical branches are still a big deal and will be for many for 10–20 more years at least. But also, postal banking could be done online and on mobile devices as well. Also, at least as of now, mobile payments services like Google Wallet and the rest don’t lend money and most still require they be linked with bank accounts, so they don’t really solve the two biggest problems stemming from banks’ under-service of the poor: high fees for storing money at banks and outrageously high interest for getting small loans from unscrupulous lenders.
The Main Problem With Postal Banking
But there’s a bigger reason to be skeptical about postal banking. It is one I, as a liberal, am hesitant to state openly, but here goes…
THE POST OFFICE SUCKS.
BIG TIME.
There, I said it. I am not proud to say it. I didn’t and don’t want to say it. But it is true, in my experience at least.
I am a liberal, like a big New Deal-type guy. I have been that for about the last thirteen of my forty years. I also love the United States Postal Service…in theory. It ties us together. It promotes an ideal of civil service, of the government providing an essential service to all its people, wherever they live, for the same price, without profit motive. It fosters a respect for government service among the populace. It is part of the national fabric. It provides lots of good jobs to people all over the country (even if automation is taking many away).
I hate reading about billionaire California Republican Congressman and ethical vampire Darrell Issa sabotaging the post office while he holds stock in FedEx and UPS. He is greed and avarice personified. I am so glad he will not seek reelection because he knows he will lose because his constituents hate him. Unfortunately, as long as the GOP holds the House, some other red-tied stooge will just take his place. (Update: Democrat Mike Levin won Issa’s seat! — ed.).
I want to root for the post office. It is doing okay in spite of Issa’s best efforts to kill it because thanks to Amazon and other online shopping sites, it is delivering a shit-ton of packages even while first-class mail is in a death spiral. I know the USPS has pension challenges (to put it mildly) and its workers have lost a lot of respect from the general population since instead of delivering a lot of love letters, cards, and pictures from back home, they mostly deliver unwanted coupons, collection notices, overdue bills, car warranty scams, and other environmentally-irresponsible litter. You can see this changing role too in how some letter carriers seem to have a lot less pride in their jobs (and their appearance) than they once did.
Still, as a liberal I want to like the post office.
But then I go to the damn post office.
The Worst Postal Employee in the World Works Here
There is a post office near me that I go to frequently. I use the self-service kiosk whenever I can, but when I have an oversize package, or need to send something certified or with insurance, or need to buy post card stamps or some similar B.S., I go wait in line to do it.
Most of the employees there are fine, if a little unenthusiastic. But there is one employee there who is a scourge. He is a man in his mid-50s to early 60s. He has a cigarette-tar-stained beard. He is a huge asshole. He is the Soup Nazi of post office clerks. He embarrasses people. He is sarcastic. He hates life and wants to make sure you hate it too.
I have on multiple occasions seen him drive people into tears and/or fits of rage. I have seen little old ladies scream to see a manager to try to get him fired. There is no manager. I have seen people ask for a complaint form to fill out about his behavior. There are no complaint forms.
When these things happen. He says nothing. He just motions for the next customer. He does not apologize. He does not care. It drives people nuts.
He refuses to serve people for any perceived “infraction.” Most commonly, if you haven’t written an address on your label when you get to the front of the line, he will send you on your way, telling you to come back when you have properly filled out your label. So you have no choice but to either fill out your label and sit through the whole line again, leave, or beg someone to let you cut in once you have done your label-filling duty. It is a Hobson’s choice.
Here’s one interaction I witnessed:
An old lady arrives at the front with a package wrapped in brown paper and string. (Awww!) I witnessed the following, paraphrased the best I can remember.
Asshole mailman, “You’re going to have to leave and come back when the string is off this package.”
Lady, “But I’ve mailed packages with string before. Just last week someone here told me it was okay.”
A-hole mailman, dripping with sarcasm, “[scoffs] We haven’t taken packages with string in forty years.”
Lady, huffing, “Well can you cut it off then, please? I can’t undo the knot and I don’t have scissors.”
Asshat mailman, “I can’t do that. You can buy scissors back there.” He motioned to a dusty retail rack that looked like an Office Max in Poland in 1983.
Keep in mind, the line was about fifteen people deep at this point and it was going to cost the little old lady a half an hour at least to do this and go back through the line. And she was old and clearly had arthritic hands. Plus, I am sure the mailman had scissors in a drawer right in front of him.
This was unctuous sadism in the guise of mere punctiliousness, which would have been bad enough under the circumstances.
The lady proceeded to get very upset and say he was a terrible person and ask to speak with the manager. They went back and forth. He didn’t care. He didn’t lose his temper but he was not going to lift a finger to accommodate her. He was the picture of self-satisfied apathy.
The old lady complained to the next clerk over. That one was nicer to her customers, but she didn’t care either. She wouldn’t look the lady in the eye. Maybe the other guy was the “boss.” Who knows? It was all seniority it seemed. There were no managers forthcoming. Or he was the manager? It didn’t matter.
Her complaints were futile. It was uncomfortable to watch. It was Kafka-esque. It was everything that conservatives scaremonger about when they bluster about “bureaucrats.” I was dismayed. I wanted to help her. Had it gone on longer, I probably would have, but she stormed out. Nearly in tears. I was eventually called to the other clerk. I looked at the asshole mailman contemptuously. He didn’t notice. I didn’t say anything. He went on break as I left.
I saw a handful of similar incidents first hand over a few years. Always the same mailman. Sometimes his victims were combative. It only made it worse. He stared ahead, the illustration of “DGAF” on Urban Dictionary. It only made the customers more angry. Some got upset and cried. Some whined. Some tried to kill him with kindness. It didn’t work. He was unfazed, unsympathetic, and unmoved.
Then, one day, it happened to me.
I got to the front with my package duly taped and a label on it, blank. I didn’t have a pen so I had planned to use one at the front or — I figured, not unreasonably — the clerk could just type the address into his computer and print a label then and there in about four seconds. In fact, I know that’s possible.
I must not have noticed it was him. Or maybe it had been so long since I’d witnessed the last incident I didn’t recognize him. Either way, I remembered as soon as he spoke.
He shoved my package aside when I set it on the counter. “You’re going to have to address the package and come back.”
I then remembered who I was dealing with. My heart rate spiked. “Can I just — do you have a pen?”
“No. Come back when it’s filled out. Next customer…”
He wouldn’t look at me or listen to me after that.
I was furious, but I knew from experience it would do no good. I went to the next clerk and asked to borrow a pen. She gave me one that was sitting there with a label wrapped around it as a weight. It was for customer use. I addressed the package. She motioned to the next person in line. She wasn’t going to serve me either until I’d gone back through the line.
I could have made a scene and said I’d waited in line like everyone else and wanted to be served, dammit! I could have quietly asked the guy behind me to let me go ahead of him (if that wasn’t also breaking some rule). Instead I walked off, boiling with anger, having wasted a good ten minutes in line. I went to the hall in front and realized the package just barely fit in the round, spinning dump-drum mechanism. I dropped it in there and left. It arrived a few days later.
The Problem With the Post Office
I had wanted to write the Postmaster about my experience. But what good would it do? He wasn’t going to be fired. Or even reprimanded. I’ve read about the appeals process, the arbitrations, etc. Punishing a postal worker for mistreating a customer absent some physical altercation is not going to happen.
Civil service and union protections that were put in place for good reason have become abused to the point that they are completely unrecognizable. Those rules were instituted to allow good apolitical government workers to keep secure their jobs absent misconduct in order to develop an experienced, professional corps of civil servants, instead of allowing inexperienced patronage hacks to sweep in after every election. They are now taken advantage of to shelter the lazy, the surly, and the malcontent.
I know it is not every USPS employee. It’s not even close to a majority. Maybe it’s only two to four percent, even. But that is too many. As any employer can tell you, it doesn’t take very many toxic employees to ruin a workplace, especially from the perspective of the good employees. They start to wonder why they even try. They get dirty looks and worse when they try to work hard, for making the shiftless look bad. The toxicity is contagious. It is worse when seniority rules allow the shirkers to get promoted above the earnest and motivated. Customers are usually shielded from the impacts of toxic employees in the private sector because the nasty employees will get fired if they take out their internal assholery on those paying the freight (as customer’s literally do in the case of the post office). Antisocial or just unsocial employees, if not let go, can be put into appropriate roles away from customers. But for many reasons, those corrective measures don’t happen at the post office.
Simply put, can you imagine an interaction like the one I described above happening at FedEx Office (née Kinko’s)? No. At the UPS Store (formerly Mailboxes, Etc.)? No. At an Eagle Postal? No. At any other retail establishment in the U.S.? No. These things only happen at the post office, or at least that’s the only place they happen again and where you have no recourse.
Why? I’m sure any conservative has an answer at the ready: government, unions, etc. What’s the liberal response? Underfunding? Did Darrell Issa personally turn the antagonists in my experienced above into jerks? I know there are complex reasons and maybe a culture can be fixed. But damn, it’s still a pain in the ass to go to the post office.
To be fair, one reason for postal employee surliness is that as good private sector jobs with comparable benefits get harder to find, postal employees stay on with the Blue Eagle even when they don’t like the job or aren’t good at it. I’m sure plenty of postal employees like their jobs. Letter carriers with cushy routes in nice neighborhoods in nice climates probably like their jobs a lot. But lower level employees in sorting facilities and letter carriers in dangerous neighborhoods probably don’t like their jobs as much. (The asshole postal employee above works at a post office in really nice neighborhood, where the customers were generally polite. So I don’t know what his excuse was.) And maybe even if the job is fine, they’re simply not suited for it. But too much time has gone by. They have seniority. A pension beckons just a few years away. So they don’t leave, even though they hate their job because they always wanted to be a plumber, or a copywriter, or a tailor, or whatever. Alas, the bitterness simmers.
This is no doubt a familiar tale for private sector employees who can’t leave a job they hate because of the health insurance benefits. But it is writ large at the post office, where there are a lot of unskilled to semi-skilled workers who, they know, aren’t going to find anything better if they leave. This is especially true because the USPS has a lot of facilities in poorer areas and small towns where good jobs are even harder to find. So unhappy postal employees often end up staying on despite a simmering feeling that they’re trapped, and that doesn’t make for a good customer experience.
Or… maybe they just don’t like working hard and found a job where they won’t get fired for slacking off.
You might think this is an isolated incident. Perhaps your post office is better. Maybe it is. But I doubt it. Sure, I’ve had some good post office experiences. But I’ve had far more where there is a line twenty people long and no one is at the counter for five minutes. How does that happen? Where do they go? Why? I’ve seen many USPS employees who appear to be working at the slowest possible speed regardless of how many people are there. In fact, that is the rule, not the exception.
Furthermore, post offices are drab and usually sloppily arranged even if they’re not outright dirty. That’s the case even at brand new post offices in the suburbs. There’s usually plenty of Priority Mail envelopes and boxes and all manner of forms, but pens are a rarity. The retail is a joke — the selection of greeting cards is hilariously awful, the office supplies are junk, and inventory is hit and miss.
Freely compare the setting at any post office to that at a FedEx Office, UPS Store, or Eagle Postal in your neighborhood. Or for that matter, even a grocery store customer-service counter. Just let that comparison kick around for a while in your head.
If you don’t have those other mailing options in your neighborhood, that is another problem with this country, but it is also part of my point: The USPS should be better or at least try to be better at serving their customers precisely because it is their job to serve all Americans with dignity and respect no matter their race, creed, color, or income, especially those Americans in disadvantaged neighborhoods where other options for jobs and mail services are limited or non-existent.
So why doesn’t the post office seem to be able to do better? After all, the worse Americans’ experiences at the post office are, the less likely they are to care when Darrell Issa and his committee take a machete to the post office and try to kill it off once and for all.
Why doesn’t the post office seem to be able to do better? After all, the worse Americans’ experiences at the post office are, the less likely they are to care when Darrell Issa and his committee take a machete to the post office and try to kill it off once and for all.
It Happens Again
A few months later I was at a different USPS location in the same city where I’ve lived for a long time now. I had a package I wanted to insure for a couple hundred dollars. Again, I didn’t have the label addressed, but didn’t think much of it. There were only two people in line behind me when I got to the front and surely the terrible man at the other post office was just an isolated and proverbial “bad apple,” right? Wrong.
I handed over the package and prepared to tell the postal clerk that I needed insurance.
“You need to come back when this is addressed,” she said, not impolitely, but not nicely either.
She shoved the package aside and motioned for the next (of two) customers behind me.
I was dumbfounded. I went off, addressed the package. Fuck the insurance. I dropped it in the box and left.
This was systematic. This was policy (at least in Dallas). This was madness.
I get that as a matter of practice, the USPS probably does not want their employees having to address every package for every customer in line. It slows things down a lot, I’m sure.
But could that not be addressed by nicely reminding customers to pre-address their labels, and then quickly typing in the address, printing the label, and mailing the package — you know, for their customers, the citizens of the United States, the name of which is in the name of the United States Postal Service?!
Even if it is the week before Christmas and the line is long and everyone is surly, could the pre-addressing requirement not be best enforced by reminding the customer of it, then letting them stand to the side at the counter to address the package while the next customer is helped, then returning to the offending customer, forgiving their MORTAL SIN of failing to have the label addressed before arriving at the counter and happily (or at least neutrally) mailing their package? Apparently not.
Conclusion [and deep, audible sigh]
I’m sorry, but if this is the kind of service delivered by post office employees, even if it is only a small percentage of them, then I have serious doubts about postal banking. Because even the better USPS employees at post offices are rarely better than nonchalant about delivering the service they are there to provide. Very few have ever left me with a better experience than I get almost every time I use a private courier center like FedEx Office or the UPS Store. And if you’re not mailing a letter, the USPS isn’t much cheaper even. (Caveat: I generally have liked my letter carriers and thought they were conscientious and hard working.)
In fact, my post office experiences have almost made me doubt my whole political identity. And now we’re going to make those same employee run a bank branch as well? Sorry to be skeptical.
I will run through my thoughts and doubts about postal banking rapid fire. I don’t necessarily believe these things, but I can’t help but wonder about them. I know many of these are contradictory. That is life. We do not live in a binary world even if our party system thinks we do. Without further ado:
USPS civil service and union job protections and pensions are a smokescreen to allow feckless, lazy employees to fester in sinecures that they just want to ride out until they can retire while doing as little work as possible. Screw them and screw the postal unions.
On that front, front desk clerk at the post office is not and should not be the end-point of a career. These people are paid way more than the clerks at the UPS Store and they work less hard and are worse at what they do. Let it be a lower-paid stepping-stone job without union protections, for younger people looking to work hard, do well, get some job experience and move on. They and the customers will be happier and better for it. For that to happen, the whole employment structure at the USPS has to change.
Maybe this is the whole problem with government bureaucracy that is also an intractable and part of human nature. The fear of getting fired is the only thing that makes 75% of people do their jobs well. See Office Space. Then again, maybe people take advantage of jobs where they know they won’t get fired because they’re treated and paid like peons and given no respect or self-control in their jobs.
Maybe everyone should fend for themselves, keep their money in a mattress, and die in the street. Or maybe we should have national health insurance and a universal basic income so if someone hates their job at the post office, he or she can safely quit and do something else that they like better without the fear of losing benefits.
Maybe the asshole mailman (and mailwoman) has had a terrible life. Maybe he’s dealing with addiction problems. Maybe he has a dying parent. Maybe his children hate him. Maybe I should feel sorry for him. Maybe he’s just a prick.
Maybe the poor are unfairly used to bad customer service and disrespect at the establishments they are forced to frequent and won’t mind more bad service at the USPS bank. But does that mean they shouldn’t be able to get better service than they’ll get at the post office? Why accept the worst just because it’s the way it already is for a lot of people? That seems insulting.
Primarily: Wouldn’t it be far easier to just require all banks to offer free checking and debit-cards on small-balance accounts, and to legally cap overdraft and other fees charged by banks as a condition of their getting FDIC insurance and being able to participate in the Federal Reserve system? The employees at any bank are far more friendly on average than those at the post office.
As for the lack of physical branches, maybe we (the poor included) need to suck it up and figure out how to deal with mobile banking. We have to think long term and there’s no inherent reason we should have to go to a physical place to deal with money in the digital age. Paying by phone is ubiquitous in Japan, Korea, and other countries that have good infrastructure and functioning democracies.
I haven’t even gotten into the whole crypto-currency future. Maybe Bitcoin or that other one (Ephemera? Angostura? Urethra?) will solve this problem.
Wouldn’t it be far easier to just require all banks to offer free checking … as a condition of their getting FDIC insurance and being able to participate in the Federal Reserve system?
Ultimately, I don’t know how to think about postal banking, but I just generally don’t think it will work in this day and age. Even if it got off the ground, the Republican Party would used it as a lightning rod for fundraising and do whatever they could to kill it in the future.
Yet I’m still a liberal. I think that with Congress in the right hands for the long term that the post office could be rehabilitated. I think government can do good in people’s lives. I think problems in the civil service can be solved by reforming laws and imposing good management, all without destroying the principles of a protected, professional civil service. I think many of the problems with American government are due to it being actively sabotaged by the GOP since at least 1994 (with the complicity of many centrist Democrats, especially in the 1990s).
But the post office still sucks right now.
Some of its employees are taking advantage of having a job from which it is very hard to get fired or even disciplined. Even if it is only 5% of employees (and I think it is more), that is too many. USPS management is part of the same system. The foxes are guarding the henhouse. Good, professional management and adequate funding could solve a lot of these problems, as would removing many of the inane limits and requirements imposed on the USPS by Congress and the USPS employee’s unions.
But until all that happens, I wouldn’t wish postal banking on an enemy. There just has to be a simpler and better solution to the problem of banking for the poor, like… I don’t know… just legally requiring banks to provide some basic level of low-cost banking to all in exchange for all the benefits, subsidies, and protections they get under the existing system.
Also, to that bearded old white guy at the post office in Lakewood in Dallas, Texas. (He knows who he is!) Get some help.
