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USPS pilots postal banking
Slashing taxes (on the poor).
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?
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.
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.
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.
The most ambitious version of this plan is something like the Public Bank of Los Angeles, which would also provide payroll services for city and…
