There's a very obvious utility in the US which should be able to prevent this: The US Postal Service.
It's federally required to exist, and services all Americans already. Basic banking services should be one of the things it is expanded to provide in a minimal, safe fashion (i.e. no loans or lending, but guaranteed electronic banking and funds transfer services).
Post office should offer free services for receiving and holding mail for up to 30 days. Not necessarily a P.O. box, as there's limited space for that, but something they can get for you during business hours. Would significantly help the homeless and van-lifers.
Exactly, that's a non-starter for a whole pile of essential services. Which makes homelessness very easy to fall into but extremely hard to work your way back out of.
New Zealand Post wants to shut its last 79 shops, but will not say when the last branch will close its doors
New Zealand Post said the move from stand-alone stores was old news and 801 of its 880 stores were already franchised.
Franchised means the branch has closed as a dedicated Post Office.
Kiwibank originally had branches at the Post Offices.
Kiwibank is left with much less branches than there were Post Offices - branches often replaced by ATMs in the wall: it has "325 Kiwibank Limited Branch and ATM Locations" https://kiwibank.banklocationmaps.co.nz/en/nzl
I presume it will take much longer in the USA for the Post Offices to close. There is no reason something similar won't happen there - the same economic forces occur in the USA.
Note that most franchises are an in-store counter or small area set aside for the Post Office supplies. I can think of franchises in book-stores, stationery shops, pharmacies, and even a public library. I know of one Post Office branch of that 79 that remains open, however it is mostly run by unpaid volunteers including a friend of mine (no banking counter).
In New Zealand the bank that provides government departments with banking is required to provide "banking of last resort" facilities to people, even going so far as people who have (for example) done bank fraud. The facilities are minimal - no overdrafts or credit cards, obviously! - but provide enough to function in a society where cheques don't exist and cash is rarely used.
Canada has a funny approach: banks can pretty much close an account willy-nilly but they're also required to open up a basic bank account to anyone that can properly prove their identity. Not sure how far anyone has pushed that envelope.
> guaranteed electronic banking and funds transfer services
That alone exceeds the requirement of “minimal” as there’s now a need to hire staff for fraud monitoring, handle disputed transactions, chase fraudulent transfers, deal with those who forgot their passwords to electronic banking, had their passwords stolen, etc.
What are the new revenue channels that will pay for all that extra staff (and considering it’s USPS, their pensions)?
>What are the new revenue channels that will pay for all that extra staff (and considering it’s USPS, their pensions)?
The federal government, unlike most other entities, does not need to match new revenue to new spending. It can and does create new money for any spending it deems worth it.
Funding basic banking for all through the USPS is worth it.
Well, the usual answer should be boring old taxes, not inflation, if you want to finance something that user fees don't cover. Just like it's done for nearly every other government programme?
Today's inflation was caused by greedy market forces, collusion, and government loan fraud, by those same capitalists.
Government spending on useful services, or helping their constituents get by on two one-time $600 payments did not create the current economic climate.
So you believe government only ever spends on Useful services? Some how I bet you can point to more than a few things government spends money on you disapprove of and consider to be less than useful
>>helping their constituents get by on two one-time $600 payments did not create the current economic climate.
Nice gas lighting, the reality is the 2 $600 payments make up something on the order of like 1% of covid spending, and I have a problem with all of it. Not just the direct payments.
That said it my be a shock to you that in some ways, to some people, I dont believe the government paid enough, not because I have this false narrative that somehow it is government job to help people "get by" it is not. However it is their responsibility under the 5th and other amendments to the US Constitution to compensate people when they take property. Shutting down the entire economy, barring people from working, and barring people from engaging in "non-essential" commerce should be viewed as a taking and thus require the government to make everyone whole from which they took.
now of course I also believe the government massively over stepped its authority and should have never shut down the economy, and does not have the power to do any of the things it did...
>>collusion, and government loan fraud,
Those are illegal activities, where is your government in prosecuting them? Ohh that is right they do not prosecute crimes anymore I forgot. How is that defund the police movement working out....
I'm gonna step past the conflation and other poor discussion to focus on the part I like in your post.
Things would have gone better if the PPP loan money was spent on keeping the working public solvent. People who weren't allowed to work shouldn't have been forced into unemployment, more or less, without adequate compensation.
But I also see the whole thing as evidence that our viral protocols and our ability to deliver clear, accurate information that won't be politicized, is essentially moot.
If it were rabies that was this airborne, we'd all be dead.
Worth mentioning that they are already involved in the financial anti-fraud business by way of postal money orders, and are already involved in electronic support by way of the very many services they already offer online. Very little of this proposal is entirely new to them.
There is no requirement that the service be revenue-neutral.
Does a car with 4 wheels exceed requirements of minimal? Who operates a payment service without handling fraud? Can you operste a postal service without handling fraud?
> pay for all that extra staff?
Do roads create revenue?
Like you are fee to argue that its not worth it, but government services do not need to charge fees, rhey can create economic growth and get the money back through taxes
> Does a car with 4 wheels exceed requirements of minimal?
I mean, yes? 3 should be enough without too many design changes. 2 with a kick stand. Even 1 with tech that absolutely cannot fail or else catastrophic failure.
I don’t see the connection between the Postal Service and banking. Is it just it was historically there? If that’s the case, you could attach it to any department.
> I don’t see the connection between the Postal Service and banking. Is it just it was historically there? If that’s the case, you could attach it to any department.
Before the FDIC was created to cover bank runs & closures, the USPS was proposed to expand into being a postal savings system, a system that was already done by the UK beforehand & had proven to work.
History not withstanding The reason people talk about the post office is a bank is because it has physical branches in just about every community in the country. More so than any other federal organization, and it is designed to serve all citizens on a frequent basis versus other federal organizations that might deal with citizens on a much less frequent basis.
It used to provide some limited banking services up until the 60s and it still does billions of dollars worth of money orders a year so a lot of the infrastructure is still there.
Many countries have postal savings systems, often very significant. The first was in the UK, 1861.[1] In the US, existed 1911 - 1967, started in the wake of the Panic of 1907.[2] The Japan Post Bank is among the largest savings institutions worldwide.[3] France's La Poste Group website[4] highlights "eliminating banking customer refusal" and provides an extensive suite of services.
The U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, explicitly gives Congress the power "To establish Post Offices and post Roads." A few lines earlier the same article grants Congress the power "To borrow Money on the credit of the United States." Would it then seem odd for the Congress to be assumed to have the power to create postal bonds, so common in much of the world?
[Addendum]
Might not be such a stretch then to imagine a Postal Savings System or something similar with great reach in the US, potentially encompassing much of what commercial banks handle today. The advantages including stability and availability, and perhaps even efficiency. Perhaps Hyman Minsky might have wished for things to... go postal?
banking does sometimes require actual money still, much more so if you're poorer. What's another institution that has offices everywhere, ships things every day, and privately and securely stores things for huge numbers of customers? Remember, DMVs/RMVs are state-level.
Hell, they're even surprisingly used to keeping large amounts of valuable paper safe. It wasn't that long ago that you could make a lot of money stealing stamp sheets.
> What's another institution that has offices everywhere, ships things every day, [...]
Walmart or 7-11 or so? Jokes aside, giving banking licenses to retailers might be a sensible thing to do. (Or removing the whole system of banks requiring licenses altogether would be even better.)
"At its more than 4,600 in-store MoneyCenters, as well as online, millions of customers have access to basic, low-cost banking services, including the ability to withdraw cash, make deposits, and pay bills."
Funny thing is Finnish Posti (ex. Itella) kinda does it. They have online service where you sometimes get your mail "scanned" before it actually arrives. Probably due to them actually printing it (in better quality somehow?) and delivering to you.
It's federally required to exist, and services all Americans already. Basic banking services should be one of the things it is expanded to provide in a minimal, safe fashion (i.e. no loans or lending, but guaranteed electronic banking and funds transfer services).