Capitalism is supposed to drive down costs and increase the variety of goods and services offered.  Have costs for retail banking gone down?  Are there more/different Retail banking operations?  No to both.

Welcome to the actual consequences of unfettered capitalism.  In the best economic situations, an Oligopoly serves the market, in the typical situation Duopoly/Monopoly firms control markets.  This is empirically evident regardless of the scale of observation. (local/regional/national)

People are making check cashing work for them now, so why change what isn’t broken?  Because it will inject more money into the economy.  Look at this presentation about banking in Central California.  The statistics clearly show there are banks, but few use them.

There’s an opportunity in between the commercial banks and the check cashing operations to lower banking costs for people who are employed and cannot afford retail banking.  They get a paper check and head to the check cashing store.   Then these people are getting reamed by check cashing operations.  In this day and age it is the peak of inefficiency.  It’s good Capitalism, at great expense to marginal consumers.

The USPS could offer consumer savings accounts and plain-vanilla debit card/checking services at monthly fees that decrease the more you save.  No credit operations.  They must offer limited services (especially limited access to paper currency) and be eternally forbidden from attempting to add more services beyond the gap between retail banking and check cashing operations.

Why the USPS?  Because they’ve got the bricks and mortar locations all over the country.  They’ve got very complex retail operation experience.  The post offices in my area have friendly, helpful people working in them.  The service is certainly better than the CSR’s Retail giants like Worst Buy and Target employ.

Would the JPMC’s and BofA’s in the U.S. decry this as ‘big government?’  Of course they would.  But they hate competition.  Check cashing operations would see a nominal decrease in customers because a check cashing store’s best customers would not/do not use banks anyway.

The scheme provides more efficiencies and opportunity for low-income people/families.  Low-income earners using the service would have more money to use as they see fit.  No question about it.

The idea will be legitimized when some Ivy League muckity-muck endorses it.