8.2 percent of US households are unbanked. This represents 1 in 12 households in the nation, or nearly 10 million in total.
The proportion of unbanked households increased slightly since the 2009 survey. The estimated 0.6 percentage point increase represents an additional 821,000 unbanked households.
20.1 percent of US households are underbanked. This represents one in five households, or 24 million households. The 2011 underbanked rate in 2011 is higher than the 2009 rate of 18.2 percent, although the proportions are not directly comparable because of differences in the two surveys.
29.3 percent of households do not have a savings account, while about 10 percent do not have a checking account. About two-thirds of households have both checking and savings accounts.
This is mostly about moving paper, which nobody does like USPS. It wouldn’t require much additional space. The same clerks, at the same desks, would handle most transactions.
I can think of another - the USPS has its own police force. It’s the government, and postal inspectors have broad police powers to protect the mail, including protection against fraud. They can get subpeonas and arrest people, etc. I’ll bet that would come in mighty handy in some ways with financial security as well.
Either the lines for mail-related transactions are going to get a lot longer than they already are (which, in my experience, is quite long) or you are going to need a lot more clerks. Who would take up more space.
Let’s see if I’m parsing this right: 8% have zero bank accounts, and around 33% have one bank account. There’s also a group in the middle, 20%, the “underbanked”, who have… umm… half of a bank account? I’m not trying to make fun of them, but I really don’t know what this means. Surely it’s not referring to people who have one account, but it is joint account shared with a spouse?
The unbanked have no access to banking services. The underbanked have access to banking services, but they are the check cashing/payday loan places - not your local branch of Wells Fargo or a Credit Union.
It has been used in recent years as a way for Post Offcies to remain operational and profitable, as so much other stuff they used to do is now done online (like people sending letters).
Thank you. I did see that wiki, but the distinction was too subtle for me to notice. It seems that the underbanked do have access to banks, but they don’t use them, whereas the unbanked don’t even have access. Thanks.
I’m a little spoiled - being fairly well off, when I go into my Wells Fargo office, the manager runs out to hold my hand while I cash a check (not quite, but close). My bank is full service, and because of the level of deposits I have, most of those services are available to me without a fee - or a much smaller one. I have access to a half price safe deposit box, free trades through Wells Fargo investments, free checks (not just free checking, they give me free checks), foreign currency exchange, free money orders. I can get a mortgage, trade stock, buy insurance - all through my bank (and whether having all those under the Wells Fargo umbrella and not having complete separation of industries via regulation is a good idea, I won’t comment on - but I don’t buy my insurance through my bank).
When someone who is underbanked goes to the “bank”- they go to a check cashing service. They can get money orders, for a fee, and cash their check, for a fee. And take out a payday loan at usurious rates. They probably don’t have an account, because the level of their deposits would be so low they would incur another monthly fee just for having a checking or savings account.
Someone who is unbanked probably lives in a very poor area of the country not serviced by a local bank branch - we aren’t talking about urban areas where “Unbanks” are on every streetcorner like Starbucks are in hipper parts of town, but places like rural South Dakota or West Virginia. Getting to any sort of banking service involves driving somewhere, and most of the economy is cash.
I’ve been to the Post office several times recently and did not notice long lines. I also noticed that several registers were not staffed. The only time I have really seen obscenely long lines at the post office were around Christmas and tax season.
The payday lenders could stay right where they are and likely make a modest but steady profit offering a needed service to the community. The spirit of community service does not appear to be the guiding principle for the majority, but I am advised there are exceptions. Regrettably, they are exceptions.
Rapacious greed is bad enough, reprehensible, but visited upon the poor and powerless, its enough to gag a maggot. The Post Office idea is an ok idea, not great, workable. But the status quo ensuckens dead donkey balls. Putting the moves on poor people is beneath the dignity of a slime mold. And we should be ashamed we ever let it happen, much less go on for so long.
I think this section of the white paper highlights the hazard:
So basically, we have a payday lender that has the backing of the federal government to collect debts. There’s two major problems with this:
(1) Do we really want the federal government to go after our poorest citizens over debt?
(2) Do we really want the federal government to use its power to push private enterprise out of a market?
The Post Office is an anachronism and it’s bleeding money. We’re already in the hole for tens of billions of dollars and that tally is growing by billions each year. There’s just no compelling government interest in maintaining a postal system any more. Other countries have spun off their post office into private companies, and they don’t seem to be any worse for the wear. Measures to grow the size/scope of the Post Office aren’t going to save it, and in the long run are just going to make the problem bigger.
Do we really need to go through this again? The USPS is already an independent agency and does not receive in any taxpayer dollars except for costs related to overseas voting mail. And the reason it’s losing money is because Congressional Republicans saddled it with a completely nonsensical retirement funding scheme with the goal of ensuring it fails.
Apparently we do. Any prefunding requirement has absolutely zero to do with profitability. That is strictly a cash flow issue. The post office is incurring obligations regardless of whether they put aside money to pay them. Please read the most recent Post Office financial statement:
Read page 3 where it says net loss for the quarter ending Dec. 2013 was 354 million dollars.
Read page 5 where it says Post Office liabilities are 40 billion dollars more than their assets.
The only reason the USPS has not received a bail out is because they haven’t run out of cash. At some point they will and the government is going to have to write them a very large check.
The prefunding requirement has everything to do with current profitability because Congress is making the USPS fund not only its current accruals, but past ones.
I’m not sure if the USPS is profitable without paying current retiree benefits. I briefly looked and didn’t see that analysis anywhere. But, even if it were, that would require the government to pick up the tab to the tune of billions a year.