> The USPS lost $2.7B last year, why anyone would want to give it more responsibility is beyond me.
The loss comes from having to serve literally the entire country by law. A postal service in cities is profitable - a postal service that has to serve even the remotest ditch in the deepest desert of a flyover state with daily mail will always incur loss. And that is what society is for: to bear the cost of providing everyone in the country with affordable mail.
To add banking services to the unbanked (or those who do not trust the megabanks any more, given their historic lack of customer support and historically low image) is something that can very well be used to offset these losses.
So the postal service loses money because it's mandated by law that it has to serve the entire country. But mandating that it has to provide banking services for the entire country is going to save money? Ok.
When you receive a money transfer does your bank send a truck out to your remote mountaintop cabin to drop it in your mailbox?
Providing basic banking services at a post office is not nearly as big a proposition as delivering mail to every address in the country.
Plus banking services are touched less frequently than mail. I get junk mail every day. I don't know the exact logistics of what they're suggesting, but I have a hard time seeing how it could be as expensive as mail delivery.
The loss comes from having to serve literally the entire country by law. A postal service in cities is profitable - a postal service that has to serve even the remotest ditch in the deepest desert of a flyover state with daily mail will always incur loss. And that is what society is for: to bear the cost of providing everyone in the country with affordable mail.
To add banking services to the unbanked (or those who do not trust the megabanks any more, given their historic lack of customer support and historically low image) is something that can very well be used to offset these losses.