Banking and Booze

Louis Dejoy is trying to destroy the US Post Office, as are a majority of the board members.

They are doing so because they want the union destroyed, and because in privatization is an opportunity for looting.

The first step to fixing the USPS is to repeal the absurd requirements that it has to fund employee benefits 75 years into the future, a couple of good follow-up steps are to re-establish postal banking, and allowing the Post Office to deliver alcohol. 

There are way too many unbanked in the US, and the delivery of things like stimulus checks would be facilitated by a Post Office that has an account for every citizen, and delivering booze is lucrative:

When U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy laid out plans Tuesday for the future of the post office, he pointed to higher postage rates and slower first class mail as a means of stemming postal service losses he says could reach $160 billion.

But missing from his new 10-year plan were two ideas economists, members of Congress and consumer advocates say could generate billions of dollars for the beleaguered service and bring the post office into the 21st century: a return to postal banking and the post office’s entry into the lucrative alcohol delivery business.

“We don’t expect the post office of the 21st century will be the same as the post office of the 20th century,” said Rakim Brooks, senior campaign strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union. “People are using the mail less, and we think that the institution has to provide new services.”

Postal banking, he said, is among the new services the post office of the 21st century could — and should — provide. It would include basic banking services, including check cashing, providing low- or no-fee checking accounts, installing low-fee ATM machines, and providing wire transfer and bill payment services.

………

Long said it makes sense for post offices to double as banks, especially given the growing number of “bank deserts” in the U.S., communities in which there are no commercial banks.

………

Congress is taking notice of postal banking. Last year, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., introduced the Postal Banking Act, aimed at providing consumers with bank accounts and mobile banking services.

In a statement, Gillibrand noted, “Postal banking is an elegant solution that would provide the USPS upwards of $9 billion a year in revenue and would address the high cost of being poor in America by eliminating payday loans, check cashing, and other predatory financial products.

………

Just as [Porter, not Mitch] McConnell believes postal banking could provide additional revenue for the Postal Service, she notes that shipping alcohol could also generate money for it.

FedEx and UPS are currently allowed to ship wine, beer and spirits, but because of Prohibition-era legislation, the Postal Service is not.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Postal Service could make an additional $50 million a year if it were to be able to ship alcohol.

………

In 2019, Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., introduced the bipartisan USPS Shipping Equity Act, a bill which would enable the Postal Service to ship alcohol.

There is not a lot of support for this, because it is likely to be successful, which would run afoul of the anti-government crowd, as well the banks and private parcel carriers, who would then have less money for campaign donations.