[billw55]

awm, on 2014-February-17, 12:07, said:

...

However, the Post Office already has offices all over the country and lots of employees, so the incremental expense of asking these employees to cash paychecks and give out short-term loans is not very high. And the US government can easily garnish paychecks to pay off small loans when people are irresponsible (so they don't need to pay money to collection services). For the postal service, this is a money-making opportunity which also has good social effects of helping the working poor find a way out of poverty.

If it works, I agree. I do think there are some aspects that aren't quite so simple. For example, the post office has employees, but most of them are already busy, and not available and/or able to handle a large volume of check cashing and lending services. A fair amount of hiring and training will be needed. At some locations, the existing facilities will not be adequate to provide the services in addition to actual mail services. These are things that business operators will think of, that government officials often will not - they have lots of ideas that sound great with other people's money.

But again, if it actually works, then fine.

[Winstonm]

billw55, on 2014-February-17, 11:32, said:

Actually, I do favor a more progressive tax structure. I just don't favor using tax money in this manner. IMO if it works, it should be self-sustainable on revenues.

Like many things, it comes down to our ideas about what services should or should not be provided by government. Law enforcement, fire protection, roads, military, most people will agree on. Health care, worldwide most will also agree, in the USA not so clear. Utilities? Maybe, maybe not. Hardware stores? No thanks. Where banking fits in, is a matter of personal opinion.

For me, the fact that somebody will benefit is not, by itself, enough reason. People (including me) would also benefit if the government opened restaurants across the nation, undercut market pricing, and paid the workers double. But we don't do that, and I suspect that few people think we should.

IMO, there is an incorrect assumption (not necessarily by you) that the poor are automatically loafers who deserve what they get. What is not clearly understood is how many of the people presently receiving government aid of some kind are actually working poor - people who are working now and would work at higher-paying jobs if they were availbable - it is these working poor who have difficulty in basic banking services, like cashing checks.

If the post office can be utilized to cash check instead of a check-cashing "store", that should turn out to be a good thing because it simply cannot be that expensive when compared to other government agendas like going to war.

[barmar]

billw55, on 2014-February-17, 12:53, said:

If it works, I agree. I do think there are some aspects that aren't quite so simple. For example, the post office has employees, but most of them are already busy, and not available and/or able to handle a large volume of check cashing and lending services. A fair amount of hiring and training will be needed. At some locations, the existing facilities will not be adequate to provide the services in addition to actual mail services. These are things that business operators will think of, that government officials often will not - they have lots of ideas that sound great with other people's money.

But again, if it actually works, then fine.

The incremental costs in adding these services to the existing USPS infrastructure would probably be significantly lower than it would be for companies entering this market from nothing. While some offices might need to be upgraded, many are probably underutilized and could handle this service with little additional cost.

[kenberg]

As near as I can tell, not a single soul on this thread has any objection to the Post Office doing this if it works. Blackshoe is fine with it. In my first post I mentioned that we had in fact used a Post Office service to transfer money much more cheaply and easily than in other ways. When I read the Inspector General's report, to me it reads as if the guy sells vacation condos in his spare time. So I am a little suspicious of the billions in profits that he advertises. A little caution could be useful here, I really don't see anyone asking for more than that.,

[billw55]

barmar, on 2014-February-17, 14:26, said:

The incremental costs in adding these services to the existing USPS infrastructure would probably be significantly lower than it would be for companies entering this market from nothing.

Probably true, but that by itself doesn't mean it would be profitable.

barmar, on 2014-February-17, 14:26, said:

While some offices might need to be upgraded, many are probably underutilized and could handle this service with little additional cost.

I think you might be surprised. USPS has been pinching pennies and reducing labor for a long time. My dad was a carrier until 2008, and management was constantly reorganizing routes, adding automation, and anything else they could possibly do to reduce labor cost and get more work per employee. Perhaps at small town and rural stations, the clerk is underutilized, but I doubt these stations would get all that much of this kind of business.

Dunno, maybe I am wrong. No need to speculate really, they can go ahead with a couple test markets and see how it works, just like any normal business would.

From another angle, I wonder how much lobbying clout the check cashing/short term lending industry has. Obviously they will oppose such a thing. Personally I would be thrilled to see the entire lot of them collapse and vanish. That at least, would be a major upside to the USPS proposal.

[billw55]

Winstonm, on 2014-February-17, 14:02, said:

If the post office can be utilized to cash check instead of a check-cashing "store", that should turn out to be a good thing because it simply cannot be that expensive when compared to other government agendas like going to war.

Straw man. I can think of many things less expensive than going to war. That doesn't mean the government should do them all.

[y66]

billw55, on 2014-February-17, 15:47, said:

Personally I would be thrilled to see the entire lot of them collapse and vanish. That at least, would be a major upside to the USPS proposal.

Amen bro.

[mike777]

",,,,However, the Post Office already has offices all over the country and lots of employees, so the incremental expense of asking these employees to cash paychecks and give out short-term loans is not very high. And the US government can easily garnish paychecks to pay off small loans when people are irresponsible (so they don't need to pay money to collection services). For the postal service, this is a money-making opportunity which also has good social effects of helping the working poor find a way out of poverty....."

For some reason the idea of the government making small loans to people who live paycheck to paycheck, roughly 90% of us, and then to garnish our wages when we don't repay ..... really bothers me..just the idea bothers me for some reason.

OTOH the idea that profit making banks shift their risk to taxpayers really bothers me.
--------------------------

As for a check cashing store...I assume the margins are tiny and risks large but it would be good to know. I doubt the margins are large and the risks low. Over time profit seekers should step in. I don't see how this plugs billion dollar revenue holes for the USPS.

------

Once we accept that we are going to treat the USPS like our military ..that failure...creative destruction,is never an option that changes the entire nature of the discussion. If the USPS will never be allowed to fail no matter what that allows all kinds of risks to put on it.

[blackshoe]

How did we get into this mess? It can't possibly be anything our government has done. Can it?

[ArtK78]

blackshoe, on 2014-February-17, 19:42, said:

How did we get into this mess? It can't possibly be anything our government has done. Can it?

No, Ed. It was entirely your fault.

As facetious as my comment above was, it is not entirely without factual basis. After all, you voted for Ronald Reagan, didn't you?

[Winstonm]

billw55, on 2014-February-17, 16:01, said:

Straw man. I can think of many things less expensive than going to war. That doesn't mean the government should do them all.

Not a straw man as you did not make this argument and I am not claiming government should do everything.

All I am saying is that war (and warring) is much more costly than check-cashing yet I hear no objections to our tax money being used in that fashion. I just would like to know from where the tax objections stems.

If you are saying you don't care if this plan is used provided it does not raise your personal taxes, well, that is much different than saying it should not be done unless taxes are not raised, and different still than it should not be done using publicly supplied funding.

[blackshoe]

ArtK78, on 2014-February-17, 20:32, said:

No, Ed. It was entirely your fault.

As facetious as my comment above was, it is not entirely without factual basis. After all, you voted for Ronald Reagan, didn't you?

And who did you - and the rest of the folks here - vote for?

As a matter of fact, in both '80 and '84 I would have had to vote by absentee ballot - and I don't think I did. If I had though, the choices — Reagan or Carter? Reagan or Mondale? — well, again, who did you choose?

Actually, generally I don't vote for a candidate — I vote against his (or her) opponent.

[blackshoe]

H. R. Block has an ad going now about "a billion dollars" people have overpaid in their taxes. Seems to me the government ought to give that back. Why don't they? Because they're not about doing the right thing. They're about taking as much money from folks as they can, so they can spend it on things like wars, and propping up despotic regimes that we like this week, and outfitting cops as if they were the military and bailing out companies that "cannot be allowed to fail" and a whole lot of other really bad ideas.

[mike777]

blackshoe, on 2014-February-17, 22:15, said:

H. R. Block has an ad going now about "a billion dollars" people have overpaid in their taxes. Seems to me the government ought to give that back. Why don't they? Because they're not about doing the right thing. They're about taking as much money from folks as they can, so they can spend it on things like wars, and propping up despotic regimes that we like this week, and outfitting cops as if they were the military and bailing out companies that "cannot be allowed to fail" and a whole lot of other really bad ideas.

Or


?They truly believe that the government is more efficient then capitalists.

To put it another way capitalists keep the poor; poor.


They say government is the very best way to make the poor ......not poor.
---------------


You can see the wide debate:

Govt makes the poor richer not poorer...Capitalism keeps the poor....poor.

or


Govt keeps the poor..poor....capitalism makes the poor...richer....

Of course feel free to add variations.

[Mbodell]

blackshoe, on 2014-February-17, 22:15, said:

H. R. Block has an ad going now about "a billion dollars" people have overpaid in their taxes. Seems to me the government ought to give that back. Why don't they? Because they're not about doing the right thing. They're about taking as much money from folks as they can, so they can spend it on things like wars, and propping up despotic regimes that we like this week, and outfitting cops as if they were the military and bailing out companies that "cannot be allowed to fail" and a whole lot of other really bad ideas.

Also because H. R. Block and other tax preparers have lobbied the gov't to make it against the rules for the IRS to prepare people's taxes for them. The IRS could fairly easily do most people's taxes and get much of that money back, but they are not legally allowed to do that currently.

[kenberg]

Mbodell, on 2014-February-18, 01:06, said:

Also because H. R. Block and other tax preparers have lobbied the gov't to make it against the rules for the IRS to prepare people's taxes for them. The IRS could fairly easily do most people's taxes and get much of that money back, but they are not legally allowed to do that currently.

This stuns me, I wasn't aware of it. I know that the IRS, at least until quite recently, provided advice because I have used their service. And I thought that for people who only need to use the short form, they could just bring in W2s and a pen to sign with. No more? There are quite a few volunteer places to help with (slightly) more complex situations w/o charge, but it would make sense for the IRS to do so.

I think I will inject a few good words about the modern IRS. It has improved dramatically over my lifetime. When I was a graduate student there were various forms of support and the tax situation was murky. An NSF Fellowship was not taxed. At first the salary of a teaching assistant was taxed. But there was also the possibility of a professor supporting a grad student with money from his grant. Since often there was no specific work requirement, perhaps this was, for tax purposes, a ffellowship and should not be taxed. If you buy into that, well maybe the money for a teaching assistanship was partly for teaching, partly for support, and so should only be partly taxed. . I and others would call the IRS. If you called five times, you got five different and incompatible answers. That was the early 60s. Now is very different. My experience with them now is that they are much, much improved with the assistance that they provide.

But I am not totally up to date on this. Around the time I hit 70 I decided that I had been filling out these forms since I was 15 and I was tired of it. For the last few years we bring the stuff in to Jenny. She's good and, more importantly, she does it.

My wife and I have each helped an illiterate person learn to read, but that is at a very basic level. Both of these guys were self-supporting, they owned a house, their kids had gone to college. Neither would have been able to do his own taxes. In these two cases they were both married and their wives were more literate, but not highly. If the IRS no longer can provide tax assistance for them, it's a damn shame.

Added: Coincidentally, my wife just saw the following local item: Human Service Programs of Carroll County [address and date given] presents free tax preparation for anyone making less than $52,000. If the county can do this but the IRS cannot, that's downright weird.

[barmar]

blackshoe, on 2014-February-17, 22:15, said:

H. R. Block has an ad going now about "a billion dollars" people have overpaid in their taxes. Seems to me the government ought to give that back. Why don't they?

Do you really want the government to have access to all your personal financial information so they can figure out all the deductions you forgot to take?

I think I did once overpay my taxes; I don't remember the reason, maybe I reported the same income twice, or reported some tax-free income. The IRS noticed the error and sent me a refund.

But AFAIK, reporting deductible expenses is totally voluntary. They're not going to adjust your taxes and send you a refund if you don't deduct your mortgage interest or property taxes, even though you were eligible to.

[barmar]

billw55, on 2014-February-17, 15:47, said:

I think you might be surprised. USPS has been pinching pennies and reducing labor for a long time. My dad was a carrier until 2008, and management was constantly reorganizing routes, adding automation, and anything else they could possibly do to reduce labor cost and get more work per employee. Perhaps at small town and rural stations, the clerk is underutilized, but I doubt these stations would get all that much of this kind of business.

My town has three post offices -- a large, main office in the center of town, and two branches at either end. There's usually a line of at least a half dozen people at the main office, but at the branch near me (and I'm guessing at the other one, too) there's rarely more than 1 or 2 people in line, and it's often empty.

I think there have been proposals to close one or both of the branches, but so far they've managed to stay open. We have a fairly large elderly population, and the inconvenience of having to travel an extra mile to the nearest post office has kept them running. So the branches could probably handle additional services, and this would make it easier to justify keeping them open, but it would make the main office even busier.

Then again, our town is also mostly middle class. We're probably not the target demographic for the proposed services.

[kenberg]

blackshoe, on 2014-February-17, 22:15, said:

H. R. Block has an ad going now about "a billion dollars" people have overpaid in their taxes. Seems to me the government ought to give that back. Why don't they? Because they're not about doing the right thing. They're about taking as much money from folks as they can, so they can spend it on things like wars, and propping up despotic regimes that we like this week, and outfitting cops as if they were the military and bailing out companies that "cannot be allowed to fail" and a whole lot of other really bad ideas.

A billion dollars works out to about three dollars per person so maybe ten or twelve dollars per family. I wouldn't doubt it. Maybe we drop off some stuff at Goodwill and lose or forget to get a receipt. There we go. Or I buy ink for my computer. At least some of it gets used for professional purposes. So does my computer. Maybe there is a deduction there. They can keep it. I forget the source of the quote but I think it goes something like this: The tax code turns a man's life into a business. A man's life should not be a business.

[Winstonm]

mike777, on 2014-February-17, 22:20, said:

Or


?They truly believe that the government is more efficient then capitalists.

To put it another way capitalists keep the poor; poor.


They say government is the very best way to make the poor ......not poor.
---------------


You can see the wide debate:

Govt makes the poor richer not poorer...Capitalism keeps the poor....poor.

or


Govt keeps the poor..poor....capitalism makes the poor...richer....

Of course feel free to add variations.

I bolded the part of your comment I wish to address. The bolded part suggests that government and capitalism are opposing forces, that in genuine capitalism there can be no governing body.

That might work in a totally agrarian society of about 20 people who all owned their own plot of producing land, but the argument falls apart once extended to millions of people working for "the capitalists".

What we need is not more capitalism nor more government, but a balanced approach based on facts rather than ideology, IMO.