A little over a year ago, United for a Fair Economy released State of the Dream 2015: Underbanked and Overcharged. This groundbreaking report looks at the banking industry from the perspective of low-wage workers and people of color. We are thrilled to be sharing a small victory that has happened partly because of this report and the policy solutions it proposed.

Postal banking gained more widespread attention when Sen. Bernie Sanders endorsed it, but activists for economic equality and those fighting privatization of the postal service have long advocated its merits. Mike Leyba, director of communications for United for a Fair Economy and principal author of State of the Dream 2015: Underbanked and Overcharged discusses why some Americans don’t have access to major banks and how this will help them. 

From personal experience, I know that when you're outside of the banking system, things get expensive. I would cash a paycheck (for a fee), buy a money order at a supermarket to pay rent (for a fee), put money on a reloadable debit card (for a fee). When you're making every dollar stretch, fees make a big difference. 

Nearly 28 percent of U.S. households (or 100 million people) are either unbanked or underbanked. This lack of access to affordable financial services drives the working poor to rely on costly, and often predatory, alternatives. But what if a trusted, accessible, and secure government agency (that receives no tax dollars for operating expenses) with the world’s largest retail network existed that could help fill this void? It does exist. It’s the U.S. Postal Service.

At the Democratic debate, Bernie Sanders famously suggested that the only way to fix our country was with a political revolution. He suggested that in order to get our country back on track, millions of people would need to take to the streets and demand that the government return to its mission of helping people, not corporations. And by all these measures, one of his ideas would revolutionize the way people interact with our economy: postal banking.