Eh, that only works if literally everyone has a Fed account, which is the same dance the IRS deals with.

For a huge portion of this country it's apparently too difficult to acquire an ID. How on earth are they going to open any bank account?

Have the post office provide identity proofing services.

https://billhunt.dev/blog/2020/12/18/federal-policy-recs/#4-...

https://gcn.com/articles/2013/01/28/usps-pilot-cloud-federal...

https://login.gov

They already do a lot of passport issuance and the like, so probably wouldn’t be too much of a problem to expand if they did it gradually.

That said, they’re currently struggling to even deliver packages or letters under the new leadership (around the time of the election I had multiple mailed checks go missing permanently, and a letter take a month+ to go within the state where it’s usually 3 days max), so maybe putting our hopes on them to save the economy through a massive new program is not a good idea?

They’re artificially hamstrung at the moment, and current service levels aren’t indicative of irreversible organizational failings.

They're not artificially hamstrung. USPS makes its money by delivering physical mail. Physical mail has been in decline for 20 years: https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/first-class...

Despite the US population practically doubling, the amount of mail sent is back down to ~1976 levels.

This isn't artificial.

They make their money on packages too, and that has been strong, up and to the right for a long time.

The difference in quality of service pre-dejoy and post was pretty clear? And they’ve been break even or profitable pretty much every year.

I’d consider that artificially hamstrung, since it isn’t the market doing that.

Of course. Current organizational failings do cause fallout and long term damage to retention and motivation of key staff, along with reputational issues leading to difficulty getting new qualified staff.

Definitely not unsolvable - pointing out that if you want the USPS to be a happy, well run organization that can take on a massive expansion in scope, it would take awhile and have to fight against the current inertia. It isn’t a slam dunk right now.

Agreed!