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Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

After moving to America a while ago, one thing that struck me is how a lot of things are designed as effectively regressive taxes: the poor pay more than the rich.

I opened a basic bank account with a giant American bank. The account has an exorbitant monthly fee, something like $15, but it’s waived if you keep a sufficient balance or have a steady salary. So the only people who pay the crazy fee are the broke people with irregular income. This is one example out of many such seemingly structural biases in everyday services.

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$15/mo is far too high at current interest rates so your point stands, but, rich people with steady balances are also paying the bank a fee in the form of an interest-free loan that the bank re-invests.

$15/mo is equivalent to ~$14,400 balance at 1.25% APR [0] so anyone with a higher balance than that across their big bank low-interest/no-interest accounts is paying more than $15/mo.

[0] I chose this number as something you can actually get in an FDIC-insured account at a more generous online bank like Ally

From a business perspective, the $15 a month makes sense.

However, I'd consider banking an essential need to modern day life. Thus I think it is worth looking at through a humanities perspective. Unfortunately in our current situation, it's very expensive to be poor.

This is a popular progressive opinion in the United States, currently pushing for "Postal Banking," AKA simple banking and check cashing at post offices for no cost. The conservative position currently being pushed is privatizing or shutting down the USPS.

Banks have been getting essentially free money from the Fed for over a decade, they don't need deposits, whether from rich or poor.

You're forgetting about this thing called greed

A similar experience happened to me while I was in school, and opened a bank account through the university which had a partnership with $BANK since there weren't any nearby ATMs in-network with the credit union from my hometown. Thinking that having access to cash would be in my best interest in case of needing to buy things secondhand like from Craigslist; and didn't see a clause in the contract which required a minimum balance for both the signup bonus and until seeing a $15 monthly fee withdrawn from the account which had a small deposit made into. It ended up being a net loss-- missing that work to open a bank account with an unattainable minimum balance meant the entire process ended up costing almost 2 hours worth of pay.

Google Wallet solved this problem while they were still around but the service was canceled likely due to being a loss leader for the company, and have since switched to Simple which has several ATMs available in my area.

> The account has an exorbitant monthly fee, something like $15,

Maybe it is really exorbitant but I have seen fees even in third world for keeping account which maintain lower than minimum balance specified. Would it also be the structural bias all over the world that stores give more discount to people who spent more money there.

I mean, this is entirely anecdotal. I'm just surprised by how American corporations seem to have laid such deep roots for price-gouging the most vulnerable. So many things come with hidden fees, impenetrable cost structures and customer-hostile communication.

It has made me realize that consumer-facing companies in my home country Finland seemed to be traditionally more aligned as participants in society, rather than money-extracting machines outside of it. Maybe one reason is that some basic industries like banking and grocery stores are dominated by co-ops in Finland.

Yea, don't do business with that bank. Not all banks do that.

Plenty of banks do this, it's very common. Usually if they offer some student account, they waive this fee that is present in a basic checking or savings account.

And plenty of banks don't. That's also very common. Bank with one of the ones that don't.

No single bank should do that.

Banks are businesses, why can't they charge what they want for services?

I don't get why people pay money to put their money in the bank. What exactly is the bank giving you these days? Credit Unions are everywhere, and I don't know anybody who pays fees to the CU just to put money in there. The amount of free shit I get from my CU is absurd compared anything the big banks offer.

And the dark patterns of opening accounts without your permission, burying fee information in the fine print, etc etc...? It's not just business; it's predatory.

Unless every bank is opening up accounts with permission, I don't see how your comment is relevant.

Now you're onto a different topic - we're talking about charging fees on accounts.

I have no idea why someone would use a bank instead of a credit union.

Actual usable web interfaces mas mobile apps?

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