I remember when "working at the bank" used to be the shining example of a stable, well paying, middle class white collar job. Now it is borderline minimum wage. Another profession swallowed whole by the internet. Sucks because there are fewer and fewer jobs nowadays that keep money in the local community.
That has changed, though; the actual bankers are mostly gone from (or powerless at) the branches. Last time I had an issue with Chase they pointed me over to a phone to sit on hold.
As a previous Chase customer, I can only say that they are horrendous and as a financial services consumer, one can do much better at just about anywhere else. Use a credit union, use a brokerage, but for the love of god, avoid a commercial bank entity at all costs (Chase, BoA, Wells, etc).
Depends on the country and weight class of the financial institution, but among e.g. U.S. money center banks, branch bankers have been successively de-skilled for the last ~3.5 decades or so.
It is still nominally a white collar occupation but has, indeed, suffered in terms of prestige, compensation, and socioeconomic makeup of workforce versus other middle class mainstays, against a backdrop where the upper edge of the middle class is doing exceptionally well for itself.
Citation available if I Google for the academic papers but the handwavy version is “I write about this sort of thing for a living so uh self-cite for the moment.”
My grandmother worked for a bank for the better part of her life. She used to bring old punch cards home to use for notes/grocery lists. My mom and I used to drive through her teller window and send her cookies through the tubes or the document slot.
In a time where money can be zipped around the world in seconds, and most transactions are cashless, what exactly is the advantage of 'keeping money in the community'?
Who do you think is paying for the roads, parks, schools around you? Is it Chase/Amazon/Apple/Google? Or is this stuff funded by taxes collected from local businesses and their employees? What happens to your town when the money in the latter category drops to 0?
The federal and state governments aren't paying to maintain your neighborhood. And they together contribute <50% of the budget of your local schools. If these mega corps don't operate in your city, they aren't contributing to it financially in any way.
>If these mega corps don't operate in your city, they aren't contributing to it financially in any way.
But by your own admission they contribute at least a portion of the budget for local schools? I'm sure state and federal funding ends up at the city level through a multitude of other programs as well (eg. medicaid). Moreover, such companies have to exist somewhere. Your city might not have an office of megacorp A, but it might have an office for megacorp B. That doesn't mean you should only buy stuff from megacorp B, because it's more efficient for companies to consolidate their operations and adopting this attitude would make everyone worse off.
> In a time where money can be zipped around the world in seconds, and most transactions are cashless, what exactly is the advantage of 'keeping money in the community'?
Living in a community that isn't poor and decaying?
When money leaves a community, it means that it won't be used to employ people in that community, buy goods in that community, or generate tax revenue for public good in that community. The market's relationship to the community can become much more extractive.
Maybe more than money, let’s say assets. If no-one care about local community, then one can have all the world money in their digital wallet, there will be no place on earth where putting their human body in a safe and enjoyable place.
Perhaps the COVID situation saw a temporary exodus from the cities, but it seems since most people have returned. It would appear that people still care about concentrating assets in a community. That is, after all, why cities exist.
Wait till big tech starts buying banks. Cuz banks are really struggling worldwide to keep up with the rate of change in tech and finance. So we aint seen nothing yet.
