For the first time in years, I looked at how much interest I was making in my Bank of America accounts. It was appallingly minuscule, so I called BoA customer service to upgrade. As we were homing in on the best options for me, the service rep mentioned that I had enough money in my accounts to waive the service fees. This fact seemed backwards to me for several reasons:

• People with little money in their bank accounts are the least able to afford maintenance fees. Shouldn’t they be more likely to hunt around for the best deal? Thus, shouldn’t BoA provide very good incentives for that segment of the population?
• Lower-income workers are also more likely not to use a bank at all, which would seem to be another reason banks should court them.
• With my white collar job, my interest income and fee payments are negligible compared to my monthly paycheck, so when balancing what bank to use, I’m much more likely to factor in non-monetary attributes such as: availability of ATMs, online banking experience/features, etc. Why is BoA specifically courting me with a tiny bit of extra cash?
• And maybe I’m a bleeding-heart liberal, but the whole concept of squeezing every last dollar out of low-income workers’ bank accounts just seems cruel to me.

Are there social justice-friendly banks out there? I’m thinking along the lines of how progressives avoid sending monthly cell phone bills to GOP-supporting corporations by signing up for Credo Mobile.