As this story indicates here, the Post Office, in spite of a rate increase, is in deep financial trouble. Unwilling to adapt to a changing market, the wranglers of snail mail no doubt will be the recipient of a massive bailout in the next few months to “save the local post office”. Something to keep in mind before the government is put in charge of our health care.
If the Post Office isn’t able to meet its mandate to provide affordable mail service across the U.S., we might consider repealing the mail monopoly it is granted, at least in those areas and times in which it is no longer offering service.
Just a thought.
Having a nation-wide way of getting mail around is very important…biggest problem with the post office is that it’s run by, well, the gov’t.
There’s a HUGE post office about three blocks away from where I set, to the north. About two miles from that, west, is another– also huge, mostly empty. To the south, about a half-mile and then one mile in either direction, are two more. (slightly smaller)
Every time I’ve gone in the big office there have been at least two folks in the back desks, and one or two at the front. So far as I can tell, 90% of the front-desk-work could be done by anyone bright enough to graduate high school, since you set a box on the scale, type in the address, read off the options and then push a button to get a print-out of the address with cost. Anyone that can manage a fast food job could do that… somehow, I doubt they’re getting minimum wage.
If the post office were run more like a private business, with the exception that they still had to offer nation-wide, everyone-can-use-it service in return for their monopoly, it would probably do better….
Why not
1. Transfer the Postal Inspection Service to the Department of Justice or Homeland Security;
2. Articulate Postal pension and medical benefits into two components: a stream they would receive were such programs actuarially sound, and the subsidy thereto; the obligations of the latter would be assumed by the U.S.Treasury and be vestigial, trending to nil over a run of decades;
3. Put the corporation that is the United States Postal Service on the auction bloc, selling it in an initial public offering and allowing it to claim the term ‘Post Office’ as a trademark;
4. Assemble every six years extant postal companies (USPS, UPS, FedEx, &c.) and have them bid on a standard contract for mail delivery in the deep country – rates and loci specified. Low bidder gets the contract. The other companies can deliver to these routes, they just do not get paid by the U.S. Treasury to do so and can charge what they please.
You folks are obviously spreading malicious lies and misinformation. Our beloved leader has told us that by removing the profit motive and cutting down on overhead, the government will provide savings over private industry- ergo, the United States Postal Service cannot be in trouble. If it had been in trouble, he would have fixed it with his pouch of fairy dust, and it would be more profitable than FedEx and UPS combined. You are just trying to shake the faith of His loyal subjects in the cost cutting prowess of the federal bureaucracy which is going to bend the ‘cost curve’ and save the economy without reducing services. I am now obliged to report you to the Executive Branch office of ‘Saying Naughty Things About His Highness’.
Ummm… who do I inform on him to?