Posted on 01/22/2016 3:48:46 AM PST by IBD editorial writer
Evidence that the government cant run a business, healthcare included. A personel note, on a Saturday morning one person at the counter, line out the door several people doing thier passports and they removed the stamp machine a few years back. Nothing like waiting on line on a saturday at the post office
Its more a jobs program and probably has been that way for a long time.
In before the “anyone can deliver mail to every address in the country, every day, for less than the post office” crowd.
Take a look at the requirements of funding the postal retirement system. If they abolished the postal service the entire civil service retirement fund would immediately be insolvent. Congress has been raiding their pension fund to literally protect their own pensions.
If the average person understood this, their attacks on the Postal Service would not be as vicious.
The post office is an anachronism. Delivering pieces of paper by hand and via greenhouse gas emitting vehicles....why can’t mail be scanned and emailed to people? For packages people should pick them up at a mail center.
It’s not a business.
It’s a constitutional function of the Federal government. It’s purposes are to facilitate important and private communications and to knit the nation together.
Of all the stupid and nefarious unconstitutional functions and programs that are bankrupting us and destroying our communities, this one should be left alone.
Of course. You have a toxic brew of people migrating to electronic communication -- email and text -- for most day to day communication -- and a lumbering government bureaucracy whose goal is more so to protect its workers and let them live the good life rather than sustain its long term viability by changing and rationalizing costs. Amtrak is in the same boat.
This is the true story that needs shouted from the rooftops. The USPS is VERY solvent if they weren’t forced into funding congress’ pensions in addition to other things.
“It’s a constitutional function of the Federal government. It’s purposes are to facilitate important and private communications and to knit the nation together.”
Agree. However, that doesn’t mean that there can’t be change made to their model. There are still plenty of folks living in remote or rural areas that heavily depend on the USPS. however, no one has to have their mail delivered every day. I would start streamlining by eliminating Saturday deliveries. Then, would look at going to a Mon/Wed/Fri schedule. Additionally, USPS should look at making email print machines available to the elderly and none-email users for whatever reason. Ive seen these advertised on tv and require zero intervention in the receiving end other than keeping paper loaded and ink cartridges replaced as needed. There’s lots of things that can be done to meet our constitutional obligation without staying with the current obsolete and bankrupt model. Just saying....
So you're OK with someone you don't know opening your mail?
Blog pimping since:
IBD editorial writer
Since Jul 13, 2007
Never answered a single reply since joining, posts very short excerpts and runs.
In our case, the Saturday PO window is open from 0900 to 1030 in the morning. Rarely a line but when you live 30 miles away, sometimes is a challenge to get there in time.
The insane part is that UPS and FedEx have contracted with the USPS for ‘last mile’ delivery. ‘SmartPost?!?!?’ There’s nothing smart about it.
This is like going to dinner with Kathy Ireland then going to bed with Rhea Perlman.
On Christmas Eve, my neighbor put a Christmas card in my mailbox without a stamp in order to get it to us before Christmas. The local postal delivery ‘person’ took it out and dropped in on the wet ground because the rule book allowed her to. This sort of petulant adherence to rules and regulations is the USPS’s undoing. I never mail ANYTHING at the PO unless I have to. UPS or FedEx are always my first choices.
I basically agree.
I think government worker unions, per se, are unconstitutional - maybe anticonstitutional would be a better word (because their "contracts" appear to bind future legislatures, and therefore violate the Peoples' right to govern themselves).
However
I was a letter carrier before I was a physician. There's nothing wrong with making that fundamentally blue collar job have a reward structure that's commensurate with the level of intelligence and responsibility involved.
And, since I live in the woods and rely on the mail, I'd look more to downgrading the direct competition with FedEx and UPS (which relies on a false model of USPS being a self-supporting business) and put the emphasis on first class, recognizing that it will always lose money (it always has), but the "losses" are a service to the taxpayers, who deserve SOMETHING useful from FedGov.
FWIW, around here anyway, the best way to get a package delivered efficiently is USPS. Logic says they should be making a profit.
In the 1990s, their bonuses paid out were on par with their budget shortfall.
In my industry, there was no bonus check if there was no profit/surplus.
Hey, watch that. Rhea would probably be a whirlwind in bed.
So the USPS answer to this is to raise International package rates 30% last week. I could mail a vinyl LP to Europe for $13.88, this week $18.18. It will wipe out what little my home business made.
The USPS should get rid of half the delivery group and go to every-other-day delivery - half of all routes get Mon-Wed-Fri delivery, the other half gets Tue-Thur-Sat.
That would cut the labor expenses in half, and double the life of the existing delivery vehicles.
Exceptions, perhaps, for those businesses (credit card payment processors, etc) that get enough mail to justify running the truck out there every day.
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