Posted on 10/05/2011 12:51:47 PM PDT by ken21
The United States Postal Service (USPS) lost $9 billion last year and is facing default if it doesn't soon make a $5.5 billion payment into its bloated retiree medical plan. This is a moment when bankruptcy can be a blessing.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
e-mail and private companies can do the job better.
you’re subsidizing the post office’s inefficiency with packages to the tune of 14 cents per stamp.
let the companies and corporations pay for their own junk mail.
let the unions find real work.
Blame the union, then hand the service of to the teamsters. LOL
Long overdue. (no pun intended)
Delivering the mail is one of the few Constitutional requirements of the Federal government.
does that give the feds the right to control e-mail?
/s
Do any of these people remember when Flying Tigers "merged" with FedEx?
February 20, 1792, President Washington formally created the U.S. Postal Service with the signing of the Postal Service Act, which outlined in detail Congressional power to establish official mail routes. The act allowed for newspapers to be included in mail deliveries and made it illegal for postal officials to open anyone’s mail.
Once upon a time small towns across America had little post offices tucked into corners of general stores. Glenpool, Oklahoma, where I grew up, was one such town. The corner of the general store with the small window and the brass mail boxes could not have cost very much at all. This was before the unions came along.
Sometime in the 70’s the little post offices tucked into corners and the local contract or modestly paid post mistress or master disappeared. New stand alone post offices sprang up and someone in town got a new full time well paid job. Of course they had to have somebody to supervise so they got more employees. Lo and behold, costs went up.
How about going back to post office corners in the stores and contract post masters / mistresses? How about 6 day a week delivery but only deliver to half the people every-other-day? I sure don’t need mail every day. All the important stuff I get by express mail, fax or e-mail. The post office needs to change with the times. The present post office and daily delivery is an anachronism.
Junk mail comes in piles every day but the trash truck to pick it up only comes by once a week. Now if they could both just come on the same day each week with the mail arriving just ahead of the trash truck....
the Federal Financing Bank will bail them out. ie, you the taxpayer
USPS borrows and doesn’t pay back. What a gig!
http://www.treasury.gov/ffb/press_releases/2011/08-2011.shtml
If anything the USPS should be given freedom they don’t have now but would like to have. UPS isn’t required to get congressional approval to raise rates. UPS isn’t required to fund their retirements 30 years into the future.
Where I live, UPS leaves parcels at the post office out of choice. Partly to support a fellow union and partly to save time and money. They don’t want to deliver first class mail and if forced to, their rates will skyrocket. In fact its illegal for UPS to deliver first class mail.
There are problems with the post office to be sure, but eliminating them out of some kind of mindless self righteous rage is pure stupidity.
I went to a township meeting about this last week to look for ways of cutting costs. Some interesting suggestions came up.
The UPS rep on hand suggested doing away with the long distance postal service transport and letting UPS and FedEx bid for those contracts. This means they would handle all the overseas, transcontinental, and distribution center deliveries. Basically they would take over all bulk deliveries down to the local post office level and the postal service would handle local rural routes, PO boxes , and home deliveries.
On the local level we could save some $1500 a month in rental space alone by moving our post office out of the rented building and putting it in the new building that was built for our police department which was itself eliminated a year later. It also appears that there’s a lot of willingness for people under 5 miles from town to give up their home delivery and take a post office box instead.
On a whole other level is the fact that these tiny town post offices are very much the center of the community. Its where people gather, introductions and connections are made. In the event of a natural disaster that cut communications, I guarantee that people around here would end up at the post office.
...dump ‘em!...
the usps has a federal monopoly in first class mail as a matter of law. the actual law has to change.
The courts used to actually require documents be sent via first class mail. Now you can’t practice in the federal courts without an email account as an actual requirement.
even state courts are going paperless. i think we should have a USPS. It is a proper function of government.
It just needs an enema.
The Post Office is just poorly managed is all. The Post Office is the only “company” capable of pickup and delivery to every address in America every day of the week.
In theory, there is no reason for Fed-Ex or UPS or DHL to even be in business! Post office has the infrastructure in place to do the same thing and a lot cheaper, too, because of the scale and reach.
Those other companies thrive - and make huge profits - only because the USPS has a reputation of losing a lot of letters and packages so business prefer to use the others. That reputation may have been earned but in my experience the service is vastly improved. (And I agree, make junk mailers pay more for pete’s sake - an amount that reflects the true cost of the field workers having to stuff all that paper into small slots. They get a deal for pre-sorting, but upcharge them for the excess labor).
I say spin the Post Office off into a private entity and float the shares in an IPO. The money raised in an IPO can be used to improve logistical software. The USPS has already purchased Stamps.com - now everyone can print labels and stamps right at home. The sell pre-packaged stamp sets in ATM machines and grocery stores already. They could expand that service by selling “blanks” (as they do now) which people can print at home off the website or from downloadable software.
Plus with the home delivery monopoly (which they should keep for at least 7 years after going public) they might be able to pick up some of the UPS/Fed-Ex (or upstarts like Stamps.com was) business as a subcontractor. All they really need to do is have a second shift of “pick up” between 3 and 7 pm so they can grab more of the ground shipping business. Businesses need late-in the day pickups and UPS specializes in that. USPS just never thought to do it.
They could also open special windows for business customers, the way banks do, at the post office. People with business accounts don’t have to wait in the general mail lines.
IMHO, the USPS could have run fedex, ups out of business if they got their act together. And make a profit. And honor the obligations they have made to current employees, but be more competitive with future hires more in line with private practice. It may be too late to run them out of business now, but making them 100% private and owned by investors would make them accountable and ultimately a lot more competitive, efficient and effective as a service.
Wow I can’t believe I had this much to say about USPS.
Some letters, e.g. checks going to or from federal clearing house banks, have a legal exception to the monopoly.
Some Iowa postal workers could be paid for no work
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2783766/posts
Par for the leftard idiot course...
figures.
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