Posted on 05/02/2012 4:41:38 AM PDT by upchuck
Technology’s rapid advance over the past few decades has brought an era of unprecedented communication among Americans. With video chat, people separated by thousands of miles can interact as if they’re in the same room. Small business owners can pay bills with the click of a mouse. The original online communications technology—e-mail—has become so much more. And there’s a government agency that is not happy about this
The U.S Postal Service is in crisis. Mail volume peaked in 2006, and they have been losing business—and more importantly, money—ever since. As an arm of the federal government, taxpayers should be worried about the financial health of an agency that is supposed to be, in theory, self-financing. Several congressional Democrats and the U.S. Postal Service workers’ unions are waging a losing war against technology to try to survive in an e-economy without cutting jobs or service.
A trio of government unions have formed together to push back against the tide of technological progress. The American Postal Workers Union, National Association of Letter Carriers and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union are all involved in the fight to drain more taxpayer money from the government and funnel it toward federal workers. Unless substantial action is taken, they’re going to succeed, and the once-great post office will become nothing more than a union-supported government agency that bleeds red ink year after year.
Post office reform is possible. There are people fighting in Congress to turn the tide and streamline the delivery agency into a more efficient service for the benefit of the whole country, but it will take effort and the political will to overcome Democrats and government unions committed to bleeding taxpayers dry for the sake of federal workers.
What Went Wrong?
Conservatives often argue that an inefficient federal program isn’t a legitimate function of the government. Not so with the Postal Service. Founded in 1775 by the Continental Congress, mail delivery was written into Article I of the Constitution. Through two centuries of legislation and regulation, the Postal Service has a government-forced monopoly on many different types of mail delivery and is designed to subsidize rural and long-distance delivery—sending a first-class letter is the same price no matter if it’s going across the street or across the country.
In 1970, Congress passed a package of reforms that turned the post office from the United States Post Office Department, a cabinet-level bureaucracy, into the United States Postal Service, a government-owned corporate-like agency. Before, the Post Office Department wasn’t charged with balancing its budget and self-funding. However, with the transition into an independent agency that had a legal monopoly on mail delivery, the new Postal Service was supposed to be able to fund itself through prices charged for mail delivery.
The turn of the century is where the Postal Service’s real trouble started, as its business-like organization proved resistant to change in the face of an evolving marketplace.
As electronic communications have advanced, the post office has been challenged in different ways. Telegrams provided for near-instantaneous transmission of messages, and the telephone allowed people to actually talk to each other over great distances. However, no technology gave postal mail such an existential crisis as the Internet. For all the previous technology had done for communications, much business still needed to be conducted with paper communications—until the Internet. The online age brought the ability to transit massive amounts of data across the world and the seeds of the destruction of mail delivery.
Mail delivery peaked in 2006 after having been relatively stagnant for the previous decade. It’s now been on a downward decline, spelling massive financial loss for the Postal Service and looking unlikely to recover. The Postal Service announced losses of $8.5 billion in 2010, $5.5 billion in 2011 and $3 billion in the first quarter of 2012. What’s more, due to a 2006 law that charged the agency to be more responsible with its accounting practices, its budget is going to look worse and worse.
I have never had a delivery failure or delay (except customs-related) with FedEx, and I have used them exclusively for critical shipments since 1997. On many occasions we failed to receive packages sent to us via USPS. We even caught a local Postal supervisor stealing our shipments.
USPS should be broken up and the pieces auctioned off.
So who delivers rural mail in your scenario?
Yes, but empowerment is not the same as requiring it.
You may choose to be a hermit if you like, but those of us who receive our bills electronically don’t need to sit around waiting for some union dork to shove a piece of paper into a metal box at the street. It’s called technology—you should try it sometime.
Whichever private firm wanted that business and bought it at the USPS auction. You are aware that FedEx et al. deliver to rural addresses, right?
The Constitution permits the federal government to establish post offices. So, it is one of the few things that are legitimate for the federal government.
Nearly all of my mailings are ordinary mailings. For 45 cents, the post office will take my letter and deliver it across the country. Will Fed Ex or UPS deliver my letter for 45 cents? I have real doubts about that, although I’ve never tried. I’ve had no reason to look for a better price.
I’ve also seen the videos of private carriers treating packages like garbage. I recall the video of the fellow throwing a package (I think it contained a monitor) over a fence onto the concrete. So, private doesn’t necessarily mean quality or greater efficiency.
For me, the 45 cent stamp is a pretty good deal. I’m not sure I want to eliminate that option.
Are you not aware that the USPS delivers packages for FedEx on a lot of rural routes? And if you send air, there are rural addresses that FedEx won’t deliver to.
Those people just won’t get service? They dont need mail? Who would bid on a money losing route?
If the routes are unprofitable, the postage must increase on those routes.
What, exactly, makes you think that government-subsidized mail delivery is necessary for life?
The same reason our Founders thought it important enough to include in the constitution. There is value in having a low cost efficient delivery service that allows citizens the ability to communicate with each other.
We have such a means to communicate: the Internet. We are arguing long-distance at no cost. Try that with USPS.
Again, the Constitution authorizes the Postal Service, but does not mandate it. You make it sound like cheap mail is in the Bill of Rights.
“You may choose to be a hermit if you like,”
___________________________________________
Well, I am anything but a hermit.
I bicycle to the market and past the post office every day.
To see ANY delivery service truck in town might be a once per month adventure.
To say that one has no need for a postal system is just whistling through his britches.
There are many older people who do not have the luxury
or knowledge of high speed internet, and even if they did,
they would still prefer to receive a greeting card via the mail.
Now that I live offshore, I receive little mail via a postal system, but if I were back in the states and still in business, having NO post office in my very rural town would be unthinkable, despite being on first name basis with my UPS and FedEx drivers.
Yes, total privatization via for profit carriers, and all billing and payments via internet, as well as electronic banking can very well be the wave of the future, but not yet....not till us old fogies die off :P
How much more will a magazine subscription cost if it is delivered by FedEx? How much will it cost to send an invoice, notice, or greeting card overseas to Europe or Asia?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Of course they don’t - but that would be a start on fixing the USPS. With good tracking, the “mailman stealing mail and storing it at his home” becomes very very difficult to get away with.
I already receive all my magazines in digital form. I send invoices in soft copy for my business, and have not received a hard copy invoice for quite some time. If you want to send a greeting card to Europe or Asia, of course it should cost more!
I sent a Fedex letter containing signed docs to rural France yesterday. $17 for priority international service (<48 hours) and I know it will get there. USPS can’t offer that.
FedEx definitely does not compete on price: I believe that the very cheapest standard offering that they have for an ordinary mailing is about $10, and they do charge more for going across the country than across the street.
FedEx has a rate calculator at https://www.fedex.com/ratefinder/home, but I don't believe that it includes any fuel surcharges that may apply.
Instead, FedEx competes on performance. I have had much better luck with mail that I care about with FedEx than I have had with the USPS. I would be glad to pay the USPS $1 per first-class stamp if I could be sure that my mail would actually get there in a timely fashion. It would be a lot cheaper than what I am paying FedEx for the same service.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.