Posted on 04/17/2013 6:25:16 AM PDT by Kaslin
Even parts of government that look like a business never get run with the efficiency of a business. Just look at the post office.
They buy commercials and tout their services the way private businesses do. They offer a service that customers want.
But a real business can't get away with losing billions every year. (I guess in the era of bailouts, I should say shouldn't get away with it.) The post office lost $16 billion last year, despite having all sorts of advantages that most private businesses don't have.
They have a near monopoly on first-class mail delivery. You want to deliver something to someone? You better not put it in their mailbox -- that's illegal. The U.S. Postal Service doesn't pay sales tax or property tax. They don't even pay parking tickets.
With advantages like that, how do they lose money?
They are part of the government, under the thumb of Congress, and that invites calcified, inefficient behavior.
"We are expected to operate like a business, but Congress has not allowed us the flexibility to operate like a business," said Postal Service Board of Governors Chairman Mickey D. Barnett on my TV show. It's all "part of being a quasi-governmental entity. That's how the cookie crumbles." Barnett added that the post office has "union contracts that have no layoff provisions."
Reality is at odds with the proud claim on the post office's website that "Since Ben Franklin ... the Postal Service has grown and changed with America." But it's barely changed. You don't tend to see change in "quasi-governmental entities." You see stagnation.
This year the post office tried to limit Saturday delivery to save money. But Congress forbade the change. The politicians' constituents like getting their mail six days a week.
"They don't want a cut in Saturday delivery," Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., told me.
"The USPS does need reform," Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo., told the Kansas City Star. "However, reducing core services is not a long-term plan. I worry that reducing services will lead to other reductions like closing rural post offices."
But the post office should do both. The government maintains hundreds of tiny local post offices, each of which brings in less than $700 a month. Running those offices costs much more than that. Some are just one mile away from other post offices.
People like "universal service," which has been taken to mean that every American must get mail service, no matter how deep in the boondocks they live. The post office even hauls mail by mule to the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
"The post office provides something that's extremely valuable and has to be maintained, and that's universal service," Grayson told me. "There are countries a lot poorer than the United States, including the Congo ... that try to provide universal mail service to everybody. ... People don't want post offices closed!"
On the floor of Congress, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., proclaimed that universal service is required, saying, "It's in the Constitution."
But it's not. The Constitution says, "Congress shall have the Power To ... establish Post Offices." But it doesn't have to use that power.
Cato Institute budget analyst Tad DeHaven argues, "People living in rural America aren't living there by force. ... Go back to history. Private carriers picked up the mail from the post office and took it the last mile, or people came to the post office and picked it up."
And private alternatives are much better today. We have e-mail. UPS delivers 300 packages a minute and makes a profit. Federal Express, UPS and others thrive by finding new ways to cut costs. They don't do it because they were born nicer people. They do it because of the pressure of competition. They make money -- while the post office loses $16 billion.
Why not just privatize it? No more special government protections, no limit on competitors offering similar services.
Then mail service would be even better than before. The market delivers.
I don’t know if Stossel is innocently ignorant or just lying when he fails to mention that much of the USPS’s losses are due to the Congressional requirement to prefund retiree benefits for the rest of the century. No business could make a profit under that burden.
My last visit to the Post Office was surreal, like a trip to an old Soviet Union “super” market.
Long line to get a service window and told “we haven’t got any stamps, try again next week.”
Right from the beginning there was as much Congressional interference in USPS decisions as there had been before setting it up.
It's usually bipartisan ~ I remember the day Casey took over ~ that's Reagan's buddy ~ he brought in some of the Classification decisions he didn't like that'd been sent to his publications and demanded they be 'reviewed' which meant that his intention was to 'reverse' them.
Open corruption at the top is the same now as ever ~
I have a fully developed privatization plan.
Things like that happen. I went to my local grocery store last week and they didn't have the Aunt Jemima blueberry waffles I was looking for.
I haven’t been to a post office in years. If I have to ship something I go to a privately owned shipping store where they offer me a variety of shipping options. I hardly use snail-mail anymore but if I need stamps I can get them at my local supermarket.
No business could make a profit if its employees were covered by the Federal Employees Retirement System (which, by the way, the Postal Service didn’t contribute to in 2012).
I think its a little bit different. A better analagy would be going to Baskin Robins and discovering they ran out of ice cream...which doesn’t happen.
Seriously - a post office shouldn’t run out of stamps.
Stop hiring people as political favors or to fill a quota.
I’ve actually come to feel sorry for the lone postal employee working in such a place who has to deal with the hostile crowd.
We are nowhere near a “post-post office world” when Republicans in Congress won’t even let them end Saturday delivery.
In Europe you can generally keep your savings account with the Post Office. At their first opportunity look for Liberals to establish that here. Will keep the PO afloat awhile longer and be a kick in the groin to those Big Eeeeeeevil Banks.
Remember, you heard it here first.
They were out of my hair spray the week before...
My last trip to the post office I wanted to use a priority mail padded envelope. None on the rack. Asked if there were any in the back and the guy says the postmaster won’t let them be sold. Why not? His policy was the answer. He tells me I have to use the next size up. The difference was over $6. I checked around and all the post offices in the area are doing the same thing. However, if you order a padded envelope on-line they sell them, but refuse if you try to buy one in person.
SCAM
From the beginning, this country decided to have a postal service that goes EVERYWHERE, including APO/FPO, inland Alaska, Hawaii and Death Valley. Some time later, we decided on a uniform price for same.
Those areas would never be served under a purely private system. It is unlikely that 1 oz first class mail (the most politically sensitive of mail prices) would stay anywhere NEAR 50 cents except in densely populated areas. Other services would come and go, like airlines in the 80s, leaving mail, instead of passengers stranded.
The USPS is also forced to have special price classes for libraries, offerings for the blind, media mail and of course the “Franking” privilege, ensuring elected officials can send news (often thinly disguised campaign mailers) to constituents.
I don’t know if it gets credited by the gov for Franking, etc., but a purely private system would need some “food stamp” type program or maybe tax deductions to offset the imposed extra expenses.
I am doubtful that the end result would run any better or cost any less.
The US Constitution states that Congress has to establish “Post Offices” ir DOES NOT say what these “Post Offices” have to look like and who/what has to “Man/Operate” them.
The last time I went in there, they wouldn’t tape my box shut (I bought it right there). So, I had to buy tape at the counter, get out of line and go tape my box, and get back in line to wait another half hour. They had their big tape guns right there...but they refused to use it (I’m not sure who gets that ‘special’ treatment)’.
None of them are required to make a stop at every house on every street 6 times per week to drop off a cataloge and two flyers. Require them to do that and then let's see how much money they make.
If you went to the Aunt Jemima Blueberry Waffle store and they were out of Aunt Jemima Blueberry Waffles then wouldn't you be a bit peeved?
On Mackinac Island, Michigan, for instance, UPS, Fed Ex and DHS all make home deliveries. The Post Office does not.
Do you have a UPS box at your residence, either attached on your house or by your drive way? Of course you don’t. No one has. I am sure though you have mail box, unless you you have P.O. Box.
If USPS did not pay the janitors at the Montgomery, Alabama
Post Office $51,094.00 with Cadillac Benefits on top, then maybe the USPS would not be in the financial angst it has made for itself.
How much does Fed Ex or UPS pay its Janitors?
Montgomery Laborer Custodial $51,094.00
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