Chris Ladd: Sell the Postal Service
By HHR | August 31st, 2010 | Category: Featured | 8 comments
By Chris Ladd
On any given day two kinds of mail show up in my box. Netflix, and useless crap. My bills are posted to a website and paid online. My mother sends me nice email messages instead of letters. I can’t remember the last letter I wrote. It was probably sometime before 2002.
Useful deliveries arrive at my door almost exclusively from FedEx or the brown truck. They include regular care packages filled with Tony Chachere’s seasoning, Zatarains fish fry (great for onion rings), Steen’s ribbon cane syrup, and other necessities from the homeland. None of them, besides my Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine arrive by USPS.
And increasingly, even my Netflix are delivered straight to my TV through my Wii.
Currently the US Postal Service is posting quarterly losses of about $3.5billion. That’s quarterly, not annually. You as a taxpayer are set to spend (borrow, actually) at least an additional $14billion this year for the privilege of maintaining an institution whose purpose in our day and age in entirely ambiguous. And that doesn’t include the cost of the USPS’s bloated pension liabilities.
The time has come to phase out free daily door-to-door mail delivery and sell the Postal Service.
Impossible? The British are well ahead of us, with the new Tory government making plans to sell off the union-hobbled Royal Mail. Japan is also considering it.
The Postal Service has one heck of a successful history behind it, dating back before the Declaration of Independence. But its relevance today is comparable to the telegraph (which still exists, by the way).
A history is not a future.
Continuing to fund the money sink that is our postal monopoly is a symptom of the nastiest problem of modern government – no government program, no matter how ridiculous or archaic, can be terminated.
In spite of the government subsidized mail monopoly, private delivery services have been able to thrive. They could compete to take over the remaining valuable elements of the USPS, including mailbox services. And the taxpayers could experience a brief windfall, perhaps enough to fund a portion of our liability for postal workers’ pensions. And the losses would end.
There is no way to make a useless, anachronistic service cost-effective. We continue to underwrite the postal service because it has a massive, powerful union and we often lack imagination.
Selling off the postal service and ending its most outdated functions would be an intelligent way to show that government can be made effective.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Chris Ladd is a Texan who is now living in the Chicago area. He has served for several years as a Republican Precinct Committeeman in DuPage County, IL, and was active in state and local Republican campaigns in Texas for many years.
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If you as a mail contractor had to deliver a News Paper forty miles out on a dirt road 100 thousand times a day for about 5 cents each you too would be in the red. At this stage upward of 50% of the US Postal Service deliveries are mandatory junk mail at extream discounts. If you want a service that is in the black, get rid of the crap that most of us just throw away anyway. UPS might pick up some of the slack….LOL
It’s NOT SUPPOSED to make a profit!! It’s a part of the COMMONS no different than Interstate Roads or Bridges or Firefighters or Police Protection. The only reason USPS started being attacked was because its a Union shop and because they finally opened up the jobs to brown folks!! Can you Dig it?
It’s not about race, its about economics, accountability, sustainability and performance. The Goverment needs to cover its basic operating expences. The postal system can’t continue to borrow beyond their capacity to repay, which they can do without reference to the compensation norms existing in the labour market. In the private sector, companies must find ways to stay afloat by cutting costs and increasing productivity or they must shut their doors.
Seems like in the private sector companies find ways to stay afloat at the cost of their lower echelon personnel by cutting their benefits and their work hours rather than those of the top corporate executives. When some functions of the postal service cease to bring in profits for the private sector, they would be jettisoned without any warning to the users. Technology being what it is, where are the online money orders? Chris can’t remember the last time he wrote a letter. If he had to jot down something could anyone decipher his handwriting? Mankind has become hostages to keyboards. If this is progress, bring back the primitive. I know another institution whose purpose in our day and age is entirely ambiguous. That institution is Congress but there is no talk of privitizing them.
Whether it’s the private sector or a government (including Congress) enitity the same standard applies, no excuses – accountability, sustainability and performance.
“…Can’t member the last time I wrote a letter.” It’s NOT about YOU!!!! That’s what the COMMONS are about!
The commons are ON THE TAXPAYERS dime! National Defense, National Highway System, Air Traffic Control, FDA, etc etc The Postal Service is the only “bidness” mentioned in the Constitution if memory serves! They wanted a mode to keep the masses an “Informed Electorate”
What about Ma Kettle in Podunk Iowa who wants to send a letter to her daughter in Key Largo, FL. What would you have her pay Big Brown or FEDEX to get that Birthday Greeting to her sweet, tow headed lil Imp of a Grand child? (OMG, did I just channel Uncle Ruckus?)
I dont think anyone objects to an efficient operation when serving the public. BTW, did u raise this much stank about the Billions Wasted in Iraq?
Again, whether it’s the private sector or a government (including the military) the same standard applies, no excuses – accountability, sustainability and performance. And, yes, on other websites I have railed against wasteful spending in our arm forces.
Why is the Post Office suffering so much and losing so much money?? The root can be found in the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Republican president. What did the Republicans do in 2006?? Despite the fact that they will not even require private corporations making huge profits to fund part of their employees healthcare in 2006 they forced to Post Office to PRE-FUND the healthcare of their workers who have not even retired yet. No other corporation or organization is forced to do this. This year it is due to pay $7.5 billion for retiree healthcare, $5.5 billion of which goes to a trust to fund future benefits. No other organization is required to pre-fund retiree healthcare. Looks to me like the same thing happened to our Social Security. During the Bush years they constantly spent our Social Security surplus, or let thieves pick it clean and it appears as if all the problems the Post Office is having can be lain at their table too. Ideology sometimes gets confused by the facts.