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Congress should let the Post Office go and let it be bought out by private investors. Nobody write letters anymore. Most of the Post Office revenue came from magazines, priority mail and contracts to help Amazon’ during Christmas but now Amazon has its own contract to use Fed EX and UPS fleet of commercial airlines. What other company you know can lose $9 billion almost every year and stay in business?
A business that is required to maintain service throughout rural America?
Perhaps think through what privatization means for not just rural Americans, but the elderly …
Nobody writes letters anymore? W I write letters on a regular basis and send them through the mail. The postal service was never meant to be a money making deal. It was meant to be a public service, which it still should be.
Close underperforming post offices, cancel Saturday delivery and/or privatize the Post Office. Problem solved.
The Federal government spends five trillion dollars per year. Surely, a nine billion carve out for the post office would scarcely be noticed.
Stop Saturday and Sunday delivery. Consolidate post offices. Provide more incentives for Pack and Ship stores to accept mail and get rid of drop boxes. Raising the stamp will only push more digital usage. Magazines and papers are shutting down, so you can’t rely on the garbage income.
The reason the post office exists is because it’s good for the economy. In 1779 they realized this. It’s still true today. It sounds like the post office has restrictions and requirements that the federal government says it has to meet, and that may be part of the problem, so that should be fixed. It also sounds like there are fixes in the works and i the short term some of the problems are just cash flow.
When I travel overseas I am always surprised how much more expensive it is to mail a letter. One of the simple answers is to charge what it costs to deliver mail.
One answer is NOT to eliminate or privatize the post office. It will be bad for the economy. Imagine being told by Amazon that they can deliver your package but it will cost $10, AND you have to drive into town and pick it up at a post office. If you want it delivered to your door it will cost $15. Now imagine your a farmer in rural Idaho and that package has a part for your tractor and it’s an hour drive to the nearest town and there is no private contractor that will deliver to your door and every days delay cost you $10k and the economy as a whole.
Privatizing the post office will work for a majority of Americans, but it won’t work for all of us. With today’s online ordering, a reliable postal service is even more important. I suspect that very few people realize how much of the e-commerce world moves through the postal service. It’s hard to tell exactly from tracking information, but sometimes it’s the first mile and sometimes it’s the last mile.
Dan,
Correct, e-commerce is huge for the USPS. It is the majority of the product being moved.
Get rid of Saturday delivery if necessary. Privatization would end up being a regret and there would be no turning back.
Privatization – Faster, cheaper, and more accurate.
The USPS went big on privatization about twenty years ago. Large Distribution / Sorting facilities were established throughout the country including a major facility in Indianapolis.
The facility in Indianapolis did the work for around half the cost that it would have cost the USPS to run that same facility. ** Not only cheaper but faster and more accurate. **
National Postal officials from Washington DC and from throughout the U.S. that came into the facility to observe were absolutely amazed at how efficient the operations ran and at how cooperative the employees were.
The contractors were also held to much HIGHER standards than the USPS and were penalized if they did not meet those standards.
The thing that amazed these Postal
Officials the most was the employee productivity levels and their levels of cooperation to complete tasks when assigned. Under the contractors there was NO back talk or excuses.
If a Postal Official told a contract employee to jump, the only response was “ How High “
There is a difference evidently.
At the Indianapolis facility there were several major changes over the years.
Examples:
Social Security Checks all used to go through the mail. Now it’s all direct deposit.
Magazines and newspapers all used to go through the postal service also.
That is almost entirely done on line now.
Bills and Payments that used to be mailed are now done on line.
Letters-Now it’s email or texts.
Let’s close or privatize all the government departments that don’t make any money:
Post Office
Police Department
Fire Department
Army
Navy
Air Force
Marines
Each of these departments lose money every year.
This is just a no win all the way around. Sort of like Social Security.