“It’s a constitutional function of the Federal government. It’s purposes are to facilitate important and private communications and to knit the nation together.”
Agree. However, that doesn’t mean that there can’t be change made to their model. There are still plenty of folks living in remote or rural areas that heavily depend on the USPS. however, no one has to have their mail delivered every day. I would start streamlining by eliminating Saturday deliveries. Then, would look at going to a Mon/Wed/Fri schedule. Additionally, USPS should look at making email print machines available to the elderly and none-email users for whatever reason. Ive seen these advertised on tv and require zero intervention in the receiving end other than keeping paper loaded and ink cartridges replaced as needed. There’s lots of things that can be done to meet our constitutional obligation without staying with the current obsolete and bankrupt model. Just saying....
I basically agree.
I think government worker unions, per se, are unconstitutional - maybe anticonstitutional would be a better word (because their "contracts" appear to bind future legislatures, and therefore violate the Peoples' right to govern themselves).
However
I was a letter carrier before I was a physician. There's nothing wrong with making that fundamentally blue collar job have a reward structure that's commensurate with the level of intelligence and responsibility involved.
And, since I live in the woods and rely on the mail, I'd look more to downgrading the direct competition with FedEx and UPS (which relies on a false model of USPS being a self-supporting business) and put the emphasis on first class, recognizing that it will always lose money (it always has), but the "losses" are a service to the taxpayers, who deserve SOMETHING useful from FedGov.
The USPS should get rid of half the delivery group and go to every-other-day delivery - half of all routes get Mon-Wed-Fri delivery, the other half gets Tue-Thur-Sat.
That would cut the labor expenses in half, and double the life of the existing delivery vehicles.
Exceptions, perhaps, for those businesses (credit card payment processors, etc) that get enough mail to justify running the truck out there every day.