Posted on 08/15/2020 4:56:38 AM PDT by karpov
Two months into his new job, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is being keelhauled by Democrats for alleged sabotage of the U.S. Postal Service. Nearly 200 House Democrats signed a letter this week accusing him of acting to “accelerate the crisis” at the USPS. Apparently they missed the post office’s news release last Friday, when it reported losing another $2.2 billion last quarter. Congress has only itself to blame for this mess.
That red ink is no fluke of circumstance. The post office is meant to be self-sufficient, but it hasn’t broken even for years. Total losses since 2007 run to $78 billion, according to a May report by the Government Accountability Office, which said that the “USPS’s current business model is not financially sustainable.” It’s a Blockbuster service in a Netflix world.
Overall mail volume peaked in 2006, at 213 billion pieces. As of last year, it was down 33%. More than half of what remains is “marketing mail.” Maybe you noticed while searching for a birthday card amid the real-estate fliers. Over the same period, however, the number of delivery points served by the USPS increased by 9%, from 146 million to 160 million.
There are more addresses than ever, but less mail than at any time since 1985. It’s similar on the retail side: Customer visits fell from 1.06 billion in 2010 to 812 million last year, down 23%. Yet total retail offices dropped 4%, to 34,613. The USPS’s package-delivery business is growing, but it can’t make up the difference.
A misalignment like this wouldn’t last in private business, but the Postal Service answers to politicians. The USPS has a monopoly on letter service, plus exclusive access to your mailbox.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Paper mail volume is way down during Covid at my mail box.
Cut costs by dropping deliveries to residential addresses to 3 days a week. Or two.
Would anyone really care?
Since they obviously cannot guarantee deliveries, vote by mail at your own peril.
Where does gov’t subsidizing Amazon fit into this?
The USPS seems to have lost some Amazon contracts, in our area a Prime van is making most deliveries. Amazon loss would be huge.
They’ve talked about cutting out Sat. delivery for a while. At this point, I’m not sure it would be enough.
And yes, I’d care if there were only 3 deliveries a week.
Printing costs have more to do with it than COVID-19.
what does having email instead of regular mail have to do AT ALL with reading and writing?!!?
Why is the post office even in existence??
For old people who don’t want to adapt?
I thought we wanted public industries to be run like private.
One can cry and whine about this or that but it’s not nearly as needed as before so it needs to be sliced and diced.
Don’t remember the last piece of important mail I received.
Slash and burn it.
Let private companies take over.
Advertising and billing pretty much stays static.
Thanks for the link to the entire article
Does anyone else remember when all mailboxes were on the same side of the street? I distinctly remember that when I was a kid. At some point that changed and everybody started putting them in front of their own house. That’s a pretty major change in efficiency. It almost doubles the time to deliver the mail.
I am a postal brat from way back. I worked for three summers as a casual carrier. My Dad was a 35 year postal supervisor and superintendent.
The USPS has been F’d up for as long as I can remember. There are a lot of reasons for it, but they are not really important today.
I am amused that all of a sudden there is interest in getting it fixed.
The printed word is in direct relationship with reading and writing ... not the least of which is books.
We have at LEAST two generations of primarily non readers, thus, non writers..... instead, they txt, lol.
It WILL show up more evidently in the not too distant future (which is already in progress)
Local post office started closing on saturday over a year ago.
Most online orders from ebay and another online auction site I use are going fedex or ups.
Amazom seems to be flipping usps the finger according to comments here.
But what have we ever eeen run by government efficiently, erfectively, and without losing billion$?
Same argument I used against abominablecare. Name one thing run by government efficiently, effectively, and without losing big buck$...
Nope, you can’t do it. Not one I can think of. Welfare, food stamps, social security all going broke, school system a shambles, this is typical government mismanagement. And corruption.
The only thing that will fix it is politicians going to prison. And I’m mot talking 6 months...
I would not care.
Half the people could get Mon., Wed., Friday and the other half Tues., Thurs., Sat.
You could half the number of carriers.
Perhaps liberals need to ban Amazon Prime delivery and FedEx and UPS and the super-store delivery services. That’s the only way to get the USPS to get more deliveries.
Or, the USPS can cut salaries and benefits and reduce the cost of delivery.
Where did I read that the major expense of the Post Office is paying into the retirement funds. Delivering mail is secondary.
I believe some things are worth spending money on even at a loss because they are important cultural or political institutions. The Post Office is important for unifying America. It also provides a very valuable communications backup service in case of disruption to the internet. I know some may scoff at this but we’ve only had the Internet for 20 years. It is hardly “robust” and is open to malicious disruption. Also, a Solar burst could wipe out our satellites and ground electronics — called a Carrington Event.
We spend money on National Parks, Roads, Railways and Airports, the Post Office, the Military, Libraries, and Museums. These are important for maintaining our culture. Losing the Post Office because we want to spend money on low income housing or foreign aid or grants to higher education is like burning the family bible and photo albums because you don’t want to buy firewood.
Isn’t that the same reason why GM went bankrupt?
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