[RooRoobird14]

Grrrr.........I am SO SICK of these CLYMERS having a monopoly on letter mail!!!!! Every year service gets worse, every year they keep raising their prices.

[RooRoobird14]

BTT

[DeaconBenjamin]

The Priority Mail 2 pound rate is proposed to go up 46 percent.

[JohnGalt]

But somehow they have enough money to buy those friggin Segway scooters...

[Zack Nguyen]

I don't suppose that they could cut spending anywhere? Oh well, I suppose I should be grateful that I can slap a $.37 stamp on a letter, and be reasonably assured that it will go anywhere in the world.

But having spent a great deal of time at the post office, I can't help but think that some of that deficit comes from poor efficiency and bad service.

[curmudgeonII]

Thirtyseven cents for a stamp?
I guess that's one cent for delivery and 36 cents for storage.

[Orangedog]

Gee, why don't they try raising the bulk mail postage rate and leave the people who need the mail for things like bills alone?! What would the poor junk-mailers do if they had to fork over more to clog up my mail box with trash 6 days week? They wouldn't stop sending the junk mail, but maybe there would be a little less of it.

I agree with your sentiment......BGRRRRRRRRR!

[johniegrad]

The postal service is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Electronic bills, e-mail, credit card transactions, private industry package delivery, all are contributing to its demise. If one decides to avoid it, almost everything can be done without the postal service. I suspect this will become worse year after year.

[1Old Pro]

Cut everyones pay, layoff people, and LOWER stamp rates so as to COMPETE with the competition.

[The Vast Right Wing]

Privatize.

[discostu]

What irritates me is that they now think they're supposed to be in the black. Up until the junk mail boom of the early 90s the post office was NEVER in the black, not once in the history of America. It's a government institution they're supposed to lose money. I blame all that stupid balanced budget talk, it's ruined everything in the government. USPS does a good job, they get the mail delivered on time and effectively, at one point it was the only part of the federal government that people interacted with regularly. But these days they're just not thinking straight.

I think we need a big letter writing campaign reminding congress that it's AOK for the USPS to be in the red and they should just fix the red in the federal budget instead of raising rates or reducing service.

[RedBloodedAmerican]

Boy, I can't wait until they trade in their delivery trucks for the "IT".

What a money savings move that will be. I am sure stamps will drop in price to....oh, say.....$0.19 ?

[demsux]

Next federal program to start bleeding money....AIRLINE SECURITY. These new FEDERAL employees will do just as good a job as those at the post office (/sarcasm).

[SamAdams76]

E-mail has got to be killing the Postal Service. Other than bills, I haven't sent snail mail in years. Of course the Postal Service wouldn't be in such poor shape if they were privatized. A private company would cut manpower in half and would probably deliver a letter for 20 cents and still make a profit.

[Jumper]

Two questions here.

One - if our stamps pay the wages and operating costs should linkage to salary and income be made.

Two - these folks get paid by the US Government as General Service (GS) employees - maybe they need to turned out to the private sector; maybe their 401K which is currently TSP should be abolished.

This is some sort of a hoax to tell the tax payers that they must pay more for stamps because the postal service is in the red.... Apparently there is no coralation between profits and saleries, therefore, government services such as this might well be contracted out as most of the Stateside Fed jobs are being abolished....

[finnman69]

This is another reason why I pay most of bill online.

[The Truth Will Make You Free]

At one point in American history, the concept of one price for all made sense to promote national unity. Today, with Internet, TV, telephones, and other communication systems, the mail system in no longer the communications glue that holds the country together. City dwellers should not have to subsidize the expensive mail delivery to those who chose to live in the mountains of Montana.

Furthermore, local mail delivery within the same zip code or metropolitan area should be at a lower cost than mail that requires additional transportation and handling to be sent to other regions or states.

[TexasRedeye]

...blamed the loss on ... increased competition.

A price increase coupled with a competition increase and no real cost decrease usually results in the death of a business.

As long a the Feds are involved (and the resultant number of employees who pay Federal Union dues), this dinosaur will continue to live.

The 37 cents will rapidly come to represent the number of days a letter takes to get to its destination.

[WIladyconservative]

Raise it to a dollar a letter, but guarantee overnight delvery anywhere in the US. FedEx carries all their priority mail, anyway!

[Protagoras]

Everyday there are fewer and fewer reasons to use snail mail. The whole thing will just be a memory in a decade or so. The need for it will be a memory to most people a lot sooner than that.

[RLK]

I have no complaints about the price of mail. I use it only for selected purposes. The post office is going broke because most mail today is done by computer email. That's what I use to conduct business and personal affairs. I get communications from the UK, Germany, Japan, Australia, India, SA, Japan, in minutes and the post office is left out of it. It's busting the post office.