This is projected to be the last Christmas for the US Postal Service. What happens then? It will be expensive to have our mail delivered by a private company like FedEx.
How will people without bank accounts get their social security checks?
Will people stop sending greeting cards?
How will the county send me my property tax bill or vehicle license renewal forms?
Could the postal service still operate with only P.O. boxes and no door to door delivery? They would have to expand most post offices to have enough boxes for everyone, wouldn’t they?
What about people that are homebound and can’t get out to pick up their mail somewhere?
Personally, I wouldn’t miss all the advertising that comes thru my mailbox but I have a feeling that stuff would still show up on my doorstep. Of course there is a lot of nostalgia associated with letters, post offices, mailmen, stamps, selective service registration, etc. but time marches on and things change. What is your vision for a U.S. without the USPS?
The OP didn’t propose the most obvious answer: that a private company will step in to offer mailing and delivery services, possibly better than USPS ever did. The only reason this hasn’t happened yet is the government has prohibited the use of mailboxes and the collection of first class-type mail. Maybe all that needs to happen is for the government to step out of the way.
I suspect some private company not bound by congressional maneuvers will appear to fill the gap. Perhaps even UPS or FedEx will come up with some cheaper, though more expensive than the USPS, delivery for small envelopes.
Whether or not this is a good thing, I can’t say. But I can’t see a large market of advertisers not paying *someone *to enable their deforestation efforts.
ETA: Or, what **Musicat **said, plus a dose of Scroogey cynicism.
Well, its clear that an 18th century institution cannot survive without massive subsidies. I suspect that we will get a lot less junk mail, and the delivery will be limited. Will I mourn the USPS? Not while I see people making >$65,000/year for work that could be done for a lot less. How many people miss bread and milk delivey, or buggy whips, or clock repairmen?
There’s a distinction between “generally acknowledged to be happening at some specific time in the future” and “predicted by one person who’s trying to make a point.” The fact that this one CNN contributor is saying this doesn’t mean that it’s true. Many things could happen in the future, and you need to learn not to believe everything you read in what’s a political commentary, not a news article.
Maybe that’s the solution. Why shouldn’t they charge more for services that cost them more to deliver?
OTOH, neither Fedex nor UPS charges more for rural addresses, but they do charge more for residential delivery. So there is a precedent for increased charges based upon location.
The USPS absolutely favors bulk mailers. If you want to read some confusing shit, take a crack at the Domestic Mail Manual. All of those byzantine requirements about aspect ratio of envelopes and paper reflectance are to make automated processing easier for the USPS. And for whom are the rules easiest to adhere to? Bulk mailers, who design one mail piece to meet those standards and send it to 80 kajillion people. They are then rewarded with automation discounts on their postage rates.
The USPS is not in trouble because it is worse than UPS or Fed Ex. In fact as mentioned above, in rural areas, those private companies use the USPS to deliver their packages for them. It is in trouble because it was sabotaged by congress. It is being asked to fund its pension system for the next 80 years (I may have the amount of time wrong but it is several decades) into the future. No entity does this and it is completely unreasonable.
Congress can fix this if they want to but Republicans in Congress want the USPS to die because they hate government services and want to kill yet another unionized outfit. I think as the crisis looms closer something will be done so the USPS will probably be changed and weakened but it won’t be going away.
While I like the mail and doubt that it will be dead within the year, these aren’t tasks that absolutely have to be done on pieces of paper that are shuttled from place to place.
You will be required to have direct deposit. Then some congressidiot will step in and complain about rights and assorted crap. The penis ensuing mess will create another bureauratic mess that the same congressidiot will claim in their 2014 re-election bid a waste of taxpayer’s money.
Seriously, you will be required to have direct deposit.
Thirded on the artificial crisis. It was a political decision by Bush and the Pubbies (band name!) a few years back to kill the union and privatize mail delivery profits to their cronies.
