I think the mistake is in expecting USPS to be a fully profitable business when in reality it is a Constitutionally-mandated government service. So then the question is merely to what extent you want it to be near profitability.
You could certainly open up non-priority letters to UPS and FedEx, but then you have to expect that either (a) the cost of a first-class letter to East Bumfuck will go way up or (b) the USPS will lose more money on a per-letter basis. This still may be a preferable outcome, as in theory the cost will go down for the majority of users and we can still subsidize the rural routes through taxation.
Expecting USPS to remain profitable while competing on cost with UPS/FedEx on the urban routes and bulk mail and delivering mail to rural customers at the same price is foolish.
It is almost impossible to imagine the US without the USPS. However if they continue on the path they are on they are going to self destruct. A lot of very interesting ideas here. After reading through them if it were up to me I would do the following:
Raise the price of postage double or even triple current rates. As others have said, even double what a letter cost to mail now is an incredible deal. At double rates it is still very affordable.
If we were to keep the current route system, cut Saturday delivery. No need for it, except possibly for premium overnight service with Sat. delivery. Make them pay through the nose for that service if they want it.
A novel idea, but possibly the best was the elimination of a route system with each city having a centralized building for all citizens to pick up their mail. Perhaps some system could be put in to place to deliver to elderly and disabled persons. But I see no problem with this. One person could replace 20 under this plan.
Of course the real opposition we are going to have cutting the size of the USPS is the union. And they would be correct that losing the jobs (good paying ones at that) would be tragic, you can’t continue to pay high wages based on a losing strategy. A
The current post office branches aren’t set up for this, though. For example, the little town in which I grew up has a tiny post office with not nearly enough room for everyone to have a PO box and only about ten parking spots out front. It works well enough, but if every resident is going to be visiting multiple times a week, they’ll need more parking.
Except it seems like it’s mainly the mandate to pre-fund retirement benefits that’s created many, if not most, of the problems (see several posts in this very thread). If the USPS was allowed to be run even slightly more like a real business and not be burdened by this mandate, apparently it would have turned an overall profit over the last 5 years.
That’s the part that makes no sense to me. We (the collective American we) want the USPS to be run more like a real business (even to the extent that it’s budget is divorced from the US budget) but then hand down rules and regulations that no real business would have to follow.
That “novel” idea (see here) would make it necessary in less populated areas to replace the few carriers driving the mail route 6 days a week with scores of people driving into town to pick up their mail. How does that make any kind of sense?
What might work is to put clusters of PO boxes in various strip malls, supermarkets and stores like Walmart or Target and then to let people decide which location they want to use for their PO box. So that I might choose to have mine at Stop 'N Shop, because I go there regularly, but someone else might choose to have theirs at Starbucks.
What precisely are the problems that need fixing, anyway? It seems to me that the USPS is already doing fine. And even if they do need government subsidies (though the evidence is that they don’t), so what? They’re an agency of the government. It’d be reasonable for them to be 100% subsidized, like almost all other agencies of the government. The fact that they’re able to self-fund to such a large degree is very tasty icing on the cake.
Good observations. No major arguments on my part but just to further the debate:
And anyone that can see 10 feet in front of them knows where that will go. They will do a good job in the profitable areas and the less profitable areas will get ignored. Good luck having a private business deliver [what’s now know as] a 1st class letter in less than a month unless the cost is $5. The existence of the USPS, as a government service, makes it better for all of us.
A lot of good points. Can’t say that all of them are bulls-eyes but they merit serious consideration.
There is still a huge need for the Post Office as it exists today. The problem is now and it is urgent. They are operating at a huge loss. In short order the USPS is going to need a cash infusion and a restructuring plan. The problem is now, not what it might be like in the future.
Analogy: When automobiles started to take over the road. The big cities couldn’t say, “automobiles are the thing of the future so we are going to quit cleaning up horse manure.”
I know what you are saying. However, the buildings that many Post Offices are in are leased and not owned. Maybe it’s time to move a lot of those facilities to accommodate the new reality.
Something I touched on in the OP. Cluster the mailboxes. I have no idea of how many mailboxes a rural delivery person services in one day. But it has to be more efficient to service 3 clusters of 35 boxes than to service 110 individual stops.
The USPS isn’t doing fine. The current Congress doesn’t want to subsidize them. A lot of their subsidy got cut off long ago when the future of the USPS looked rosy. It is a legislative issue. Under their current restrictions they can’t function at break even. Write your congressman if you want to continue the USPS the way you are used to. I’m not making a judgement, just an observation.
The Journal of Economic Perspectives had an article on the US Post Office in the Summer of 2005. Excerpts: First-class is the Postal Service’s bread and butter, accounting for about 55 percent of its revenue from mail in 2004. This core business is declining. From 1994 to 2001, the annual number of first-class mail pieces rose about 8.7 percent. But from 2001 to 2004, it fell by about 5.5 percent, the largest drop since 1933. I guess billpay is cutting into the USPS’s business.
Could they just charge more for junk mail? Actually, that would be hard: Standard mail is defined as “Bulk advertising mail formerly known as third-class mail.” …However, standard mail accounts for only about 26 percent of the Postal Service’s revenue from mail. …
Overall, the demand for standard mail is more elastic than for first-class, so the shift toward a higher proportion of standard mail suggests that volumes will be more sensitive to future rate increases. This pattern makes intuitive sense because advertisers have a variety of ways to reach their customers. Standard mail volumes are also more sensitive to the business cycle, increasing the volatility of postal revenues. That said, it may be possible to milk the junk mailers more than now – or not. The article’s broader point was that there are limits to such a strategy. I couldn’t find anything good or bad about whether the USPS’s relative junk mail pricing was appropriate or not.
I still suspect that email 2.0 could be a money spinner and a good thing, though it would require private creativity, public law enforcement and NGO oversight.
I don’t think you understand how email works. Trust me, if you set up any kinds of “micropayment email” an immediate free network (or a few dozen such) of SMTP servers will spring up to kill this idea. And if the government tries to shut them down in the US, they will just move abroad.
Thanks for the feedback. FTR, I indeed do not understand how email works. (Nor do I understand your argument. :o) In my feverish imagination though, I was imagining a parallel system, whereby Umail (or whatever it would be called) could only be sent between two Umail account holders. Or rather, you could send out into email-land, but you could only receive a emails from within the Umail system. (The former could be spoofed though: this concept would have to be heavily vetted and may indeed make little sense.) Of course nothing would stop you from having a piece of software that handled both email and Umail.
I see the USPS as being in about the same position , as buggy mfgs., 100 years ago.
They can either:
-adapt to a future that involves less 1st class mail (by offering augmented services)
or
-die a slow death (well, not so slow)
Either way, nobody has ever (successfully) fought progress.
Face it, USPS employees had it VERY good, for a long time.
But their time is up.
Of course, Congress runs on patronage, so they will try to keep this relic of the 19th century alive…but the losses are now unsustainable.
Well, considering a postal service is mandated in the Constitution, I’m not sure what choice they actually have about keeping it alive in some form.
And it seems Congress itself was largely responsible for it. The retirement pre-funding obligation, divorcing the USPS budget from the federal budget, and a de facto limit to pricing increases are all things that would hamstring an actual business. The retirement pre-funding alone turned a profitable company into an unprofitable one.
The USPS HAS been trying to change with the times. But it’s stuck in the position of not entirely being a private company and not entirely being a government agency. Either Congress needs to let it actually run itself or incorporate it back into the federal budget again. It’s the either-or crap that’s really killing it.
