That’s it, my thoughts exactly. The USPS doesn’t need fixing. Times have changed, but if you want to mail a letter from Hawaii to Maine and have it cost less than a dollar and arrive quickly, you use the USPS. There will always be a need for a service like that. The government should just keep funding it because it provides a valuable service at a cost no private company’s going to touch, but its still valuable. Fund it at a loss
If I want a quick delivery of a letter from Hawaii to Maine, why shouldn’t I pay the cost? Why should the taxpayers subsidize it for me?
Especially since I could send an email or an electronic funds transfer instead of a letter or paper check obviating the need for most of these deliveries. Magazines and newspapers are online as well. The only possible thing I can see the need to use the mail for is delivery of merchandise or other packages. The market seems to be doing great with that re UPS and Fed Ex.
If Grandpa doesn’t want to learn how to send e-mail, then he can pay what the market will bear for delivery of his hand written letter. Don’t make me subsidize it.
I don’t see where it is mandatory. I see a power to create a post office, but Congress isn’t required to have a post office anymore than it is required to issue letters of marque or reprisal.
Its the difference between a luxury and a necessity.
Grandpa doesn’t need to buy a computer to live. As long as he pays his taxes and other bills, he can continue to exist unfettered by governmental G-men knocking on his door. But tell him he has to change, forced to, because the services he’s used for 80 years is gone* and won’t be available unless he spends money he doesn’t have, or goes to a library a town away, is wrong, moreso than having a fraction of one percent of your overall taxes spent on the Post Office
*Thing is, government doesn’t exist to be the most efficient. They could if they spend on it, but there is no need for it. The reason why you should be forced to subsidize it is because there are people who don’t have the access you so cavalierly toss around as ubiquitous. That if there is one person somewhere in the middle of Montana, surrounded by buffaloes without a human miles around, the government, as part of its social contract with the people it governs, is still mandated, forced even, to provide basic necessities to that future Unabomber. So long as that person is an upstanding American citizen, there are certain things the government HAS to do for him, among them access to vote, and provide for his wellbeing so far as his taxes cover it. And in this country, having the ability to mail things cheaply isn’t a luxury, its a necessity. Making it more expensive, like how conservatives like to create poll taxes, is disenfranchising. Even the homeless deserve basic governmental help because they are American citizens
The USPS is currently the best way to make certain services available to certain people. It is in no way right to tell people they cannot pay bills, receive voting information, or have jury duty notices unless they change their lifestyle. It is up to the government to provide that, and we should continue to do so by funding the USPS, at a loss if we have to
If I recall correctly, the Constitution allows, but does not require, the government to operate a postal service.
Mine has a lot more than that, but it is still pretty crowded and would be more so. And what about when that critical letter you weren’t expecting comes, and you don’t get around to picking it up for two weeks?
I delivered mail one summer when I was in college, and I think you could cut back to 5 days (and I agree with John’s carrier that Tuesday would be better than Saturday) with the proviso that the mail still get sorted, so anyone really wanting it can come to the post office, show it, and get it. You could also stagger route delivery so that each route only gets covered for five days, but the off day is different. That would cut down congestion.
Times change and people have to change with them. When the automobile became common many small town grocers and merchants went out of business because people could drive to the “big” store in the town further away. History is filled with similar examples.
For the government to subsidize a dying way of life stifles progress. I’m not entirely unsympathetic. There’s a place I spend a lot of time in the summer with no cell phone service or high speed internet. The nearest grocery store is a half an hour away. Where is my subsidy for these things? After all, some people live in that area full time.
Living in the sticks has its upsides and downsides. Why should urban dwellers pay for my creature comforts when I choose to live in the sticks?
We are not there yet. You use the automobile analogy but seem to have missed my analogy upthread. Just because the automobile became the “thing of the future” in the early 1900’s doesn’t mean that urban areas had to neglect the clean-up of horse manure.
The OP was intended to seek ideas and recommendations as to how we deal with the current crisis. It’s not about how the system will be in 20, 30 or 50 years. Tell gramps that he is in contempt of court because he didn’t go online with a computer he does not have to find out that he’s been summoned for jury duty.
A significant percentage of the country is still without high speed internet. Even so, not everybody has a computer, has access to one or even knows how to use one. That may change but we are far from it. A fair number of people don’t have a television by their own decision. What would the outcry be if the government said that everyone had to have a television as that was going to be their only source of communication?
The Post Office is still relevant. How do we fix it?
Current email has all the security of a postcard. I’d like something closer to sealed letter, maybe even better in some ways.
- If it cost ten cents+ to send me an email, that would filter out a lot of spam.
- I would like to have email whose content falls under the purview of mail fraud law. That would also filter out a lot of nonsense.
- Businesses might like #2. Particularly for B2B communications.
4a. I’d like widespread and automatically encrypted email. That way I could be sent a document from a bank or broker without having to shuffle over to their website to download it. Instead it would go directly into a specific directory on my computer. Mail fraud law would complement such a service.
4b. I imagine a partnership with mozilla, so secure and encrypted backup could be automated as well, onsite and even offsite via google.
4c. Banks want you to switch to paperless to save them money. This sort of scheme could make edocuments actually work. - No, there are no panaceas: eg hacking will remain a problem. As will mail fraud for that matter.
- I would hope that the system would not even allow executable files to be attached.
There’s an advantage to business and individual to being able to communicate with someone or anyone without too much hassle. And the mail system is a slow but strong network, at least for documents and packages. The technical term is network externality I believe.
It boils down to cost. There are externalities to having high speed train access between Podunk and Bumbleland as well… but they are small. For myself, first class mail at 60 cents seems like a pretty good value, for existing service, even though this urban resident is subsidizing Iowa and Alabama. Still there’s nothing like practical observation and experience: I extend a nod at Voyager’s and John Mace’s remarks.
Um, two of those four cosponsors were Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Danny Davis (D-IL) so I think it’s fair to say it was a bipartisan consensus bill rather than something secreted in the dead of night by evil Republicans. Things don’t get unanimous consent in the Senate (which only requires one Senator to object) or pass the House by voice vote (which only requires five out of 435 members to request a roll call) unless there’s pretty broad consensus.
It may happen that in some State legislatures or municipal councils things get “snuck in” by the majority at the last minute, and even at the federal level there may be a provision in a massive bill that gets missed, but there is absolutely no way the minority (either party) in the US Congress is ever so asleep at the switch that an entire bill passes without their knowledge these days.
Like RP said, we are not at the point where a not insignificant amount of people can have access to a USPS alternative without hardship.
For your examples, the ability to open up your own grocery store isn’t a right guaranteed by the government, and not owning one doesn’t infringe up your right to anything and it certainly doesn’t cause hardship by the mere fact of its non-existence. Being unable to get letters or mail, however, is a hardship, and unless you live in the forest in a tree purposefully to avoid contact, there is an expectation that even rural residents take for granted that they can indeed get mail.
Your last sentence says it all: you assume having mail is a comfort instead of a necessity. It is not what you think it is
This. Make post offices min-data centers and wi-fi hubs at cost. Watch the prices of commercial carriers come way down to price match.
As a Letter Carrier I can honestly state that many post receiving businesses, which for the most part operate Monday thru Friday, would rather have no delivery on Saturday than Tuesday.
Also, we currently have 5 days on, one day off, with a staggered offday separated by 8 days. That Off day is handled by a special carrier, Called a T-6, that handles 5 routes in sequence, and is paid more to boot. If the USPS were to go to 5 day delivery, it will most likely be Monday thru Friday, eliminating the T-6 position.
I can see both reducing the number of days the mail is delivered and also raising the cost of postage. It’s really, really cheap right now… far below what would reasonably be expected. That said, I think bills that expect to be paid by return check in the mail should provide postage paid return envelopes.
Maybe I’m just a young whippersnapper but I honestly would prefer to actively kill the post office rather than ‘fix’ it somehow. Well over 90% of the mail I receive is nothing more than pure junk- I rarely even open half before pitching it directly into the recycling bin. Why on earth do we subsidize the daily delivery of trash to our doorsteps? Just because Grandma can’t get with the times and type out an email instead of a Christmas card? To have home delivered meds? Certainly every one of the people here advocating the need to subsidize delivery of medications also supports the need to subsidize healthcare for all these people as well (congressional republicans sure don’t, although they for some reason support USPS)?
If you want to totally retool the USPS to be a nationwide high-speed fiber optic carrier that’s all fine, but to improve the act of sending one scrap of paper from A to B when we have cheaper, easier, faster and more environmentally friendly methods already in use, I say- why bother? Or at the very least, make those who want the service pay for what they use.
No, we don’t have cheaper. That’s the point. The USPS is losing money. If they charged $5 per letter this wouldn’t be happening but stamps cost 44 cents
Like I mentioned before, there’s a difference between a necessity and a luxury. A not insignificant number of people still depend on the post office. It is not a luxury for them, they need it. That’s why we should continue funding the USPS
Who’s to say the USPS can be fixed? Why should anybody think that Congress won’t just take more money away arbitrarily if it lifts itself back up into the black?
They need people with a functional brain to run it.
I’d pay much more than $0.44 to deliver a regular envelope to a specific person anywhere in the US.
Now that the internet is upon us, they still refuse to adapt and offer simple services like: accepting a customer message, printing it in a hand-written looking font, and mailing it out to a specific address for a reasonable fee.
They should have been the No 1 choice for online greeting cards too, but they’re about 10 years behind in terms of adapting to existing technologies.
I’m still not seeing the necessity of it. All people have said is that going without mail would be such a hardship for a so many people. Why, exactly?
If it’s simple person to person communication, we have email that covers that nicely, for free (this is where cheaper comes from), and with less environmental impact.
If it’s to get medications, surely some system can be worked out to give discounts for people who truly can’t bear the cost of UPS.
If it’s simply necessary for people out in the boondocks to have the same convenient daily door delivery of trash that I so despise, let them pay for it at a sustaining price.
I even live in vote by mail state (which I like for the convenience), but I would happily go in to the courthouse to do my civic duty if it meant I didn’t have to sort a giant handful of trash daily, and I’m sure I would save time over the whole year.
We don’t. Junk mail isn’t paid for by other mail, or by taxpayers.
Email isn’t free.