Topic: The USPS Nears Collapse

[LadyVirginia]

Bloomberg BusinessWeek has a long story outlining the desperate financial situation that the United States Postal Service is facing. The USPS is currently approximately $15 billion in debt, and with revenues continuing to drop—and, as is becoming the all-too-familiar refrain with government agencies these days, costs of health care and retirement benefits for workers are rising rapidly. As the Bloomberg story reveals, the USPS has no real plan to deal with what even its advocates are calling its imminent insolvency.

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The USPS’s business plan? They hired someone to try to convince banks and other large companies not to use rising digital technologies but to continue using paper statements that must be mailed instead. No wonder they’re in such bad shape.

Read the rest here


Must I always be right?  Even before digital technology I was arguing the postal service should be privatized.

[Glock32]

This has the makings of another Labor vs. Environmentalist matchup. I do enjoy it when the Left fights amongst itself.

[charlesoakwood]

USPS supports the clear cutting of forests.  Deforestation, a major cause of Anthropogenic Global Warming.

[John Florida]

 only the government can screw up a monopoly.

[IronDioPriest]

...Even before digital technology I was arguing the postal service should be privatized.

This is the quintessential example of how government support of an industry, niche, or market that would not survive the free market can never work.

Technology has moved beyond hand-delivered paper mail, and subsequently its market share has plummeted - to the delight and benefit of consumers. Left as a private entity to answer to the free market, the postal service would not necessarily simply go away. It would make service adjustments, downsize, restructure, innovate, and seek an equilibrium that mirrored the demand in the market for such services.

But instead, the government props up a service in an industry that people want less of, trying to maintain its bloat and create a demand for its services where less and less demand exists.

As someone else here pointed out a few weeks ago regarding government subsidizing of choo-choo trains - they might as well subsidize typewriters, in order to keep the typewriter industry afloat. That's how absurd it is to place decisions about industrial survival into the hands of government.

[LadyVirginia]

only the government can screw up a monopoly.

 

[Predator Don]

...Even before digital technology I was arguing the postal service should be privatized.

This is the quintessential example of how government support of an industry, niche, or market that would not survive the free market can never work.

Technology has moved beyond hand-delivered paper mail, and subsequently its market share has plummeted - to the delight and benefit of consumers. Left as a private entity to answer to the free market, the postal service would not necessarily simply go away. It would make service adjustments, downsize, restructure, innovate, and seek an equilibrium that mirrored the demand in the market for such services.

But instead, the government props up a service in an industry that people want less of, trying to maintain its bloat and create a demand for its services where less and less demand exists.

As someone else here pointed out a few weeks ago regarding government subsidizing of choo-choo trains - they might as well subsidize typewriters, in order to keep the typewriter industry afloat. That's how absurd it is to place decisions about industrial survival into the hands of government.

Couldn't agree more...Classic example of gov't versus private sector. The private sector adjusts, a gov't agency does not because there is no pressure to turn a profit.

It's ironic....The private sector must answer to investors and one would think gov't would answer to the ultimate investor,the people, but it isn't working that way today.

USPS = Jabba the Hut

[RickZ]

So pretty soon all email will be 'taxed' at a small amount, say $.05 an email, with the proceeds going to the USPS to propr up and pay for the bloated medical, pension, and other operating costs of that 'most important and vital' Federal agency.  (Vital to govenment employee unons, but not to many other people.)

[Sectionhand]

In spite of this , I read the other day that USPS employees retirement and benefits reserve is over funded . 

[AmericanPatriot]

I think Beck wrote about this in Arguing With Idiots.

Congress puts so many restrictions on USPS they can't function.

[John Florida]

I think Beck wrote about this in Arguing With Idiots.

Congress puts so many restrictions on USPS they can't function.

 The union has had a choke hold on them for as long as I can remember. My sisters ex worked for the post office ans is almost due to retire and the stories make you hair stand. People walking around with alcohol all day at work getting so drunk that they would put him out of sight to sleep it off and if he wasn't up by the next shift he was just kept on the clock and given over time.

 The wonder why they're down the tubes? Privatise the damned thing and watch the price of doing business drop like a rock.

[LadyVirginia]

I made the acquaintance of a woman who at 6 weeks postpartum had to go back to work.  She cried as she said she didn't want to leave her baby but they needed her income to pay the mortgage (on this huge, new construction house I might add).  I thought how much could she be bringing home--she works for the post office?  I found out recently that some employees make $41 an hour.

[Libertas]

Let it collapse and die, never to return again!  Private outfits could absorb their load easily and new concerns would pop up immediately to fill rural voids.