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| Photo: Ileana Johnson 8/29/20 Photo taken in the Ripley's Believe or Not Museum in Williamsburg, Virginia |
Let's look at it logically:
1. When was the last time you actually wrote a letter to any of your relatives and they answered back? That is a lot of postage and mail that the post office no longer delivers because we communicate via text, email, and facetime.
2. Are there many people left who still write a check to pay bills that requires sending by mail and purchasing a stamp?
3. How many people choose to have packages sent by USPS when FedEx and UPS are so much faster?
4. Why pay the post office when you can have the packages delivered and returned to Amazon or other retailer for free?
5. Are Democrats that dense and cannot see that the postal service has to reduce drop off boxes and remove them from places where nobody places letters inside anymore and the boxes are always empty? Don't they realize that those USPS truck use up a lot of gasoline and spew a lot of pollution into the air? Why not remove 15,000 unused mail boxes?
6. The post office always allocates its yearly funding first to the pension fund, years in advance.
7. I guess, it is more politically convenient and expedient to blame President Trump for the changing times and the changing financial fortunes of the post office.
8. No, Nancy Pelosi, we do not need your Democrats cheating through mail in voting. You can put your masks on and go vote in person. You don't seem too worried about thousands of your protesting black shirts who may or may not wear masks but they sure are well armed.
9. Due to the Democrat lockdown that has destroyed so many mom and pop and other mid-sized businesses, we no longer receive any volume of advertising, coupons, or catalogs through the mail. J.C. Penney and Sears are gone and so are their voluminous catalogs. We grew up with those and we used them to order everything from rakes to Christmas ornaments and they all arrived with the post office truck. Very few catalogs arrive through the mail anymore. People order online. Businesses adapted and streamlined. Some no longer have catalogs at all.
From what I understand, the postal service has enough money o operate, but what they Don't have is enough money coming from reduced revenue to pay the pensions of retired union employees. They got way or over their skis in obligations they now simply cannot pay for.
ReplyDeleteThis is why Pelosi wants all this money for USPS. Has nothing to do with function and everything to do with an antiquated method of delivering information that could be as obsolete as horse drawn carriages.
Same is true of retirees in Dem. run cities that have long since been in decline that hav grossly underfunded pension plans. Pelosi wants them propped up too.
Can't let this crisis go to waste. Get while the getting is good.
Excellent points, Chriss.
DeleteActually I've found many stores use Priority Mail for packages which arrive in two days. The only place I receive two-day delivery with UPS (that I don't have to pay extra for) is from NYC. If you're mailing a package within 1500 miles, it's also cheaper with the Post Office. Many stores also use USPS return labels so I don't have to pay to return things.
ReplyDeleteI've found the post office to be competitive in many markets but like the previous commentor points out, it's the pension obligations that's doing them in. These under-financed pension funds are the next big bomb, public, private, the works.
To be up front, my mother worked at the USPS in St. Louis for 20 years. It was very, very hard work sorting mail at the main P.O. and the Christmas rush was a nightmare. But it offered a great job opportunity to a single mother of four children that paid far better than any other job without a college degree. The P.O., like the U.S. Military, was early on an equal employment employer.
Dear Ileana,
ReplyDeleteAbout balancing the USPS budget...
I've felt for decades that the postage for non-profits should be greatly increased. I've attached a pic of 'junk mail' that I received yesterday, that was mailed for just 5 cents. Weighing 1.2 ounces, it would have cost 70 cents to mail it First Class. So I would have to pay 14 times as much as the non-profit group. That's a crazy difference. Often I receive large bulky non-profit solicitations designed to help get my attention, mailed for a dime or less that would cost $2.00 or more by First Class!
The ridiculously low rates happen because of intense lobbying by the interest groups. The USPS could probably double or triple the rates without reducing the volume of NP mail very much. This would greatly increase USPS income and slash their deficit.
I don't object to having lower rates for non-profit groups because many/most of them, especially religious groups, and Right to Life, represent worthy causes. Because the absurdly low rates encourage their fundraisers to mail 10 or 20 solicitations per year to each donor, however, they are spending huge sums on writing their 'pitch' and on printing, stuffing envelopes, addressing, etc. These costs probably consume most or all of my annual 25/35/50 dollar donation that I make in December, making the low rates counterproductive. If they had to pay higher postage rates they wouldn't bury me with junk mail that I never open. Then when I received one or two solicitations per year I'd be more likely to read their 'story' and respond, and they'd actually come out ahead!
I love the work by Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch. He's done so much to expose corruption in Washington! But I've been buried in his solicitations.....often large, heavy envelopes.....and up to three items per day, between my home and business. They simply go straight into the 'circular file'. It really pains me to see them waste so much money on all the mailings sent to me. This wouldn't happen with higher rates.
Eighty to ninety percent of my mail is junk mail. It's the biggest item in my weekly trash (overloading the landfill). Besides non-profit mail, there are all the catalogs that we never asked for and that are mailed out far too many times per year. Though their postage is a little higher than for non-profits, these low rates encourage 'catalog overload' in our home.
Until recent decades mailmen didn't need their own trucks to handle the huge volume and weight of mail. This change happened because of the very, very low rates for non-profit mail, catalogs, etc. Raising those rates would probably make the Post Office solvent!
Best regards,
Dave