From National Review Online – Charles Krauthammer’s take on the Postal Service:
I’m kind of old-school. I like the delivery. I like the snow and sleet and time of day and all of that.
Look, it’s very obvious that you can’t privatize this. Three studies have looked at the postal service. Because of the new technology there is no entrepreneur in his right mind who would purchase it. So it’s going to be on the government dole forever.
The question is, is it completely obsolete? Look, it has one mandate which other private services don’t have. It has to reach every tiny hamlet everywhere in the country no matter what. It’s got to be universal. So that’s a slight handicap that the private companies don’t have.
Its main handicap, of course, is the crushing labor union contracts and the new technology, especially e-mail, which makes most of what it does obsolete. So that’s why it runs a huge deficit.
But, look, anything that is in Article 1 Section 8 of our constitution, anything that Madison had waxed enthusiastic about it in Federalist 42 — the postal roads that have kept us together — as an old-school guy, I don’t want to see it die.
As a conservative who believes in the market, it ought to die, but as a conservative that believes in tradition and stuff that really holds us together, I would subsidize until it dies a natural death in the next generation. But for old guys like me, keep it going for a while. …
[As for] the hard-hearted younger generation — well, if you ever got a sweet-smelling love letter at 17, you’d feel otherwise. Of course, I never did, but somebody did.
You can’t smell your e-mail.
“Its main handicap, of course, is the crushing labor union contracts and the new technology, especially e-mail, which makes most of what it does obsolete. So that’s why it runs a huge deficit.”
I cannot remember the last time I heard the United States Postal Service was making a profit. That includes long before there was email, before the labor unions got carried away, and before 99 of new technology. New technology by the way has only made other companies like UPS and Fed-Ex thrive.
The main reason the postal service suffers is because it hires lame employees. It has been that way since about the time of JFK and only gotten worse since. A government agency can actually produce frevenue for the USA. This was proven by the U.S. Customs Service which from the begining of the republic until well after the implementation of the Income tax was, BY FAR, the major revenue producer for the US Treasury. Of course it was Reagan or Bush the first who ruined that with free trade agreements. I liked them both but loathed that decision. No the post office is not suffering because of email or technology but because arsehats run it and lames and sluggards work there.
I would like to see it carry on too but with an efficiency that it has not known in at least the last 40 to 45 years. If it cannot do that, I say – ax it. It will save us all money and get us better service from private concerns or carrier pigeons,
All the best,
Glenn B
By the way – you sure can smell carrier pigeons – lol….
I’m reminded about the staffing practices every time I have to go in person to the USPS. The surly and inefficient staff make the second “S” in USPS a joke. “Service” my a**.
Then there was the 1980’s “fad” for USPS workers going insane, thus the term “going postal.”
Pigeons? Merely rats with wings . . .
Ever since I was knee high to my dad I knew that the place to go in order to mail a letter was non other than the U.S. Post Office. My dad would drag (not really ‘drag’) me around with him whenever it came bill paying time which ususally included a stop by the post office so I learned from a very early age where to go for stamps, money orders, and of course, ye ole mail delivery. But as I somehow mad it to adulthood I find out that the post ffice now advertises for all these services that were so well ingrained in me already. I once asked a postal clerk ( as if she would know), “Why does the post office spend millions of dollars each year for something we already know?” The answer I got at that time had something to do with the so-called competition with FEDEX and UPS.
Lousy answer if you ask me.
Yes, I would like the post office to stick around for another hundred years or so but they don’t need to spend money advertising their ineptness.
It seems to me that the USPS and the DMV are competing to see who can have the most surly staff members interfacing with the public.
Speaking of the DMV…
In the old days you didn’t have to register your horse nor did you need a license to drive one.
Some years ago when Gov. Weld was the governor of Massachusetts he got a law passed that said once you get your first driver’s license that it would be good for life. Well that worked out real well until the next governor came in, and missing all that revenue, reverted back to the former ways and means of stealing the citizens money.
I renewed my license a couple of years ago. When I looked around the room at the DMV, I was shocked to see the abhorrent quality of the people with whom I would be sharing the roads – a frightening experience.