America’s Largest Retailer
Ezra Klein notes that in terms of number of outlets it’s the United States Postal Service:
Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.), chairman of the subcommittee on the federal workforce, Postal Service and the District of Columbia, noted that Postmaster General Jack Potter, who wasn’t at the hearing, likes to point out that the agency has more retail outlets than McDonald’s, Starbucks and Wal-Mart combined.
One approach you could take to the Postal Service’s problems, of course, would be to privatize it. Repeal their legislative monopoly on delivery of “ordinary” mail, repeal their legislative universal service obligation, and sell the thing to private investors. As run by the government, the USPS loses money, but I bet it would have significant value on the market. And the USPS’ massive real estate portfolio would be one of the key reasons. The politics of the situation make it basically impossible to manage these holdings in an economically rational way—nobody wants to see their local post office closed or relocated to someplace less convenient even if that’s what makes the most sense to do. And you see something similar with the controversy over halting Saturday delivery. Right now congress wants to make the USPS financially self-supporting, but doesn’t want to let USPS be managed the way an entity that’s actually financially self-supporting would be managed. Which is fine if you think that daily delivery of paper mail is a critical public service—critical public services shouldn’t be managed as profit-maximizing entities—but in 2009 does the delivery of paper mail really count as a critical public service?
93 Responses to “America’s Largest Retailer”
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November 6th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Yes. Yes it does.
November 6th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Yes, Matt it does, and you are letting your upper class upbringing and lifestyle color your views. Many elderly people still do not know how to use computers. Many poor people do not own computers or have ready access to them. Other individuals still do not pay their bills online because they lack back accounts.
November 6th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
No. No it doesn’t.
While you’re at it, get rid of all those random street corner mailboxes. Want to mail something? Put it in your mailbox for your postal carrier or go to a post office. Want to create a ton of unnecessary work and clutter? Put big steel boxes on every other corner across the country and send people out to empty them twice a day.
November 6th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
I don’t think Saturday mail delivery is that important, and it should be on the cutting block.
November 6th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
If we’re going to have 2 days a week without mail, why make them consecutive? I’m sure that millions of other Netflix subscribers share my concern.
November 6th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
The post office is inefficient because it predominately hires African-Americans. African-American IQ levels are easily a full standard deviation below the mean. The difference in profitability between the USPS and its private sector rivals is explainable solely in terms of the demographics of their respective work forces.
November 6th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
but in 2009 does the delivery of paper mail really count as a critical public service?
Yes.
max
['I know the usual suspects salivating over prospect of looting the real estate portfolio there, and I don't care.']
November 6th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
MattY is now clearly owned by the neoliberals.
Only a neoliberal would make the a priori assumption that private management is better than public.
November 6th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Until all governmental entities agree to trust the private timestamp for government document deadlines, yes. Outside of that, no.
November 6th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Heh. “I don’t like your opinion so it’s obviously a result of you having money!”
Stay classy, sp6r=underrated!
November 6th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Interesting David Byrne rumination on just this topic (and many others). Eventually, the answer will be inevitably no, no, it doesn’t. But we’re not quite there yet. I for one would love to see a whole lot less subsidizing of bulk crap mail.
November 6th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Yes, it does Matt, and I’m frankly really surprised that you don’t see that.
i agree with the above commentor that you are letting your own economicially advantaged life experiences cloud your thinking on this. Especially in times of economic uncertainty, paying for a good computer and internet service can be a luxury for many people. Even in good times, spending that kind of money by the poor and working poor can be tough. Sure, there is the public library, but relying on those computers for all your correspondence needs is problematic.
you could make the case for reducing post offices, because it is true that paper mail has reduced quite a bit over the yeras. But the digital divide still exists, and paper mail is still a critical public service for people who simply cannot afford computers and internet service, or who cannot use those things, for whatever reason.
November 6th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
I can never tell if this is the real Steve or just a parody.
November 6th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
The post office is inefficient because it predominately hires African-Americans. African-American IQ levels are easily a full standard deviation below the mean. The difference in profitability between the USPS and its private sector rivals is explainable solely in terms of the demographics of their respective work forces.
Exactly.
November 6th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
It’s only critical for those who don’t own computers, or don’t understand how to use computers, or have to turn pay-day loans into money orders to keep the lights turned on, or want to mail something like a book or a CD but live too far removed from a UPS or FedEx for that to be efficient, etc. down the line.
But since they’re the types that pay less in taxes their general welfare is less important and can be ignored so some company or another can turn a profit.
November 6th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Nigger.
November 6th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Until all governmental entities agree to trust the private timestamp for government document deadlines, yes. Outside of that, no.
Can you explain more of that. I’ve heard the same thing – the courts don’t recognize FedEx or UPS delivery confirmations. Only certified mail meets the burden of proof – or something like that…
November 6th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
On balance, this reminds me of George H.W. Bush marveling at the technological wonder that was a barcode scanner…
November 6th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Heh. “I don’t like your opinion so it’s obviously a result of you having money!”
Stay classy, sp6r=underrated!
Mike
Pointing out that one’s economic class effects their political views is quite common in liberal circles. Furthermore, I was quite respectful in making the comment about Matt’s economic background and avoided the insults that many posters (think Petey use). So, I don’t understand the stay classy statement.
Matt himself, correctly I’ll add, points it out when it comes to mass transit in cities. Read his recent post that was about the myth of everyone in LA using cars.
November 6th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
I’m not sure quite what kind of a dipsh*t equates the quality of the postal service to the race of the staff, but I am sure that that type of dipsh*t doesn’t belong in this country.
It needs to be said that the Post Office is one of the few actual close contact points between the citizen and the government, and that ought to matter beyond a concept of profitability.
It is also important to mention that in many parts of the country…here in Maine, for instance…having a mailbox on every corner may still mean miles between mailboxes, and there have been recent instance here when the Post Office sought to remove the only mailbox in a small town, depriving that community of a common meeting place…protests have resulted.
November 6th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
I came in to note that since the USPS is an enumerated power of Congress in Article I, Section 8, it arguably can’t be spun off privately absent a Constitutional Amendment due to the nondelegation doctrine. But then I was gobsmacked by Sailer’s appalling and unvarnished racism, and kind of froze up for a bit.
November 6th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Yes. Think of it as a social safety net like unemployment benefits or Social Security, except that it’s for communication and community instead of financial well being.
November 6th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
We already have a government program to provide free cell phones and service to the elderly, disabled and poor. Why not a similar system to provide computers and internet service and stop wasting money moving all this paper around?
November 6th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
I’m not sure quite what kind of a dipsh*t equates the quality of the postal service to the race of the staff, but I am sure that that type of dipsh*t doesn’t belong in this country.
The correlation is supported by multiple regression analysis. As we still have the first amendment in this country people will not be forcibly deported merely for voicing politically incorrect truths.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
While you’re at it, get rid of all those random street corner mailboxes.
mike, you may not have noticed, but most curbside mailboxes have been removed by the USPS in the last 10 years or so.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Maybe OT, but I’m 95% sure that #5 is not the real Steve Sailer–the comment’s just too blatantly racist. The real S.S. always couches his racism in some kind of pseudo-Socratic rhetorical figure.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
I guess it really was Steve
November 6th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Steve Sailer and Christian Weston chandler are my kind of guys.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
I came in to note that since the USPS is an enumerated power of Congress in Article I, Section 8, it arguably can’t be spun off privately absent a Constitutional Amendment due to the nondelegation doctrine. But then I was gobsmacked by Sailer’s appalling and unvarnished racism, and kind of froze up for a bit.
I’m simply presenting accurate statistical information. It’s not my fault if the facts don’t conform to your preexisting notions of political correctness. You also seem not to understand the nondelegation doctrine.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Providing a very low-cost and reliable means of communicating for legal and other essential purposes is indeed a critical public service. If you want to provide that public service in another way, great–but do that first before dismantling the postal service.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Remember when we had Matt’s comments posted in yellow background so we knew it was really him. Thinkprogress should give Steve Sailer something like that, maybe a stars and bars backdrop so we can identify the real Steve and fake Steve
November 6th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
wow, I agree with Matt on two posts in a row. This is a first.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Let me guess, you do all your bills online, you don’t read any paper magazines, you don’t care if your local grocery store is running a special on potatoes. That’s fine, but tens of millions of your fellow Americans write paper bills and read magazines and need to know which local store has the cheapest necessities. Some day all those people will be dead and then you can have your little utopia where absolutely everything is done in a state of complete motionlessness in front of a computer, but until then quite a few of your fellow citizens are relying on this public service.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
God damn it Matt, yes.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Thinkprogress should give Steve Sailer something like that, maybe a stars and bars backdrop so we can identify the real Steve and fake Steve
This is really me. Regulars readers, however, are well aware that I do not support the Confederacy.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
YES IT DOES protect “are” postoffices! Postal service should be 6 days a week regardless of weather or apocalypse. Don’t hamper our mail. Non profit mail is the only way to provide adequate service, anywhere in the world, any time, for only the cost of a few stamps. Plus, those stamps are gorgeous.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
There are at least four Senators that will always fight privatizing the USPS, because the alternative is that AK and HI get royally screwed.
Next in the filibuster lineup would be the farm and mountain states Senators. Ergo, until bills, checks, tax forms, and other time sensitive communications are overwhelmingly digital in those states, even in rural areas, this concept is a non-starter.
Even excluding the cost of an internet connection, it still costs more to pay bills electronically than via paper check. Exposing more retail bank accounts to automatic fund transfers or web-based transfer authorization is a cyber-criminal’s wet dream. On-line banking and shopping security is still on a downward trend.
My wife having had experience with the mail system while running a direct mail shop, I’m led to understand that the mail system is already efficiently run, given its current service mandate. Postmasters are given considerable incentive to run their shops as ruthlessly as any Walmart manager.
So, there only way for private post to fund a profit margin is via massive service reductions… to add less value.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Well yes, the postal service does lose money. And if you privatized it I’m sure FedEx could make a profit. They would of course do this at a tremendous cost to millions of people who still rely on the postal service. Mostly poor and rural Americans.
You’re not dumb, apparently though you just don’t care about real life for anyone who isn’t at least solidly middle-class and/or from a major urban area. Oh sure, you “care” in some abstract sense but when it gets down to specifics you are first in line to completely disregard the needs of poor and rural Americans.
Get your head out of your ass, or at least out of DC for awhile.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Matt won’t rest until it costs everybody $7 to mail a letter.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Correct me on this, but I believe the USPS leases virtually all of their retail locations. I know of a few cities that owned the post office building, leased to the USPS, who had to keep the structure in good working order, ADA compliant, etc.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Matt is being mean-spirited today. He really wants to screw the rednecks.
One of the reasons that the USPS is so inefficient is that covers ALL the country, say Kenedy County TX, all 400 residents are regularly covered with the same 41 cents post stamps as LA County’s 10 million. Any private company will start charging them something that reflects the real costs of delivery.
So people in rural areas which tend to be poorer, will get to pay way more than city residents.
That’s a great way of letting those rural welfare queens know what getting the “guvment” off their backs feels like.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
I don’t think pointing out Matt’s class/life experience is out of bounds or incorrect. If you’d asked me two years ago whether daily delivery of paper mail was a crucial service, I would’ve said “No,” without thinking about it, because it wasn’t an issue in my life, outside of Netflix.
Now I work for a local government agency that deals extensively with a population that often doesn’t have a reliable phone line, let alone email. Much of our correspondence involves restricted timelines for response that are mandated by the federal regulations under which we operate. (As in, “you have X calendar days to appeal our decision to terminate your assistance.”) So, for people in this situation (which includes many more people than the ones we actually interact with), I’d say that dependable daily delivery is pretty important, yeah.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Tangentially, this reminds me of all the shittily written software I have that craps out if not continuously connected to the internet, because people in Mountainview or Cambridge or Vancouver don’t even conceive of not having a 24/7 T3.
You could conceivable close or reduce many of the retail branches and have the letter carriers themselves do most of the cash transactions. How much this would save, I don’t know. They’ve already moved out of most of the fantastic columned buildings and into dumpy strip mall fronts anyway.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Just fund the damn Post Office for crying out loud. I’m sick and tired of the mantra that we need to downsize everything. How come Canada and Australia and every other country just has functioning govt services and everybody isn’t clammoring to kill them off all the time?
How many businesses rely upon the PO to comminucate and deliver goods to customers — and what is the aggregate effect on the economy of that? Amazon.com, and Netflix come to mind.
How many jobs does this create to have a large PO work force?
IS it reallt wise to *cut back* and lay people off or reduce there hours right now??
Americans take for granted that a letter is delivered anywhere for 40 cents non-discriminately. I think we are losing sight of the VALUE of the post office, and the *measley sum* we might have to pay to keep it running well.
Americans love to gripe but don’t want to just fund basic services.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Matt hates people that don’t live in big cities. I believe he’s made that clear time and time again.
At the very least, he’s given absolutely no thought to how this would impact people that aren’t Matt Yglesias.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Matt, read your own quote from Krugman today!!
Sounds a lot like the Post Office you want to downsize!! Maybe the otehr Matt can talk to the downsizing Matt and talk some sense into him.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Regarding Mr. Sailer’s comments:
- I’m not sure how selling off the function of the USPS to one or more truly private entities would pass the “intelligible principle” test, but I’m open to suggestion.
- Comparing the demographics of the USPS with the US as a whole, we can see that Mr. Sailer is playing fast and loose with the facts.
AA’s are moderately over-represented, rather than “predominate hires”. Asians are over-represented, and Hispanics under-, which based on Sailer’s favored IQ stats, might suggest that as a whole the USPS workforce is just as smart or stupid as the general.
Assuming that Steve in fact believes the IQ stats he references to be true, I haven’t read enough of his writing to know if he feels the results are based more on biology or culture. Knowing my own bias, this would determine I thought Steve was completely fruit loops, or just a troll.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
A couple of points–just visit some country, like Colombia, where there is no functioning mail service to see what it is like. Try to pay a bill for something that doesn’t have online bill paying for example. In this country how do you send your care package to the troops in Iraq or Afghanistan without a postal service? And don’t forget, huge swaths of our large country have no or very limited Internet service, including many areas surprisingly close to major cities. Large areas of upstate New York, Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire have limited service. Also, millions of poor people have no bank accounts–the postal money order is a way of life.
November 6th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Well, I can see getting mostly out of the retail portion.
Let’s go back to the old days where there were a few big Post Offices, but places like general stores also had post offices inside of them.
I’m sure we could close down most of the small post offices and have retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, 7-Eleven, Office Depot, Post Boxes etc…. pay for the privilege of running a small postal location at their site. It would generate foot traffic to their locations.
November 6th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Cmholm,
I don’t want to go anywhere near the racial angle because I think it’s just stupid. But you really do seem not to understand the non-delegation doctrine. The point of the doctrine is that Congress cannot delegate it’s legislative power, i.e. the ability to make laws. That’s why it has to give the agency an intelligible principle, because otherwise the agency would be making law rather than implementing it, i.e. it would exercising a legislative rather than executive power.
It has nothing to do with what you’re claiming here. Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 simply gives Congress the power “To establish Post Offices and post Roads”. It doesn’t create any obligation for Congress to do so. Congress could simply decline to exercise this power altogether. By allowing private companies to deliver letters, Congress would not be “delegating” any legislative powers to UPS.
November 6th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Put the philosophical issues aside for a moment, the pure political dynamics of Matt’s proposal are really interesting.
The USPS, as structured, involves a massive wealth transfer to two groups–rural America, and direct-mail marketers. A privatized postal service, even if obligated to deliver mail to everyone, would establish systems that served the big majority of people that live in sizeable metros with better service at lower costs. If you want to count USPS employees as a beneficiary, geography suggests they are also heavily skewed towards small towns.
If “progressives” push USPS privatization (even with reasonable AK/HI subsidies and such) it forces Red State America and rise up and demand the protection of a classic big-government program because the private sector can’t be trusted to deliver reliable services, and it is critical that taxpayers subsidize all that junk mail and all those rural low-productivity jobs in order to protect social solidarity.
I can’t wait to see the Palins and Limbaughs explain why universal heath care is socialism, but universal delivery of paper mail on Saturdays and subsidized junk mail is critical to the survival of capitalism and freedom.
Of course, this will never happen, because (as many of these comments demonstrate) so much of the Democratic party is so wedded to ancient loyalties, that they’d never even recognize the huge political opportunity privatisation offers
November 6th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
“Just fund the damn Post Office for crying out loud. I’m sick and tired of the mantra that we need to downsize everything. How come Canada and Australia and every other country just has functioning govt services and everybody isn’t clammoring to kill them off all the time?”
I wonder if the post office’s very efficieny makes it vulnerabee to these kinds of “why don’t we get red of it” arguments here in the states. I think that when a government service is run pretty damn well, like the post office, it becomes really invisible to many people (come on 41 cents to mail anywhere in the country? and incredibly reliable, most of the time, to boot? that’s efficiency). You don’t even notice it, because it is run so smoothly and interwoven throughout so many transacations for the private sector (i.e. netflix, having the choice to mail out your ebay stuff thru PO or FedEx) and public sector (someone upthread mentioned the reliance on a well-run post office for low income government agency clients).
Much needed service is provided by the government and strewn throughout so much of our lives, such as road care, the testing of our water and food supply, reliable public schools, public libraries and yes, the post office. In light of the current healthcare debates, I just laughed when I heard this argument: “do we really want our healthcare run by the government? they run the post office! horrors!” And of course I thought “if only it ran like the post office! that thing is amazing!”
I like the choice to choose between the private and public secotr for my services, and frankly, just because something is private doesn’t always make it better. The reliablity and low-cost of the PO cannot be beat, for many people, especially in rural and low-population areas.
Matthew, I’m embarressed that people have to tell you about the value of a public service such as the post office. Aren’t your a progressive liberal? Jeez…have you been abducted? Who are you? Wha…?
November 6th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
1) Matt’s absurd neoliberalism is inadequate as others have posted. Sorry, but the 20 something tech revolution blogosphere world is not applicable across all cohorts or regions.
2)Steve Sailer, ladies and gentleman. Wow, talk about ideology. Rather than look at any other metric of inefficiency, he reproduces his “racial science” manifesto. One size fits all racism. Talk about change I can believe in! This
November 6th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
I haven’t read enough of his writing to know if he feels the results are based more on biology or culture.
Those are not mutually exclusive propositions. Certainly the pathological African-American “hip hop” culture has negative influences on black job performances, as anyone who has worked alongside African-Americans well knows. But the science strongly suggests that genetics plays a significant role. For example, owing to the admixture of white european DNA, African-Americans are considerably more intelligent than Africans, though they still badly trail Asians and Whites.
November 6th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
I take this as evidence that Matt is stupid enough to pay for the FedEx/UPS shipping “upgrades” on Interweb purchases.
November 6th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
…and there we go. Question asked and answered.
November 6th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
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November 6th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
SilentBeep:
I went to FedEx/Kinkos recently to send some documents overseas that had to be delivered safely and was quoted some ridiculously expensive price for overnight. I didn’t actually need overnight, and asked if they had something cheaper. The guy laughed and said if you want cheaper, go to the post office.
Choice is good. If we only had UPS/FedEx, a simple letter would cost $5~10 to send, plus a fee if you want them to pick up. Bottomline is that FedEx and UPS have great service but are expensive. USPS is a *lot* cheaper for some things.
November 6th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
I’m in favor of a robust public option for delivery of paper mail.
November 6th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
I’m curious how anyone could get data on the IQ of USPS employees.
Could anyone tell me how they did it since I seriously doubt that such data exist.
November 6th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
I don’t think that is the real Steve, so let’s get that out of the way.
If we move to 5 day-a-week mail delivery, the USPS saves a ton of money and people, even the paper-dependent, are only incrementally harmed. That seems like a very good trade-off.
November 6th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Count me as a supporter of the USPS.
November 6th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
“The Post Office…is brilliant. Nowhere else in the world can you have someone come to your house, pick up a letter, and deliver it to whatever the farthest part of the US away from your home is for under 50 cents, usually in 2 to 3 days. I just got back from the post office mailing out books to two people, each over a pound, and spent less that five bucks total. It took me less than five minutes because I used an automated kiosk in the lobby of the building, and I put it on my debit card. Fed Ex and UPS can’t come close to touching that service.
What’s more, the Postal Service goes places private industry won’t. If a place is deemed too rural to be financially viable, no private delivery service will go there, not without charging an exorbitant fee–and sometimes not even then. The Postal Service will. It gets the job done. If we’re looking for a model for efficient, high-quality service for healthcare, we could do a lot worse than the post office.”
http://incertus.blogspot.com/2009/08/post-office-rocks-dammit.html
November 6th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Quickly searching I came up with around 28 million people who don’t have bank accounts in the U.S., which means no online bill paying for them.
November 6th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
In Canada there’s no mail delivery on Saturdays.
Contra Sailer, the reason why USPS loses money is that they underprice their service. Personally I would be willing to pay up to $1 for first-class mail delivery. (And I would be willing to pay $5 more on my monthly Netflix subscription) I’ve had packages lost by FedEx and DHL, but the US Postal Service has never screwed up my stuff.
Also, US Postal Service is unionized but FedEx is not. (I admit, UPS is also unionized, which somewhat cuts against me.)
November 6th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
“Certainly the pathological African-American “hip hop” culture has negative influences on black job performances, as anyone who has worked alongside African-Americans well knows.”
This is fake Steve. Real Steve is way more circumspect.
As for Matt’s post, you know the thing where conservatives are liberal on certain issues which they’ve actually experienced? Like a conservative with an incurable disease, or who’s had problems conceiving, will be in favor of stem cell research? That’s a lot like Matt. He’s oddly unable to apply his political beliefs about government spending and publicly-funded services to things which he never uses (cars/auto companies, mail) and therefore thinks are useless.
November 6th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Yes, it does, dammit! I’m trying to find an agent for a book. I sent that agent the manuscript by e-mail — twice — and it got lost in the ether. So I printed it out, shlepped it to the Post Office and paid for postage plus confirmation of delivery. At least I’ll know if it arrives (or not), which is more than I can say for the agent’s AOL account. E-mail is “free” — but sometimes it sucks because it’s not reliable. I trust the USPS to get it there more than I trust my USP. Matt, some things are a public good, and should not be held to a “break even” standard. As Justice Holmes wrote, “Taxes are the price we pay for civilization.”
November 6th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
I understand the reality that the post office is losing money. Perhaps a good compromise here, would be to stop service on Saturdays. It wouldn’t substantially harm the poor and rural, it would save money and the truth is, paper mail has gone down over the years. Or raise the rates to a dollar as someone mentioned. Aggregate absolute need, by most socioeconomic sectors of our country, for the PO, is not as widespread as it use to be. I think there is a debate worth having for making adjustments in the PO. But yeah it’s still a critical public service, so canceling the PO all together, is essentially crazy IMHO.
November 6th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Not this again. We should be nationalizing or more heavily regulating other utilities and public services to bring them up to the USPS’s level. Cable and mobile phone providers are pretty horrendous, for example.
November 6th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Um, yes it does. It is a critical public service. I do not want to spend $2.00 per letter or more so that some supersized version of UPS can deliver my mail. The Post Office is fast and efficient and has no profit motive, which is exactly how I like it. I only wish the health care business worked the same way.
November 6th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
What a worthless country. We can’t even run a Post Office anymore. It’s unbelievable. Now we gotta get rid of nationwide postal service because the government is expected to make a profit while providing its citizens with a time honored service.
We have a progressive voice calling for the destruction of 800,000 good jobs with decent benefits, for what, so we can achieve more productivity? You got it. If you throw 800,000 Americans out on their ass and replace them with 400,000 low paid private workers, you will achieve productivity goals of some kind.
I like it. Good plan. Let’s hand what little remains of the country over to private interests and foreigners and let them run the entire country for us. Yes, we will then be a 3rd world country, but we will have high productivity! And profits!
So what if we have 35% unemployment. Who gives a fuck.
November 6th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Max424 @71: Exactly right. Also Jake @44 and silentbeep @52 and others with those sentiments.
November 6th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
What a bunch of people have said…
Corporations exist of course to maximize profit. Competition from the postal service compels private carriers to charge more reasonable prices when delivering to and from rural areas (than they probably would otherwise); tens of millions of people in this country don’t live in cities or suburbs.
Apart from the fact that I continue to send any number of letters per year (there are lots of people you just can’t reach readily by email) I find that USPS service is better than UPS for shipping stuff. How many times has your UPS ground package shipped from the next state over gone all the way across the country before getting to you?
Also (as has been noted) postal service workers often earn middle class wages…lots of labor troubles through the years at the private carriers
November 6th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Jake. you have never actually been outside of the United States have you?
I suppose you’ve never heard of Qantas or the Commonwealth Bank or Telstra? I live in Australia; people talk about privatising Australia Post every day of every year.
November 6th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
I’d like to add that what it comes to down to is what it comes down to when privatizing any public service. The added costs of having the government (rather than the private sector) do something in more or less every case has to do with paying people a decent wage and giving them decent benefits.
November 6th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
The postal system allows citizens and others to communicate with one another over large distances in privacy; maintaining it allows us to exercise a very basic freedom. Isn’t that what government is supposed to do, create and maintain the frameworks that enable our freedoms?
Also, Bluestreak@72 et al.
November 6th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
“The postal system allows citizens and others to communicate with one another over large distances in privacy; maintaining it allows us to exercise a very basic freedom.”
This is an excellent point. It’s a federal offense to tamper with mail through the PO. There are no reasonable expections for e-mail privacy and there are very little safeguards protecting anyone from reading it. The skyrocketing rates of identity theft shows the price we pay for the convenience of electronic transactions.
November 6th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
What you can imagine happening isn’t complete privatization but certain people (as in Republicans in Congress) saying that the only way to keep some post offices open full time and others open at all (with most of the former and latter being in rural areas) is to privatize certain operations.
This is what has happened and continues to happen with public libraries and other trusted government services at the town and county level.
Unfortunately, government managers and unions tend to respond by offering not temporary pay cuts in lean times but cuts to public services which tends to play into the hands of the right-wing politicians who push this stuff.
In the end what tends to happen is that taxpayers end up paying as much as they had to keep the services they valued but the money leftover (from paying people [often in rural areas where good jobs are harder to find] sub-standard wages who had formerly been getting a good, steady paycheck as government employees) goes not to improving services but into the pockets of private companies (who do little more than mooch off of taxpayers).
November 6th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
Re: Yes, Matt it does, and you are letting your upper class upbringing and lifestyle color your views. Many elderly people still do not know how to use computers. Many poor people do not own computers or have ready access to them. Other individuals still do not pay their bills online because they lack back accounts
Underrated,
Do you honestly think Mr. Yglesias gives a flying f*ck? All the cool people at the Santa Monica / Georgetown/ Upper West Side cocktail parties use the internet, and that’s all that hipsters like Mr. Yglesias care about. Why should hip 21st century bloggers care about old, poor, square people? Hell, they probably even still haven’t got the news that Nietzsche killed God.
The basic intellectual and moral vacuity of late-capitalist postmodern American West was rarely so aptly demonstrated then in this thread about the postal service.
November 6th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
Why should hip 21st century bloggers care about old, poor, square people?
If people choose to live in an 85k three bedroom home in Lower Overshoe TX they should have to deal with living out in the country. Why should people in LA or NYC subsidize their choice to live out in East Bumfuck Alaska?
November 6th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
Keep your government hands off my mail delivery.
November 6th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
“. . .but in 2009 does the delivery of paper mail really count as a critical public service?”
yes, it does.
this has been today’s edition of incredibly simple answers to unbelievably stupid rhetorical questions.
November 6th, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Why should people in LA or NYC subsidize their choice to live out in East Bumfuck Alaska?
Because if they aren’t living in East Bumfuck they can’t get to their job at the farm growing the food that goes in to your gaping maw. Or the mine that eventually results in there being a stainless steel pot to cook the food in. Or natural gas to heat the pot that cooks your food. Etc etc. Ya like those new fangled electric lights? It means someone has to work in the mine so that coal gets fed to the power plant a few miles down the road from East Bumfuck. And the people who maintain the road that gets the food to you gaping maw, and the pipeline that transport the gas to the range that cooks the food….
The people out in the hinterlands aren’t making their money manipulating symbols on a computer screen. They tend to produce tangible goods that allow you to sit at your computer and manipulate symbols for profit and pleasure. If we all spent our days manipulating symbols the only thing in the pantry would be symbols. Symbols are hard to cook.
November 6th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
yes, not everyone can afford computers. But do such people actually write letters to communicate. I’m pretty sure they either use a telephone or walk over to their community center/library and email.
November 7th, 2009 at 1:34 am
It’s always infuriating to hear Matthew or other relatively prosperous people on the internet assume that the whole country has equal access to things they take for granted. There are dozens of millions of people in this country who either do not have a computer with access to the internet, or have very old and slow ones that cannot perform all of the functions that Matthew is accustomed to. For many people, going to relatively simple websites takes minutes of loading time. The internet simply isn’t a replacement for standard mail.
November 7th, 2009 at 2:52 am
Basically it is your own interest that matters! If you have motivation somehow you will be a literate,otherwise you do whatever you like…..! But when it comes to infrastructure of school buildings…American steel buildings are the best.
November 7th, 2009 at 3:37 am
Yes.
The postal service is a critical public service.
Matt, you talk about diversity of people talking about Cantor. Has it occurred to you that you live in an incredibly homogenous technocratic bubble where access to high end information technology is a safe assumption? Get out of the cocoon. Until the government is willing to subsidize or create high end public internet and printing kiosks from rural Georgia to remotest Alaksa, yes, yes it is a critical public service.
November 7th, 2009 at 3:58 am
Public libraries are not enough to totally replace the kind of communication access the usps has for for those without adequate technology funds or skills. Funding for public libraries is perenially threatened as it is.
November 7th, 2009 at 10:23 am
For those wondering why Canada’s post office isn’t running into such trouble, it’s probably because Canada is a more urbanized country than the U.S. Shocking, I know, but it’s true… we have a huge amount of open space but nobody’s there, they’re mainly in cities. Whereas in the U.S. lots of people actually live in small towns.
Ever look at that “lights from space” map? http://funny.funnyoldplanet.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/9f678_north-amerika-lights.jpg
Canada’s basically a thin string of lights clinging as close as possible to the U.S., i.e. as far away from the cold as possible
November 8th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Because of the losses accrued by the postal service, that’s two less laser-guided warheads that we can afford to build.
The USPS is a threat to our national security.
November 9th, 2009 at 1:38 am
“in 2009 does the delivery of paper mail really count as a critical public service?”
Yes, because of legal documents. And bills count as legal documents. And most people can’t afford to hire process servers.
November 10th, 2009 at 5:09 am
I think they can’t make the delivery of paper mail count as a critical public service.It’s stupid.
November 10th, 2009 at 5:14 am
They can’t get money from here if they insist to make the delivery of paper mail aount as a critical public service.