The Christian Science Monitor weeps over the plight of the Post Office while pointing to the dog in the manger:
The cost of labor sticks out like an oversized letter. Compensation and benefits make up about 80 percent of USPS costs. Unionized postal workers are supposed to earn wages comparable to those of their private-sector competitors, but one study shows they get a 28 percent premium. Negotiations are coming and unions will have to show more flexibility if they want the post office to survive.
Interestingly, US postal officials reject the idea of privatizing the postal service. An argument can be made for privatization. For much of its history, universal delivery of newspapers and correspondence served to fulfill the mission of the post office to “bind the nation together.â€
But do Americans really need binding through catalogs and credit-card pitches? This advertising is subsidized by the USPS monopoly on first-class mail. Shouldn’t that monopoly now be broken, and advertisers made to pay their own way and other businesses compete for first-class delivery?
The emphasis is mine.
There are solutions possible for every problem that has been brought up so far in defending the current workings of the post office. If hard copy is absolutely required in remote parts of the country, I can imagine a machine that could produce it while preserving the requirement for privacy, something of an elaboration on the fax. Local contractors could then be used to deliver the hard copy (just as they are now). Payment methods via phone, cellphone, or Internet could be made more secure. And so on. All without the massive physical and bureaucratic apparatus of the present post office.
In today’s environment which is a better means for binding the nation together: the post office or more widely available broadband Internet and reliable cellphone communications?
Yes, things would be different than they are now. But things are different now than they were when heralds were the only official means for transmitting messages.
Dave,
Nice ideas, but what chance do they have against the political power of the union and those who support a post-office? I doubt there’s any politician who’s going to vote away almost 700,000 jobs nationwide.
Also, over that past few years I’ve changed my mind on the benefits of privatization which has not, in my estimation, impacted the growth of government, the number of government employees, amount of government spending etc. It’s simply created a new class of rent-seekers.
I would add that “privatization” usually means granting a monopoly on a government service to a private company, which means that we typically lose accountability. See e.g. defense contractors such as Blackwater and Halliburton.