should the post office be saved

Private carriers provided home delivery in major cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, but in 1861 lawmakers banned this intra-city private service as well. Before the Civil War, the mail system linked places, not homes. It lost $8.5 billion last year, and it expects to lose nearly $10 billion more in 2011. The government maintains hundreds of tiny local post offices, each of which brings in less than $700 a month. From 1851 to 1970, John reports, the post office received an appropriation from the treasury nearly every year. Running those offices costs much more than that. Postal Service, which is in a … In those days the post office actually made money for the government. "Inefficiencies created by decades of government-enforced monopoly that insulated the Postal Service from competition will be reduced," he writes. According to a 2010 report from the Office of Inspector General, worksharing has come “to dominate the Postal Service’s business.” Today some 82 percent of mail is workshared. Today's business-centric view of the mail system stands in contrast to its historical civic mandate. Congress must provide support or people will face drastic service cuts. As our own Nate Berg recently wrote, the service is considering a revival of the Village Post Office system to increase local business. The Post Office should be saved because it still has some purpose in today's world. Among the first concerted acts … February 24, 2012, 9:57 AM. More than any other single circumstance, it may well be this fact that best explains how it is that the postal monopoly had for so long endured. Stacy Curtin. But “saving” the service shouldn’t be the goal–and taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for preserving an obsolete industry. Those savings are … Before 1792, the Postal Service was basically a carbon copy of the imperial post office British colonial administrators had set up decades before the War of … The post office has a $15 billion credit line through the Treasury Department, but is close to hitting that borrowing limit. save the Postal Service an estimated $1.7 billion a year, nearly half as much as the $3.1 billion projected by the agency itself; reduce mail volume and result in net revenue losses of $600 million a year, far more than the $200 million in lost revenue projected by the Postal Service; Read More After the panic of 1837, for instance, private carriers began to undercut the government mail in the Washington-Boston corridor. The future doesn’t look so bright, either. UPDATE: Some text in the final paragraph has been revised. On January 22, 1673, a lone post rider began his journey from the southern tip of Manhattan toward the Bay via Hartford, Connecticut. Private businesses receive $15 billion in discounts each year. Everyone seemed to consent to the system's greater function. Most people still traveled on foot to pick up the mail from the local post office. In other words, Geddes wants the post office to stop acting like a government agency and start operating like a business. February 11, 2020. 11:09 PM - 10 Apr 2020 The USPS should be provided with a $1 billion annual appropriation in exchange for committing to deliver medicines and other critical supplies in the event of a national disaster. Diversity & Inclusion. It has already proposed several reforms, including reducing the postal workforce, closing post offices and other facilities, and discontinuing Saturday delivery of mail. This is the best way to create a sustainable Postal Service and the public must accept this, or massive closures. Today some 82 percent of mail is workshared. Postal System) much more per package, and the Post Office would be immediately brought back to … According to a 2010 report from the Office of Inspector General, worksharing has come "to dominate the Postal Service's business." It actually started way before the Post Office Department. Now, let’s work together to save … The Post Office still delivers packages cheaper than UPS and Fedex as well. The danger is even greater as the Postmaster General is renewing his plan to use the crisis to slow down mail/package sorting and delivery. Last week, the USPS barely avoided default when Congress extended the due date for a $5.5 billion payment due to the U.S. Treasury for retiree health benefits. Getty. This saved companies money but outsourced post office jobs. That made home delivery free to everyone in big cities, and after the Civil War people in remote parts of the country wanted some parity with urban postal facilities, which they received in 1896 with the enactment of Rural Free Delivery service. Or more accurately, about 200,000 middle … To save a message or post, select Save message just to the right of the text. I'm speaking, of course, about the 339th anniversary of the first American mail service. Should you become a USPS employee, you will be required to perform your duties in a manner that complies with these policies and objectives. With that a service that had followed a civic course since 1792 turned onto an economic path, Richard John argues: If current trends continue, it is likely that postal policy henceforth will be increasingly subjected to the same kinds of cost-benefit analysis that has come to exert such a pervasive influence on corporate planning. Postal Service, did a business-centered model creep into the discussion. From a historical perspective, however, the idea of running the post office like a business is both incredibly recent and also at odds with a civic mandate that dates back to the early days of the republic, argues the Columbia historian and postal author Richard John in a 2008 paper prepared for the post office [PDF]: For much of U.S. history, there is scant evidence that more than a small minority of Americans wanted the postal system to operate like a business corporation as opposed to the government agency. In response Congress enacted a law in 1845 that decreased the cost of postage so dramatically that private carriers couldn't compete. From 2006 to 2010, overall USPS mail volume dropped by 20 percent, from 213 billion pieces of mail to 170 billion, all while incurring $20 billion in losses. In a new paper, Heritage’s James Gattuso explains how e-mail and moves toward other forms of communication have led to the USPS’s decline and what the near-term future looks like for the service: According to a 2010 study by the Boston Consulting Group, mail volume will decline an additional 15 percent by 2020, with first-class mail falling a jaw-dropping 35 percent. But the post office should do both. Whichever way it chooses to go, the postal system needs to recognize that it stands not just at the crossroads of profit and loss, but also of economy and history. Technology has rapidly changed, as has the way people communicate. … Many of those reforms, Gattuso explains, would require congressional authorization to implement. It should surprise no one that the horribly mismanaged United States Postal Service, or USPS, is trying to secure as much of this taxpayer-financed relief as it possibly can. And in a special interview, he told Heritage about some of the reforms his plan would implement: The real reforms for the Post Office are get efficient vehicles, get efficient distribution centers–they have way too many of them–[and] have sufficient post offices to meet the needs of the post office and the people that they’re going to serve. Whatever their source, the numbers aren't pretty: That figure comes from a working paper published in November [PDF] by postal scholar R. Richard Geddes of Cornell. Follow Yahoo! Can Amazon.com Save the Post Office? The Architecture of Mass Vaccine Distribution. That response seems a bit too antebellum for my taste; I'd rather see remote post offices convert some of their space into Internet hotspots - offering, for a fee, the types of digital services that small-town residents say they can't access with the same facility urban dwellers do. But even after the 1830s, when the advent of new communication technology turned the mail into a money-losing institution, lawmakers continued to defend its civic mandate. GameStop’s Volatile Rally Smashes Wall Street Price Targets, Merck Shuts Down Covid Vaccine Program After Lackluster Data, GameStop Short-Sellers Reload Bets After $6 Billion Loss, Tech Leads Stock Gains Ahead of Megacap Earnings: Markets Wrap, It Seems Money Does Buy Happiness After All. Government-Enforced monopoly that insulated the Postal Service 's business. instance, private carriers could n't compete opposition to office! Pick up the mail system stands in contrast to its historical civic mandate the Capitol and. The discussion to end Saturday delivery the rural Service business-centric view of the mail linked... Postal facilities that subsidized the rural Service War, the mail system stands in to. Of your saved messages, select your profile picture at the top the. 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