Ah, the Post Office. Talk about a massive entity desperately trying to justify it's existence. All I get in my mailbox nowadays is 0% credit card offers, flyers, packs of cupons and now I've even gotten nigerian scams. They must be getting pretty desperate. Frankly, the only thing I get worth anything in the mail are birthday or Christmas cards containing money. The cost of all this wonderful mail? Only $18.2 Billion dollars in losses a year by 2015.
The agency was recently poised to begin finally cutting back, however backlash from rural areas has caused it to change it's stance.
"We've listened to our customers in rural America, and we've heard them loud and clear—they want to keep their post office open," said Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe
But opposition came from all sides, including from elected officials and tiny communities from New Hampshire to Iowa to Wyoming. The postal service is 237 years old, and many communities see their local post offices not only as a place to pick up mail, but as a link to one another and to the rest of the country.
"In some communities we're the meeting place; that's where the bulletin board is and where people meet every day," said Mr. Donahoe.
Honestly, how many people actually read the bulletin boards at the Post Office. I am originally from small town Pennsylvania and even there people paid their bills online and rarely ever went to the Post office. Besides, there was always a UPS or FedEx store right nearby. Let's not forget that this is the agency that thought this was a good idea to help workers relocate. It just so happens they lost an average of 58,000 on each home.
Anyway, what do you guys think of the Post Office? Is it a dying beast that needs to be put down? Does traditional mail even have a place in society at this point?
We're at a stage where whether we keep the service or not, a huge crowd will be pissed off. All we really have to do is wait a few years for fewer and fewer people to give a damn as email and private courier such as UPS and FedEx make the Service obsolete.
EDIT:
IMO, the Postal Service always sucked balls. A simple overnight delivery from NYC to upstate NY can almost NEVER be completed on time, and if you tell them they just go, "it's not a guarantee, it's an estimate!!"
I hope they go under, and fast as fuck.
LOL.
My dad was a mailman and when FedEx started getting big his fucking head exploded. He thought the government should shut them down and prosecute them for impersonating letter carriers. My old man was hard core blue and gray. He actually refused to own a fax machine until 1999 because he thought they were putting mailmen out of a job.
Your pop sounds like someone with whom I would not mind sharing a beer.
Lol, when I saw the title I thought you meant going this type of Postal, figured an Ibanker had lost it:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/GwyVYCyKuUI
I would say let private carriers compete, then see who survives. As it stands, the post office is just a tool for direct mailers. I have seen estimates ranging from 60% to 90% of all mail is junk. There just isn't a need for a huge agency to handle letters anymore.
I think it only exists because the older generations do not know any better. Growing up, I saw my grandmother writing actual checks for each bill. Despite my efforts to get her to switch to a more efficient billing system, she resisted. For this demographic, shutting down the USPS sounds as absurd as closing the fire department.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't a bunch of other countries privatized the postal service (e.g., TNT in the Netherlands - they operate in other countries, too)? Why not go that route?
It's not 'merican enough.
The postal service as it stands today would fail immediately as a private company. The pension obligations and pay packages they've handed out due to the "money isn't real" mindset has run that organization into the ground.
oh well, 18 billion a year is nothing these days
Go read the Post Offices 10K. It makes you want to cry. They WANT to become fiscally sound, but are not allowed to because of the government. Some small town losers who want others to subsidize their post office because if that closes the whole town goes under.
Like how shitty of a town do you live in where the fucking post office is the focal point.
I'm not reading that.
It's a report from Accenture / BCG / McKinsey that says "You guys need to focus on PROFITABLE products, fire a bunch of people, sell off assets, and make those rural a-holes use a PO box instead of doing so much last-mile delivery." None of which is likely to happen.
right on. They're definitely right in that it needs drastic changes. As is, the postal service is a huge bureaucratic mess.
My macroeconomics professor actually used the USPS as an example of why we need for unions in the United States.
Sounds like a retard. Unions are for labor demand and wage rate stabilization, not fucking with a natural part of a company's life like bankruptcy.
Ok,
Maybe it is just me, but why dont we just abolish the USPS and since we constitutionally have to be able to service the rural areas we just subsidize that?
Seems like allowing UPS or FedEx to take over mail, give a little bit of taxpayer money in order to get them to deliver to rural areas is a win win?
My problem with privatizing the mail with UPS or FedEx is that UPS might not deliver to a FedEx zone and vice-versa.
Why would UPS not want to deliver to a "Fed Ex" area? Wouldn't they want to steal market share?
Couldn't the private companies just bid on contracts to deliver whatever is constitutionally mandated (rural areas)? Seems pretty simple.
Maybe you don't give both of them contracts ... also, I'm not aware of exclusive "zones" for the express companies.
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