… Postal Service, did a business-centered model creep into the discussion. On January 22, 1673, a lone post rider began his journey from the southern tip of Manhattan toward the Bay via Hartford, Connecticut. What the Capitol Riot and Inauguration Lockdown Cost the City of D.C. It can be saved with some fundamental fixes. Postal System) much more per package, and the Post Office would be immediately brought back to … The USPS has a serious problem, and Congress should act quickly to address it. Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat is supposed to stop the United States Postal Service (USPS) from delivering mail, but can it be saved from mounting debt, plummeting volume, and the not-so-slow-motion postal train wreck coming quickly down the road? Most people still traveled on foot to pick up the mail from the local post office. Many post offices in rural areas in particular cost more money to run than they’re worth. Admittedly, some of you might have missed this anniversary as you watched New England and New York advance to the Super Bowl. It actually started way before the Post Office Department. The post office has a $15 billion credit line through the Treasury Department, but is close to hitting that borrowing limit. Tasked, in short, with unifying distinct parts of the growing country. I hope. Postal management announced this week that it will weigh the closure of 3,700 of its 32,000 post offices, hoping to save $200 million a year. Technology has rapidly changed, as has the way people communicate. To Save The Post Office, People Try Buying Stamps : Coronavirus Updates People are taking to social media to urge support for the U.S. With the evolution of digital communications, the USPS must adjust to the new way of doing business, and Congress should make it easier for the USPS to adapt–and that means making it easier for USPS to close post offices, reduce its workforce, and trim services. The future doesn’t look so bright, either. It should unleash the agency.” — Editorial, Los Angeles Times. This saved companies money but outsourced post office jobs. Call your Senators urgently. The government maintains hundreds of tiny local post offices, each of which brings in less than $700 a month. 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. Similar efforts were soon made to ensure free home delivery by the post office. Should It Be? Gattuso says the “USPS is failing and needs to change. 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. To save a message or post, select Save message just to the right of the text. The Postal Policy Act of 1958, for instance, emphasized that the post office had always been a public service - a means to promote the "social, cultural, intellectual, and commercial intercourse" of all Americans - and as such should be assisted by the general treasury. Can Amazon.com Save the Post Office? Private businesses receive $15 billion in discounts each year. UPDATE: Some text in the final paragraph has been revised. Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal. In fact Congress made bold moves to keep private competitors from infringing on the urban postal facilities that subsidized the rural service. Even though it needs to be saved they need to cut costs. The Post has been integral to America since colonial days. 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. The post office has recently announced its desire to close thousands of local post offices, lay off loads of workers, and end Saturday service, en route to cutting operating costs by around $20 billion before 2015. 4. 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. But the post office should do both. Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) process **Click here for information from the EEOC about … The eclipse of this civic mandate has been comparatively recent. According to a 2010 report from the Office of Inspector General, worksharing has come "to dominate the Postal Service's business." The bipartisan plan to save the Post Office. Getty. Everyone seemed to consent to the system's greater function. Follow Yahoo! Today's business-centric view of the mail system stands in contrast to its historical civic mandate. At the same time, the postal system clearly must modernize in response to the digital age, lest its debt grow so large that we begin to hear word "bailout." 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. The Post Office MUST stop the bleeding and every other day delivery is the solution. In other words, Geddes wants the post office to stop acting like a government agency and start operating like a business. That "distinct possibility" has now become a reality. 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. 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. After the panic of 1837, for instance, private carriers began to undercut the government mail in the Washington-Boston corridor. Louisville’s Mayor on What President Biden Means For Cities. In response Congress enacted a law in 1845 that decreased the cost of postage so dramatically that private carriers couldn't compete. Now, let’s work together to save … The post office — if it was built before the 1950s — is often one of the grandest buildings in a town or city. Diversity & Inclusion. 's The D aily Ticker on Facebook here! Saturday delivery should be cut to save money “The postal service should be free to choose to stop delivering paper mail six days a week — once all the stimulus checks are in the public’s hands. 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. People still receive necessary things and not so necessary things like bills, magazines and birthday cards in the mail. Read full article. Here's why we should #SaveThePostOffice: The Postal Act of 1792 (signed into law by George Washington) made the decision that the post office would serve every community regardless of costs. 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. Sunday Delivery a ‘Win-Win’, Macke Says Earlier this year the United States Postal Service unsuccessfully attempted to end Saturday delivery. Only in 1970, with the transformation of the post office into the U.S. Selling off the post office’s most profitable arm, its package business, would leave behind its unprofitable arm, delivery of the regular mail, to fend for itself. Congress must provide support or people will face drastic service cuts. At that level of mail, USPS will lose a staggering $15 billion per year. 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. Geddes looks at the post office from an economic perspective, and as a result, in these fiscally retrained times, his point carries a great deal of weight. These residents see the mail as both a democratic privilege and a civic lifeline; they "fear that places that began with post office buildings would simply cease to exist with their departure," the Times reports. With the evolution of digital communications, the USPS must adjust to the new way of doing business, and Congress should make it easier for the USPS to adapt–and that means making it easier for USPS to close post offices, reduce its workforce, and trim services. On Monday at The Heritage Foundation, Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA), a successful businessman before coming to Congress, spoke about his plan to save the USPS from financial collapse. 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. Before the Civil War, the mail system linked places, not homes. Or type /saved in the command box at the top of the screen. We don't know his name, but we know he was a well-conditioned fellow — pretty much the opposite of Postal Employee Newman — tasked not just with carrying letters but also stimulating trade, fortifying defenses and even apprehending fugitives. It has already proposed several reforms, including reducing the postal workforce, closing post offices and other facilities, and discontinuing Saturday delivery of mail. 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 … Lawmakers continued to defend the tenets of the civic mandate into the 20th century. Today's business-centric view of the mail system stands in contrast to its historical civic mandate. Sunday marked another chapter in the history of the cultural relationship between Boston and New York. The United States Post Office is bleeding money and is on a trajectory for ruin. After barraging homes asking for candy in these cute costumes, maybe your kids can melt the hearts of the most die-hard post haters. There’s still a chance that a new location will be found for a post office, but it would probably be little more than a kiosk within an existing business. USPS has been pushing for it and claims it would save $3.1 billion per year, ... Issa recommends $1 billion worth of post-office closures per year. 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. "Inefficiencies created by decades of government-enforced monopoly that insulated the Postal Service from competition will be reduced," he writes. February 11, 2020. The Post Office still delivers packages cheaper than UPS and Fedex as well. In those days the post office actually made money for the government. The Postal Service says any new facility will not provide post office boxes. From 1851 to 1970, John reports, the post office received an appropriation from the treasury nearly every year. @Amazon, and others in that business, should be charged (by the U.S. This Plan Could Save the Post Office From Extinction This Plan Could Save the Post Office From Extinction Incorporating financial services could be the post office's saving grace. Geddes makes a compelling argument that the delivery monopoly long held by the post office should end, and that the system should enter a gradual transition toward privatization. The Post Office should be saved because it still has some purpose in today's world. This is the best way to create a sustainable Postal Service and the public must accept this, or massive closures. To see a list of your saved messages, select your profile picture at the top of the app, then choose Saved . Should you become a USPS employee, you will be required to perform your duties in a manner that complies with these policies and objectives. As Save Our Post Office points out, that's the equivalent of 180,000 jobs transferred to private sector. Have a confidential tip for our reporters? Eric Jaffe, January 25, 2012, 1:16 PM EST As many historians including John have pointed out, the likes of Washington and Madison saw the post office as an essential vehicle of democracy — providing important public information to a vast populace, particularly through the cheap delivery of newspapers. As our own Nate Berg recently wrote, the service is considering a revival of the Village Post Office system to increase local business. For the past twenty years, the Postal Service has been preparing the way to dismantle this legacy of brick-and-mortar post offices, as if it were a burden to be disposed of rather than an inheritance it was responsible for protecting. Postal Service, which is in a … You take all of those savings in efficiency, reduce the size of labor, have the new facilities, less facilities, what you need, and the Post Office can make a 2 or 3 billion dollar profit next year. The USPS doesn’t have to become extinct, but Congress needs to allow it to make the changes it needs to survive. USPS to Cut Another 35,000 Jobs: Can the Post Office Be Saved? 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. Such an exercise raises the distinct possibility that certain benefits that Americans have traditionally obtained from the postal system will be ignored, since they are hard to quantify, and, thus, to measure. At the core of this mandate was the recognition that distributing information to the entire country meant serving remote areas as well as dense cities. But “saving” the service shouldn’t be the goal–and taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for preserving an obsolete industry. 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. As the New York Times pointed out earlier this month, the loudest opposition to post office shutdowns is coming from small towns. 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. 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. For a small group of Americans, a mailbox is a lifeline - and the Post Office is a resource that can't easily be replaced. Not until after 1970 was it challenged in a major way by [what] one might call a market imperative. Stacy Curtin. Or more accurately, about 200,000 middle … As currently structured, it cannot survive unless supported by tens of billions of dollars in subsidy.” To be sure, the USPS has significant problems and needs restructuring. February 24, 2012, 9:57 AM. 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. 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; The moves come in response to staggering losses suffered the past few years, due in part to the rise of electronic communication and an onerous 2006 law that requires it to pay billions a year into its pension trust. 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