Folster

Recently I have been doing a lot of thought about government reform. It led me to question the relevance of the United States Postal Service. With the embracing of e-mail and the surgence of private parcel services, is the USPS still needed? I do know that at one time it was vital to the nation, but that was decades ago. What exactly does the USPS do anymore besides distribute junk mail and lose money doing it? I'm under the impression that UPS, Fed Ex, DHL, and others could easily replace the USPS while doing it more efficiently and effectively. The government could save millions if not billions of dollars a year by turning this service over to private companies.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Am I missing something besides the obvious initial loss of jobs?

Ryanwb

Unions keep the buracracy moving!

Dback Jon

There are still many documents/letters that are mailed. And FedEx, etc are fine if you live in a Metro area - rural areas don't have such luxuries.

And millions of Americans don't have computers.

Besides - the USPS DOESN'T lose money anymore - haven't for decades.

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R.I.P Tim Minnick

The KING of Cards

nidan

I think we are a few years away from not needing it but eventually, yes maybe so

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DogTv

Pariah

USPS pays for itself--it's the only part of gov't that doesn't use tax dollars.

Ryanwb

Last figure I read is that only ~ 50% of US citizens have access to the internet.

Folster

That's surprising. I wasn't aware of that. I guess I should have researched that, but I posted this thread on a whim so....

Ryanwb

I work for a bank and last year was the first year that check volume started to actually decline.... They said 10 years ago that checks would be a thing of the past by 2005.

Things move slowly in this country.....

Dback Jon

Back in the 60s/early 70's it did lose money. Then it was reformed and made an quasi-private institution, mandate by Congress to cover ALL of its costs via stamps, etc - no tax money.

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R.I.P Tim Minnick

The KING of Cards

Russ Smith

who would sell stamps?

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“Your expectations always exceed outside expectations. I feel like you just can’t stop working, can’t stop getting better, because I’ll be a failure in my eyes before I’m a failure in someone else’s eyes.” -- Arron Afflalo

D-Dogg

What other programs do you think would be able to follow this type of model?

Dback Jon

Military?


That is tricky - USPS is a fairly self-contained service that everyone uses, but the cost to use is very low.

One would think that some agencies like the Forest Service could recover the majority of it's budget through user fees, etc. One problem with that is that if gives the USFS an incentive to sell timber, etc at the expense of recreation/conservation.

The Federal Highway Administration certainly should be, and the FAA as well.

__________________



R.I.P Tim Minnick

The KING of Cards

nathan

The USPS deserves credit for heavily investing in technology. I've been to the Lockheed Martin site that designed their state of the art sorting system and was very impressed. Their OCR is accurate enough to read handwriting 95% of the time. The interesting thing is when they can't read a label, the correction is made by someone in India.

abomb

You could argue that Social Security could benefit from infrastructure changes, such as automated payments via Direct Deposit, etc. I bet someone could come up with a solvent SS system that would increase taxes to begin with, but level out over the coming years due to increased efficiencies.

D-Dogg

Yes on both of those.