Let it Die I Say

"Cause my baby just a-wrote me a letter" The Boxtops

"What was in that letter?" The 77's

Postal chief says post office running out of money

WASHINGTON (AP) - The post office will run out of money this year unless it gets help, Postmaster General John Potter told Congress on Wednesday as he sought permission to cut delivery to five days a week

I’m finding it really hard to care if the USPS goes under or not. I can’t think of anything that I receive from the mailman that I can’t get another way. I don’t get letters anymore for the most part. I get emails, IM’s and text messages. I can get all my bills and pay them online. Coupons from favorite stores, restaurants and other companies can all be delivered via email or on the company’s websites. All the smart companies already do this. Netflix movies can be downloaded straight to your computer. Almost everything I get now is junk mail. Sure once a year I get a birthday card or two from a grandmother or aunt, but they are getting old and the cards would be stopping soon anyways. Of course I’d miss out on the dozens of solicitations for credit cards, dating services, used car companies and the latest restaurant to open. Not that the new polka themed restaurant, Pete’s Polka Palace, doesn’t look enticing. Live polka music and food and drink that only starts with the letter ‘P’. Good times.

Now, as a bad husband, a worse father, a terrible neighbor and an incompetent employee, I obviously know a lot about "disasters". But this one takes the proverbial cake. This ‘business’ has been losing money year after year after year. Billions of dollars each year! Real money people, which you and I and every other tax-paying sap have to make up. Just so some geezer in a trailer park in Oxnard can get their publishers clearing house entry and readers digest in the mail. Drive a stake in it already. Or at the very least end its monopoly on delivering letters. Let the FedEx’s and UPS’ of the world have a crack at delivering non-priority letters. They have been wanting to for years. If there is really a need someone will figure out to do it and make money.

How they expect to make money when they charge the same amount of money to mail a letter from Boston to New York City as they do from Boston to Hawaii is beyond me. Do you see FedEx and UPS doing that? Would a cab driver charge you the same to drive you a few blocks as he would to drive you across town? Do airlines, car rental agencies or moving companies set prices this way? I got to admit that being able to mail a letter across the country for 42 cents is a great deal/steal (assuming it actually gets to the correct address). But now we know why, it’s being subsidized with stolen money. And don’t give me the; it would be too confusing to charge different rates by distance garbage. They could figure out how to do it if they really wanted to.

Not that they will be allowed to go out of business. The Feds are bailing out everyone and their mother so they are going keep this quasi-government agency going. They aren’t going to let one of their own die. No way they are going to give up their monopoly on letter delivery.

So what we have is an inefficient government-supported monopoly that is hemorrhaging money. Sells its product below its cost, does a poor job of what it is supposed to do and is used by fewer and fewer people every year. And to top it off we have to cough up money to keep the non-sense going. The kids of America will just have to grow up playing FedEx instead of Post Office.

Yeah yeah I know lots or people will be put out of ‘work’. And this will be a short term problem. But they can get productive jobs and contribute to building the wealth of the nation. When the post office goes broke UPS and FedEx will be picking up the slack and be needing to hire new employees And yes I do know that postal workers are prone to ‘going postal’ so firing them all could be very dangerous but why can’t we just have Jack Bauer, Chuck Norris and Sarah Connor do it?

To all you mailmen out there I’m kidding (partially). Don’t go leaving my mail at crazy Mrs. Nesbit house down the street. She’ll use it in the litter box for her 42 cats.