John Stossel is ABC News' Co-Anchor of "20/20" and New York Times best-selling author of Give Me A Break & Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity. His "Give Me a Break" commentaries take a skeptical look at a wide array of issues, such as education, the economy, parenting, and more.
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Post Offices Closing: Good Riddance!
08/04/2009 4:58 PM
This week the postal service announced a list of 700 post offices that may be closed to save money. People are wailing about losing “their” post office, saying things like “A lot of elderly people use this post office," “The post office is something that everybody needs," “I won't be able to get my love letters,” and “Just kicking the poor.”
Give me a break.
I’m sure that years ago, people wailed when their ice man went out of business. Should government have propped him up? “Where will I get my block of ice?!”
The postal service, like all government monopolies, is an inefficient sinkhole. Private companies like UPS and Federal Express give much better service. Consumer Reports found that, again and again, the private deliverers get it there faster.
The private competitors also make a profit doing it, so they don’t ask for taxpayer handouts. They outperform the post office, even though the post office has huge advantages. It pays no federal tax, no state tax, and no parking tickets. Often they don't even pay rent. They don't pay to register their vehicles. Check out a license plate spot on a post office truck -- nothing there.
The postal service always promises future solvency, but keeps losing your money: $7 billion this year despite a 2-cent rate increase.
The monopoly should be allowed to die, as free marketers have argued for years.
Short of actual death, The Oregonian suggests:
The right, if painful, course would be to insist that the postal service align its size and capacity with the declining demand for its services. Mail volume has been dropping sharply for the past couple of years, and the GAO reckons it's not coming back. The postal service itself estimates it will handle 175 billion pieces of mail this fiscal year -- a drop of about 28 billion pieces in a single year. Simply put, fewer people send letters each year, and each year more businesses convert customers to online or autopay billing. These are irreversible trends.
At the same time, the postal service has 727,000 employees working at 38,000 facilities nationwide. It recently offered early retirement deals to 150,000 of them, but all but 3 percent elected to stay on their jobs.
And why wouldn't they? The GAO points out that the postal service pays very well, even by the standards of federal agencies. It shoulders the entire cost of life insurance premiums, for example, although most agencies pay about one-third of the premium costs…
But the postal service is the perfect laboratory for the federal government to enact all the big changes it wants for the rest of the country. It can reshape health care benefit packages to give employees an incentive to keep costs down. It can burn less imported gasoline by eliminating vehicles and days of delivery. It can cut its use of electricity by closing facilities.
These are things the government wants to encourage all of us to do. The least it can do is to let the postal service show us the way.
The people who are upset of about “their” post office closing are the people who are always upset by change. Some have only been using the post office because it's a monopoly. They don't know what kind of service they could have if the post office is allowed to die a natural death.
August 4, 2009 in Government | Permalink | Share | User Comments (44)
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If they could ever turn a profit maybe they could stay open.
Posted by: Huh | Aug 4, 2009 5:16:33 PM
John, how can you be so uncaring!
Next thing you know, they will take away the door to door milkman!
Posted by: Jay Chambers | Aug 4, 2009 5:25:18 PM
The Govt should immediately pass the Cash for Mail Act. Each day, the Post Office will pay people to give them letters, say 25 cents/letter. This would help bailout an ailing Post Office by upping the volume of mail. It would enable the Post Office to cancel the closings and even hire people. In a recession, everyone knows we need the govt to do more -- and Obama could then take the credit he so deserves for creating or saving millions of jobs! Please call your Congressmen + demand they pass the Cash for Mail Act.
Posted by: Evinx | Aug 4, 2009 5:41:12 PM
How dare those small towns and elderly people object. Just who do they think they are? Citizens and human beings? They can either pay their bills online or send their mail via the private carriers at private carrier rates. By the way, what do the private carriers charge per envelope?
Does the word anarchy have any meaning for you?
Posted by: jan | Aug 4, 2009 5:45:23 PM
If the non-postal delivery systems are so superior, why doesn't our own government use them? Hmmmmm......maybe that isn't such a good question.
Posted by: Willie12345 | Aug 4, 2009 5:58:22 PM
"The postal service always promises future solvency, but keeps losing your money: $7 billion this year despite a 2-cent rate increase."
Care to let us know how much funding they have received in the past 30 years? It is borderline lying to suggest they took $7 billion from the US government. They may need a bailout, but as of now they haven't taken any handouts from Congress for decades (other than as reimbursement for terrorism hardening after the anthrax attacks and for free postage for the blind, overseas ballots, and such).
Meanwhile, Congress is the one that makes it hard for them to close post offices, set a sustainable postage rate, or reduce service. Congress requires they deliver 6 days a week even to rural, expensive to serve addresses. It seem appropriate they get a few perks to cover the burden of such mandates.
Posted by: jhw539 | Aug 4, 2009 6:06:59 PM
I actually hope they close the one nearest me. Always a long line. They got rid of the stamp vending machines and installed a fancy electronic one that is broken half the time. It doesn't matter if there are 15 people standing there: the employees will take their presumably union mandated break. And it's old. And dirty. And the mail carriers that come out of it have delivered someone's medical X-rays to me, and handed someone else my brokerage statement. Amongst other things. Good riddance.
Posted by: Brian | Aug 4, 2009 6:11:31 PM
Right John,
And all those who send you your bill, can use UPS or FedEx and charge you more for it. Hey how about you just open up your bank account so your vendors can just automatically take the funds out of your account; you trust them, right John, being they are so efficient and everything.
It amazes me that you people can make such statements without backing any of it up. You say it and it must be true. Never had any difficulty with a private firm in your life I am sure.
Posted by: Thinking | Aug 4, 2009 6:36:01 PM
Thinking, everyone has problems with the private sector. However, if they screw up, i can go down the street and take my business elsewhere. The post office is a monopoly. Plain and simple.
Posted by: Michael | Aug 4, 2009 6:52:52 PM
THE POST OFFICE JUST PURCHASED 100 NEW FLAT SORTERS MACHINES AT 10 MILLION A PIECE. GO FIGURE
Posted by: RIP | Aug 4, 2009 6:55:40 PM
There was once a great capitalist, well before his time - name was Lysander Spooner. He was one of the first anarcho-capitalists and one of the first people to ever lead a private challenge against the post office...
Of course the government had him arrested. Goddamn him for even trying, right, liberals?
Posted by: Adrian | Aug 4, 2009 7:06:45 PM
Thinking, everyone has problems with the private sector. However, if they screw up, i can go down the street and take my business elsewhere. The post office is a monopoly. Plain and simple.
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What John just said that FedEx, and UPS are more efficient, you can take your business there. Bet ya though that those who send you your bill will still use the USPS.
I am just thinking how efficiently those private banks tanked our economy.
Posted by: Thinking | Aug 4, 2009 7:16:56 PM
You mean the private banks encouraged to make bad loans by the government?
Who ever said that the private sector is immune to corruption or failure? It happens all the time. The difference is, the government can continue to fund failed projects and porks through YOUR tax money. Businesses are allowed to fail, at which point, they have to change directions, or others will do a better job to earn more profit.
Fedex is largely more efficient than the government model, as is texting, instant messaging, camera phone comunication (not yet widespread in the united states), emails, and other forms of modern delivery system that's rendering the post office "snail mail" obsolete.
Posted by: lee | Aug 4, 2009 7:37:00 PM
Fedex is largely more efficient than the government model.
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Then they should have no problem putting the USPS out of business. I sure get a lot of mail from the business across the US from the USPS. Obsolete? I think not.
Posted by: Thinking | Aug 4, 2009 8:01:29 PM
The only good solution is to do the following things at the same time:
1) allow competition with the post office (eliminate its government-guaranteed monopoly), and
2) sell it. Privatize it. Get rid of it. The government shouldn't be operating a business. I'd buy it if I could: their real estate is worth untold billions.
Note that in the one area that competition with the post office is allowed, package delivery, private companies dominate... and still make a profit.
Posted by: GregF | Aug 4, 2009 8:08:12 PM
You cannot generalize the statistics about _package_ delivery customer service to the entire USPS.
Here are some observations from my business needs and why I prefer to stay with USPS instead of the UPS and FedEx.
1) The private companies cannot deliver to PO Boxes or military addresses.
2) The private companies are often slower in delivery to rural addresses.
3) The private companies have limited delivery arrangements with foreign countries, often limited to major cities.
4) The private companies cannot handle regular letters. Invoices, payments, reminder notices, legal statements, etc, are cheaper to send via USPS. How would you like to get your next doctor appointment reminder via overnight package delivery and you get the shipping invoice, too?
5) USPS will hold mail for up to 30 days. None of the private companies will do that. If you are on vacation and a package arrives via UPS, it either sits on your door or gets bounced back to the shipper. Neither a good option.
Closing offices is not a problem. For me, in the suburbs, there are 7 Post Offices within 5 mile radius of my house and the one I use for business isn't even the closest one.
Yeah, the USPS can do a lot to improve efficiencies, but for my business needs which involve letter mail and international, the private delivery is not even an option.
Posted by: M Russell | Aug 4, 2009 8:48:09 PM
By the way, what do the private carriers charge per envelope?
Invoices, payments, reminder notices, legal statements, etc, are cheaper to send via USPS. How would you like to get your next doctor appointment reminder via overnight package delivery and you get the shipping invoice, too?
Uh, do you people even realize that the other carriers aren't allowed to deliver non-urgent (First Class) letters? If they were, the price would go down. Economies of scale: larger input, price per unit goes down.
The monopoly of the USPS keeps efficiency from maximizing in the industry.
Posted by: Angela | Aug 4, 2009 10:04:15 PM
Jan, Brian, Adrian, Lee, Greg F, et al:
You're missing an essential point: private companies are *forbidden* from competing with the Post Office on first class mail. They can't deliver bills, magazines, and such to a home or business. That's what a government monopoly means. Do you really think the USPO could compete with Fedex or UPS if they were allowed to fight for the same business, on the same grounds? No frikkin' way.
Posted by: Danimal | Aug 4, 2009 10:34:06 PM
If the government service is so much better, than it need not fear competition - the wisdom of the people surely holds in the marketplace, too. So let's end the monopoly and see what happens when innovation is free to come in.
Posted by: Michael R. Brown | Aug 4, 2009 11:26:49 PM
Fed Ex doesn't deliver here. In fact, they put packages through the USPS (wearing the Fed Ex shipping label) so it gets to me. UPS routinely misdelivers packages. Once to an abandoned house, once to a neighbor's truck, etc. The UPS guy did put it inside the truck, though.
My rural mail carrier never makes a mistake. And he has to use his own vehicle for a "contracted" amount (it's a meager take-it-or-leave-it deal) with no allowance for hours, weather delays, gasoline prices, etc. plus it's in effect for 2-3 years.
Rural areas need the USPS. Paying bills by mail is the only option for many people. Zero cell phone reception where I live, and dial-up is an on-again-off-again proposition. Hey! Maybe privatizing mail will work out as well as the Baby Bells did! Or we could try hundreds of little co-ops handling mail...that might work.
Or if you wait a few years, those pesky old people will die off, and then you can wireless up the entire nation!We'll all be connected! Won't that be cool!
Posted by: Susan B | Aug 5, 2009 4:58:06 AM
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