Goin' Postal
The 221-year-old United States Postal System is a marvel. We’re conditioned not to view it that way because of the orchestrated and well-funded public relations effort dating back to the first inauguration of Ronald Reagan designed to destroy our faith in government. (The ultimate goal of the saboteurs is to destroy government service itself.)The USPS is one of the most visible and human faces of our government. A mail carrier has basically been coming to my home six days a week my whole life. I still pay my bills through the mail, which means that roughly six envelopes get sent to me each month, and then I send six of them back. In the almost-20 years since my 18th birthday, I have changed my address approximately 14 times. That’s a lot of sorting and a lot of mailing to be executed by the Postal Service's dedicated team, yet I have never failed to receive even one of these bills in all that time, and in a timely fashion, nor has the recipient of my returned payment ever failed to receive it. It costs me 46 fucking cents-- roughly a third of the national average price for a cup of coffee-- to mail an envelope anywhere in the country, and when I put it in the mail, I know it will arrive there the day after tomorrow. That is insane. Yes, we live in the age of faxing and the internet, but those machines are only capable of reproducing copies of many of these items, not the real thing.
When the era of big government began-- under George Washington in 1792-- the United States Postal Service took flight-- or technically, I guess, took hoof. In the 20th century, it served to prop up the fledgling aviation industry. As it still does today, it tied the nation together physically and intellectually, by distributing information and helping us all save money by sharing in the cost of transporting documents and products. But also today, as Grover Norquist and the National Army of the Smash and Grab School of Economics have directed of all our government services, the baby in the bathtub has been condemned to drowning. By the end of 2013, roughly half of the USPS processing centers will have been shuttered, 3,000 local branches closed, and more than a third of the Service’s livable wage jobs terminated. Saturday delivery will go away, probably forever, and mail will take roughly twice as long to reach its destination.
The Postal Service has been under attack for decades. It’s already been bastardized into a quasi-private corporation. A decade ago, a government audit revealed it had overfunded its pension plan by $70 billion, but the agency has not been allowed to tap into those funds to pay down debt, expand services, or invest in improvements. It’s now the victim of an internal government accounting scheme in which it increases the federal debt if it draws upon its own surplus. A 2006 law passed by our bought-off legislators prohibits the USPS from offering products that would create “an unfair or otherwise inappropriate advantage” over its competitors in private industry. It is forbidden by law for the Postal Service to lower prices that would allow it to compete for the growing home delivery business spurred by online shopping. It's a rigged game.
The federal government will probably wind up selling off the Service for parts-- the trucks, the buildings. Their private competitors, with their vastly-inferior distribution network, will be happy to place bids, I’m sure. Funny that you don’t see the USPS' equally cost-conscious competitors threatening to end their Saturday deliveries.
You also won’t see the private companies make any effort to provide a meeting place for residents of small, rural communities. When the USPS is gone for good, you’ll be entrusting your absentee electoral ballot to a private delivery service, not to mention many of your medical and pharmaceutical needs. If you rely on a public assistance payout, you’ll be dependent on them for that too.
There’s going to be a devastating, wide-ranging social impact when we lose our post offices. Even if you never ship with USPS now, I encourage you to check your shipping receipts a decade from now for evidence. Our government appears ready to turn over the shipping business entirely to private industry, in that same way that worked such wonders for the airline industry.
posted by CM @ 6:55 PM
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