wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

"There is no reason why new technologies for delivering written communications should be regarded as fundamentally different and separate from the old.

Why can't we require people to put virtual postage stamps on their email, text messages, and Web communications--either as flat surcharges or transactional fees--for the benefit of the postal service?"

Can we do the same for the newspaper industry while we are at it?

We decided long ago as a society that we need a government-run postal service, and we put a mandate for it into the Constitution. If we want to revisit that decision, that's a separate question. Today the question is, how can we fix our constitutionally-mandated postal service?

No private company is allowed to set up a competing postal service, carrying letters, purchase orders, and magazines to American homes and businesses. Yet we have permitted the Internet companies and the cellular phone networks, to do the same thing, simply because the written communications they carry are made of electrical impulses instead of paper and ink.

There is no reason why new technologies for delivering written communications should be regarded as fundamentally different and separate from the old.

Why can't we require people to put virtual postage stamps on their email, text messages, and Web communications--either as flat surcharges or transactional fees--for the benefit of the postal service?

Unless and until we decide as a society that we no longer need a government postal service, and amend the Constitution accordingly, the postal service's monopoly on carriage of written communications is necessary and good. We have exempted the Internet and SMS service providers from honoring that monopoly long enough. They are well established and don't need protection anymore. It's time to make them stop undermining our postal service.

@ gary from queens -

No one wants to do the business of the USPS. Sorry, FedEX and the other private carriers don't want that job or to fill the role of the USPS, it's too difficult.

Randi

If the USPS didn't exist, there would be companies competing for that business. Private companies today are not permitted to compete with that service now. So that's why USPS delivers letters today.

Profit isnt a bar to low prices. Both government and private industry have similar overhead costs. Companies pay for it from profits. government pays for it through taxes. either way, it gets paid because THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH.

The Framers were right to have government run the PO----in 1780!! Not today. transactions over long distance was only done through written correspondence. it was therefore more vital. today, people use the phone and email and texting and Fedex or other private carriers. USPS is less critical. Gov no longer needs to do that job.

Auto insurers use high risk pools. it works. government is not necessary.

Gary from Queens:

Businesses that do well will earn a profit. UPS and Fedex are great examples of that. But the purpose of that business is to make a profit. The purpose of the postal service, or any government agency, is to provide a service to all citizens, not to make a profit.

The difference between UPS/Fedex and the Post Office is that because UPS/Fedex are for-profit businesses, they have the option to pick and choose who they do business with, who they serve and charge premium rates in order to maximize that profit. The Post office, on the other hand, is designed to offer mail services to ALL citizens of the US and its possessions at a cost that is affordable to all citizens.

Government can't fill the demand of every citizen, but it must in areas when the public has a need and private business won't fill the demand. You mention health care; I work for a health insurance company and there is a large pool of consumers that private, for profit health insurers WON'T do business with.

The electorate determines who gets elected and there are areas of the government in which the electorate is not in control. But it is the electorate's responsiblity to understand the functions of government and to make their elected officials accountable to their best interests - even in areas of government where the electorate has no control.

@joe from Brooklyn

Businesses must deliver a service or product that the public wants. it receives profits for that. Doing it real well yields high profits. UPS and Fedex fall into that categor. USPS does not. end of story.

I believe mail delivery and health care should remain private. government doesnt have to fill that demand.

I said nothing about government owning and running other endeavors. so please stick to the subject everyone.

And Henry, you have the liberal illusion that the electorate determines who gets elected, therefore the electorate controls government.

Wrong. Unaccountable agencies of government have discretion as wide as the Potamic, and are totally outside our control and influence.

William from Manhattan has some good points.

1)I definitely agree that the Postal service and the Postal Regulatory committee should be running the service with less regulation from Congress' chokehold. It sounds like our gov't is using the USPS as a piggy bank.

2)When it comes to weekends, the post office should have either:
a - No operations/no delivery on Saturday & Sunday, BUT have post offices open for longer hours during the week (8am-9pm) OR
b - Have no letter delivery on Saturday, but have post offices open for mailing services and parcel pickup

3)The post office has to expand its self service and internet options. Its silly that we can only print postage for parcels using Express or Priority Mail only. They have to expand this for First Class parcels. It would save customers time and save the post office a ton of money.

My husband is a 21 year letter carrier. He is SWAMPED today with letters and packages.

Although First Class mail volume is indeed falling, the Internet is not killing the Postal Service, nor is the weak economy. WHAT IS KILLING THE POSTAL SERVICE is a burdensome congressional mandate, a Bush‐era law passed in 2006 that requires the USPS to massively pre‐fund the cost of future retiree health benefits over the next 75 years in just 10 years’ time. This cost covers not only current employees but employees who have yet to be hired—and it is on top of the cost for health benefits for current retirees. No other company or agency in America is required to pre‐fund future retiree health benefits.

The $20 billion in deficits over the past four years has been the direct result of the $21 billion in pre‐funding payments dictated by the 2006 law. In the absence of this mandate, the USPS WOULD HAVE BEEN PROFITABLE over this period despite the worst recession in 80 years, and it would still have borrowing authority to weather the bad economy. As a matter of fairness, the USPS should be allowed to fund retiree health benefits on a pay‐as‐you‐go basis, just as most businesses do.

There is a sensible solution to the postal financial crisis that won’t directly cost any taxpayer money: The Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which administers the federal and postal employee pension plans, should acknowledge the findings of the two external, private‐sector audits that found a pension surplus of between $50 billion to $75 billion in the postal portion of the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS). Congress should allow the Postal Service to use this surplus to cover the cost of pre‐funding future retiree health benefits. A bill containing such a solution has been introduced as H.R. 1351, which offers a responsible way of dealing with this financial crisis by allowing the Postal Service access to its own money, funds that are in excess of what they will ever need to pay for pensions. It’s worth noting that H.R. 1351 currently enjoys 193 co‐sponsors from both parties, while H.R. 2309, the so‐called Postal Reform Act, has a co‐sponsorship of one.

@gary from Queens -

Your knee jerk anarchist reactions are more than boring. Can you do us a favor and try thinking before you comment?

Maybe you need an assignment....Go out and learn (and them come back and explain it to us) why U.S. healthcare is 4-6% more of GDP than other developed countries? Aren't you feeling at least a little ripped off by the private insurance health care system?

gary from queens said:
“Government does only one domestic thing barely well: it takes our wealth and forces us to do things.”

As a people, we select representatives to govern. Part of governance is creating and establishing social projects that benefit society and help us all flourish, especially projects that benefit from universality and don’t do as well as separate fractured private enterprise systems. This takes money, so we have reasonable taxes so that we can all pay for the types of services and projects we all choose.

Ideally, democratic government is us, there is nothing inherently sinister about it, but yeah, we have to work at it, no one said it would be easy.

With more of us working from home, the 'Click 'n Ship'/Pick Up service should be a gold mine. However, in the past two years I've seen the service dramatically decline (boxes aren't picked up as scheduled, despite e-notices to the contrary). I've repeatedly submitted webtool and local station feedback, yet there has been no improvement. Other neighbors are experiencing the same, and have already gone to the UPS store up the block.
I want to support my post office, but, unless the service improves, I'll have to ship elsewhere.

Gary - You should go live in a third world country for 6 months and you will see rather quickly what happens when "government gets out of the way"

As a someone who has lived in this country for more than 10 years, I often compare the business acumen of this country, with what I left behind. I think its amazing that we have this great postal service in the Huge country, to think a letter can go to one end of this country to the other for as little as 42 cents, is mind boggling, and to think its gets there in 1-2 days its an amazing feat. I have hardly had any post lost in all this time, and also the "Change of address Service is also pretty fantastic. I would hate to see this great Institution go down the drain. I think like most people of this country, we would all prepared to pay more for the services they offer. I feel as passionate about this as I so do the MTA service this city provides. If only the general public could compare these two great services with what other sophisticated countries, have to offer, they would appreciate how great both services are, and help preserve them. BTW I am from the country who originated these services, and who's has seen the decline of the Royal Mail and the National Railway, I would hate to see the same happen here.

Raise the rates. Cut out a day or two. There have got to be solutions that doesn't entail shuttering the shop.

And @DarkSymbolist from NYC!
& Katie from Huntington

I agree with both of you.

I've lived in Greenpoint for 7 years.
The post office is one of the most brutal places to have to go to. The lines are long, the staff is surly, and frankly they don't seem to care. One gets the feelilng, they're doing you a favor. It's absolutely critical the usps address the terrible customer service that exists in their branches. I suspect many choose to use their competitors at a higher expense to avoid trips to the such rotten places.

We have to have a federal postal service; doesn’t anyone remember that movie with Kevin Costner?

You’re still going to want to get mail after the apocalypse!

1. Definitely let USPS and the PRC set reasonable rates, particularly for First Class Mail.

2. Absolutely do not stop Saturday delivery. Online orders for prescriptions etc have to be delivered. USPS would lose that business and never get it back.

3. Offer competitive "internet cafe"-type services. Should have been done from the start.

America is full of under-funded pension plans - how could the post office have "over paid" so much? Or is this just another Republican way of keeping working people from getting a pension?

If the post office is shut down, the middle class may as well give up. Who can afford $15 or $20 using FedEx or other overnight delivery services. Not everyone wants to bank on-line. What's wrong with raising rates to $1.00? I would pay a $1.00 or even more to get a letter from here (NY) to California in two or three days. Not everything has to be there overnight. The pension plan isn't at fault as much as not charging reasonable rates. This is not 1955 anymore. The Postal Service should be picketing the Congress.

Oh ok so apparently Gary thinks we should have no government at all...running anything. Complete nihilism...that'll work really really well.

Or maybe corporations should rule us...after all, corporations are NEVER run poorly, or lose money, or exploit their workers, or harm their fellow citizens through pollution, are never corrupt, etc. Corporations always run everything perfectly! So yes, let's privatize everything, because corporations do such a good job at everything.

Corporations= good, government= bad.

Life really is this simplistic in the real world..clearly...

Now back to my Ayn Rand book...

Everyone always talks about stopping Saturday service. When there are three-day weekends, that could be a hardship waiting so many days between mail deliveries. Perhaps a mid-week Wednesday with no service would be preferable.

Why not impose a 1 mill charge on every EMAIL?

Prior to the institution of Federal income tax, all monies generated by the federal government came from mail delivery!

New income stream for UPSPS - certified email. Senders PAY for "stamps" - tenth of a cent or less - which permits them to email through USPS servers. These servers control for spam, viruses, etc. Congress enables swift investigation and prosecution of the originators of malware. USPS gets new income, we get a source of email we can trust.

@ gary from queens -

A rather inane remark, especially considering that the "government" does NOT run the USPS. Also, it would be just great if the USPS wasn't there. Real dandy country we would live in.

Question: Besides the pre-payment of pensions, has the USPS considered providing other goods/services side-by-side their regular services at their facilities?

Can SOMEONE tell Andrea Bernstein to give her guests a chance to finish their comments instead of interrupting them in the middle of a sentence?????? So rude. And stupid!

And don't think just because you shutdown the USPS I will have to give my business to your crony capitalist buddies in UPS, I will use DHL for everything just out of spite! Sure, I'm joking but only slightly...

My company is struggling to make ends meet. We can barely pay our bills. Solution: pay 5 billion dollars up front every year to cover retirement costs, even though this retirement fund has a 80 billion dollar surplus. Where is the logic in thisplan?

I don't understand why the congressional mandate passed in 2006 which requires the USPS to prefund the cost of future retiree health benefits at over 5 billion a year is hardly mentioned in the media. The $20 billion in deficits over the past 4 yrs has been the direct result of $21 billion in pre funding. No other company or govt. agency in America is required to pre-fund future retiree health benefits.

Can you really imagine a first world industrialized nation that can't even afford a postal service? Ok, shut down the post office but please stop saying the USA is "The Greatest Nation on Earth" or whatever.

Hey gary from queens. I suppose you dont like anything that is run by the government including public transit, public schools, roads, parks, police, firemen, libraries, garbage removal, the military, nasa, state schools, community youth programs, social security etc.

But you are probably right. Corporations will most likely make all of these better by cutting corners and decreasing quality to increase their profits.

We want government to run our healthcare system, despite the fact that it cannot even deliver our mail without going into default?

Government does only one domestic thing barely well: it takes our wealth and forces us to do things.