Why do postal workers make great comedians? Because they know how to deliver the punchlines! 📫
Having an alternate career might be a good thing, too, because there’s been talk recently of privatizing the Postal Service, which would shake things up a lot! What exactly does this mean, and how would it impact the Post Office on a daily basis? We’ve got the details!
Here are Five Fast Facts on the prospect of postal privatization:
- 💸 The Dollars Don’t Make Cents - Who can lose billions of dollars every year and still keep operating the same ol’ way? Uncle Sam’s delivery service, that’s who! The Postal Service lost a whopping $9.5 billion last year alone, and it’s another $80 billion in the hole from previous years! Taxpayers have been footing the bill since the 1970s to keep those boxy white trucks running.
- 📉 Use Shrinkage - The river of red ink is due mostly to a 63% drop in usage since 2000. It also doesn’t help that the Postal Service has a universal service obligation, meaning they will deliver to everyone no matter where they are or how hard it is to get to them. But these things – combined with typical government inefficiency – are throttling the service’s ability to run in the black.
- 🛑 Signs Of The Times - The Postal Service was originally created and given the USO mission because our young democracy was dependent upon an informed citizenry and written debate. Given the distinct lack of the Internet or TikTok a couple hundred years ago, the only way to communicate to the public was through the mail. The Founders knew it was that important! Now, however…it’s a relic of a bygone era, a dying industry.
- 🤔 Partial Prospects - If full privatization is too much for the palate, one option would be to privatize only part of the service. This would allow for some major slimming of budgets and efficiency gains, though it would likely mean a lot of federal workers would lose their jobs (this is why politicians have avoided it like the plague in the past).
- 💡 It Can Be Done - The idea of privatizing isn’t completely wacky, though. Back in 1979 the government allowed a split for package deliveries…and private companies like FedEx and UPS were born! Nowadays, who do you think of when you need efficient and cost-effective delivery, the Post Office or one of those other guys? Bingo. And there’s nothing saying private companies can’t improve on other things the Post Office does, either.
🔥Bottom line: If privatization happens, it might mean some costs go up (at least until alternatives figure things out), and it might mean some delays or less frequent deliveries. But in the long run it’ll save truckloads of taxpayer money, and some private companies will almost certainly fill the void much better than the Postal Service ever did. Would it be a big change? Yes. Would it be worth it? Time will tell, but it’s definitely an idea worth exploring.
What do you think about privatizing the Postal Service?
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