The Founders never intended the Postal Service to be managed like a business(washingtonpost.com) |
The Founders never intended the Postal Service to be managed like a business(washingtonpost.com) |
* Title 39, U.S. Code, Section 101, 3622, 3401 * Title 18, U.S. Code, Sections 1701–1737
Interesting, the postal service has the largest service area, with last mile delivery to almost everywhere. I'm surprised that they haven't leveraged that to provide unique products and services.
https://facts.usps.com/table-facts/
Email has killed it. The body lives on, but the brain is dead.
The post office isn't a "common good" anymore. It's a cheap way for businesses to deliver junk mail to consumers who throw most of it away.
That said, it pulled in $78 billion in revenue last year. And I haven't looked at their budget in any level of detail, but it sounds like the loss is due to the requirement to fully fund their healthcare and pension obligations (which the USPS has technically been defaulting on).
DeJoy got a lot of shit for trying to modernize the post office a few years ago, and the noise around him has died down since then. The one thing I remember was he was trying to stop Saturday delivery, which would have thrown thousands of post office employees out of work. PO employees historically were relatives of politicians (patronage), so that was a non-starter.
The writer seems to imply that "managed like a business" is a bad thing. There are concepts, like accountability, efficiency, customer orientation, and responsiveness that some government agencies have adopted to great effect. Maybe the writer should start investigating the world of business before dismissing it and saying that poor service, inefficienty, irrelevance, and high costs are OK if it's for "the common good."