Monday, September 19, 2011
Mail on Saturdays? I think not.
In attempts to provide aid to the US Postal Service the Obama administration's plan would put an end to Saturday mail delivery. This may, in fact, be a good choice since it is becoming more popular to use email and the internet to pay bills. However, would it be better to hike up the price of stamps and packages to increase postal revenues? Though many in Congress support the 5-day mail delivery concept, E-commerce companies and other businesses rely on Saturday mail. In addition, the Postal Service must drastically deduce its payroll by over 200,000 by 2015 so is looking at possible closures of approximately 300 facilities. Isn't there a better way this can be dealt with? There is already enough unemployment.
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3 comments:
I agree that cutting government services that currently employ a large number of people would prove unhelpful in decreasing unemployment or convincing other business to increase jobs. Increasing the price of mail delivery seems to be a very plausible solution as even paying a dollar or so to mail an envelope would be a huge saving compared to attempting to do it yourself. For the people that could not afford to do send mail regularly, there are many free email clients and increasingly more communication is done by email now.
Agreeing with Kore, I don't think closing facilities that employ such large numbers of people is a good idea. I'm also not sure if raising prices on stamps would help aid the US Postal Service. If prices are increased, people will have even more incentive to not use the postal service and instead use other forms of communication, such as the internet or email, which are free. However, I do think small increases in price on services that only the postal service provides can be plausible. For example, shipping packages cannot be done electronically, and I think raising prices slightly on such may be able to benefit the postal service.
While firing USPS workers might seem like a horrible thing to do, I think that people are not looking at the long-term benefits of cutting postal services. Currently USPS is losing money. It is a government service that has become outdated with the arrival of the internet and email. Since messages are usually sent over the internet, it seems that the resources that are currently being used to support the postal service could be used elsewhere.
For example, the money that the postal service currently uses could be used to expand other sectors of industry thus creating jobs that won't be as easily destroyed.
I believe that the long-term benefits of reducing USPS services definitely outweighs the short-term job losses that would occur.
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