I have had my share of issues with USPS over the years. I once bought my Mom a jewelry box for a present and shipped it via the Post Office. When Mom got it, the glass components were shattered; my Dad, who worked for USPS as a second career after retiring from the USAF, shrugged off my complaints of unprofessional handling, blamed me for not upgrading service and inadequately marking that the package was fragile. I once was punched from behind in the kidneys by one of a half dozen or so Latino employees circled behind me as I argued with an El Paso supervisor over a postal insurance claim (the vendor claimed not to have received a return shipment). I've usually had apartment offices sign for parcels, but my Mom ignored my requests not to require my personal signature. She sent me some custom birthday gift; I had an ongoing feud with my carrier at the time, his gleefully noting I would have to make arrangements to retrieve the package. I went down to the local post office, only after waiting in line a half hour to find out they didn't hold packages and I would have to call and arrange redelivery. They never could find the package, and it must have taken 2-3 months for Mom to collect insurance for the lost package. There are numerous other incidents I could describe, but I'll simply finish by my most recent. I have to retrieve my mail from a free-standing streetside bank of boxes maybe a couple of hundred yards away. I had to go to the local post office to place a key deposit. There was a delay because they had to change the lock; I got a key in advance and they were supposed to leave a redundant key in the mailbox after the lock change. I never got the spare key--and then several days later found a key left in the keyhole of my open box. Someone could have taken the key without me ever knowing.
I don't think I'm the only person who has had issues with the government post office monopoly over the years. And it's not just poor service, but a matter of principle. We have an anachronistic Constitutional provision for a postal service which was prescribed to provide interstate communication and as a revenue source. The $77B in recent revenue doesn't even cover its current/retired labor-heavy costs, never mind making a dent in nearly $7T of 2021 federal expenditures. The current postal system bears little resemblance to the original, which did not include home delivery; The home delivery service started during the Civil War era. The fact is, government-enforced services/monopolies aren't competitive. The proto-libertarian Lysander Spooner in the 1850's offered a profitable private mail service cutting delivery costs to a fraction of government prices, noting the Constitution did not prohibit private competition. The government engaged in corrupt monopolistic practices, such as exclusive contracts for railway transport. Eventually Congress would explicitly prohibit private competition.
Ironically, technology has eviscerated the USPS' first-class mail cash cow business with ubiquitous cheap email service. Most payment services can be automated online, newspapers and investment prospectuses can be accessed online, etc. My siblings and I mostly text or call each other. I don't even walk to my mailbox daily and most of what I collect is mostly junk mail. One indication of USPS' uncompetitive nature is the fact that its market share in the more competitive parcel delivery market is roughly about 20%, This is despite many competitive advantages over private competitors;
- “On the basis of total company costs and revenues, or on the basis of some continuing process of allocation of costs between regulated and unregulated operations, there will always be the danger, in principle, of subsidization of the latter by the former.”
Congressional Dems in particular zealously protect crony union monopoly privileges of postal workers, a key constituency, for example, restricting the ability of managers to control uncompetitive labor costs:
The USPS has increased its use of contractors in recent years, but USPS employees continue to serve 98% of all U.S. homes and businesses...a 2008 Government Accountability Office (GAO) study found that the average annual cost of delivery by a city carrier was nearly twice that of a CDS [private contractor] carrier
The fact of the matter is that the US, unlike many developed economies, has retained the monopoly of home mail delivery. (See also here.)
It seems every other day on Twitter Postmaster DeJoy is trending, targeted by leftist trolls, furious with various cost-saving moves and his desires to replace vehicles with less expensive gas-powered vs. electric vehicles, anathema to crony Big Green interests. (Not included in the current bipartisan reform legislation.)
The real driver behind the "reform" legislation was a 2006 decision for USPS to explicitly recognize an unsustainable high-cost retirement health benefit and to pre-fund it; leftists, of course, are in a state of denial of the dying nature of the first-class monopoly privileged franchise. [Well, of course, leftists, like Cherokee Lizzie, want to expand the extra-Constitutional USPS' business portfolio at the expense of the private sector, including banking services. The current measure flirts modestly in this direction suggesting servicing state hunting and fishing licenses.] The idea, of course, is for postal customers to pay for labor-related expenses, not the American taxpayer. I believe that USPS stopped funding its annual allotment a decade ago. I believe postal employees paid less than a quarter of the cost of their retirement benefit.
The basic idea in the current legislation is to require future USPS retirees to register with Medicare with current retirees receiving some supplemental coverage. In exchange, the US government will effectively wipe a significant portion of USPS liabilities/debt off the books. Congressman Issa and other conservatives argue that this legislation doesn't address the real problems and amounts to a taxpayer bailout. I agree.
Real reform starts with repealing the home mail delivery monopoly, postal union reform, and partial privatization. Congress needs to stop intervening with managerial cost-cutting measures, whether it's rate-setting, branch/facility consolidations, delivery scheduling or more flexible staffing, including more flexible deployment of temporary/contract labor.
One thing is certain: when Democrats and Republicans agree on anything, the American taxpayer is getting screwed, and the real problems are not getting solved.
