At Forty-Six Cents a Pop, Why Doesn’t the Postal Service Make Money?
16 February 2013
16 February 2013
More than a week ago on Slate, Brian Palmer posed the following questions:
“Why Doesn’t the Postal Service Make Money? What do UPS and FedEx know that the USPS doesn’t?”*
These frequently heard questions seem deliberately determined to undermine a fine, government program that has served America since its founding, by making an odd, apples-to-oranges comparison.
I can send a letter from where I sit, here in Bee Cave, Texas (78738), all the way to Barrow, Alaska (99723) or Mililani, Hawaii (96789) for 46¢, and it will arrive in a day or two.
When was the last time that UPS and FedEx delivered a letter for 46¢? When was the first time either private company did this? Even back in their founding days (1971 for FedEx; 1907 for UPS, which started as a parcel service in Seattle).
Why doesn’t the Postal Service make money, indeed?
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Forget about Congress’s requirement that the USPS fully fund all its pension obligations up front. Forget the requirement that the USPS visit every mail box receiving even a single piece of cut-rate “bulk” mail six or five days a week:
When’s the last time you mailed a letter using FedEx or UPS, and got change back from your dollar?
What’s missing here? Other than an ideological determination to undermine the constitutional mandate that the United States government provide postal service?
Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!
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*Why Doesn’t the Postal Service Make Money?
by Brian Palmer, Slate (02/07/2013 at 2:29 PM CT)
@GozoTweets
Revolutions Around the World
2 February 2013
02 February 2013
A Felicitous Element common to many comments on Fareed Zakaria’s opinion essays in The Washington Post is that the quality of many of the “comments” is unusually thoughtful. Trolls are few. The company there is often pleasant and thought-provoking.
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In a Comment on Mr. Zakaria’s latest Washington Post essay, Arab Spring’s Hits and Misses,* one reader, ffrey63, wrote,
It has been well said that the American Revolution succeeded because, unlike the French, Russian and Chinese revolutions, it was waged by reluctant revolutionaries. Moreover, the historical record is pretty clear – most revolutions are transfers of power, not exchanges of tyranny for democracy.†
The comment called to mind another theory, recently read, about the American Revolution. The other theory characterized America’s origins as more of a civil war than an actual revolt against tyranny. The thought was new to me: that what revolutionary pressures our Founding Fathers experienced were mild, compared to other such struggles in history. This perspective makes America’s founding seem even more remarkable.‡
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Mr. Zakaria’s Main point, taken away from reading his thought-provoking essay, is the hypothetical proposal that Jordan’s monarchy may be slowly moving its country deliberately, step-by-step, in the direction of a constitutional monarchy. It’s a nice thought. One hopes that substantial reality lies behind it.
One wishes to believe that today’s Arabian monarchs respond increasingly to the tenor of the times. One also wishes to believe that that “tenor of the times,” regardless of how reasonable its first soundings (in U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq) may or not have been, will yield continual reverberations of democratic republicanism throughout the more-troubled regions of the world.
Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!
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* Read Fareed Zakaria’s Washington Post essay here: Arab Spring’s Hits and Misses
† One may find the full comment by clicking the link to all comments, and searching for ffrey63 by date and time: 1/31/2013 7:36 AM CST
‡ Regrettably, the source of this viewpoint has been forgotten.