The federal government wasted more than $50 billion on the United States Postal Service since 2007 according to TaxFoundation.org. In return, the American taxpayers receive poor quality service.
The USPS needs to be privatized or reformed, both for quality and fiscal reasons. An example of the poor quality the Postal Service provides is how bad the reviews of local post offices are rated on the Internet. It is impossible to find one with more than 2.3 stars out of five.
Everyone has had their run-ins with the Postal Service, but the common complaints from people I know are lost packages, lost mail and a lack of customer service. From personal experience, I had important mail lost on a weekly basis and packages delayed simply because the employees did not feel like delivering that day.
If the USPS was a private sector company it would surely fail, because no one wants to use an inefficient, offbrand company for package delivery.
The efficiency problems and employee apathy probably stem from the self-entitlement of their unionized employees. USPS employees have higher compensation on average than the private sector and collective bargaining has prevented cost-saving changes such as part time work, retiree health care reform and automated postal functions.
There is no good reason why the Postal Service is around, except that the government loves its monopolies.
Federal income taxes are circulated back into the Postal Service and it borrows billions from the government. Yet, the USPS loses billions of dollars each year.
The power Congress grants prevents change in the Postal Service and allows the company to impede competition. An example of an impediment to competition — USPS subsidizes express mail and package delivery by raising prices on monopoly products.
The irony is, that even with all the support the Postal Service receives, it still cannot compete successfully with UPS and FedEx.
Concerns over privatization are union ploys to keep their fat pockets lined and the truth hidden. European privatization of state-run mail services had successful transitions. The Netherlands privatized its postal service in 1994, and, today, it’s part of a global delivery company, TNT Express.
The use of modern technology reduced the need for mail, so delivery only needs to be a few days a week. Commerce solution company Pitney Bowes suggests about 60 percent of household mail volume received is advertisements.
Seeing advertisements six days a week can easily be accomplished by hopping on the Internet. The federal government spending billions of dollars and recipients having to check their mailboxes every day is a waste of everyone’s time and money.
The USPS is a prime example of everything wrong with government. Anything the public sector can do, the private sector can do better.
Garrett Marcel is a 22-year-old petroleum engineering senior from Houma, Louisiana.