Seen on Facebook:
6 Ways to Help Save the USPS That Each Take Less Than 2 Minutes
None of these ideas are worth the electrons it took to get them to my screen.
If you haven’t already heard, the U.S. Postal Service is in trouble. It’s currently running out of government funding and there are concerns that the agency will collapse completely if the government doesn’t approve a substantial aid package to help the USPS weather the COVID-19 storm.
But the Postal Service isn’t supposed to run off of government money. It’s supposed to leverage its first-class mail monopoly and pay its own way. (See also, Amtrak.) Which is hard to do, given how it’s organized. So let’s look at the suggestions.
Why would I want to donate money to the USPS by buying stamps I won’t use? (Which is laughable since I’m secretary of an 800-member organization that has me buying stamps and going to the post office all the time.) They’re supposedly a quasi-private corporation, one of the largest in the US. Would I donate money to Amazon, or Apple, or Microsoft? No, I would expect them to clean up their act or go bankrupt. That was the POINT of creating the Postal Service out of the old Post Office Department in the first place.
The social media posting, petitioning, and making a cell phone call to some wacky number that will send an automated letter that the congresscritters will ignore are all little more than theatre. But they’re feel-good theatre.
Call your representatives….HAHAHAHAHA. Have you ever actually done that? Or sent them a letter or email about an issue you feel strongly about? COUGH COUGH Susan Brooks COUGH COUGH. Worthless.
Choose USPS shipping…well…they’re rarely any worse than UPS or FedEx, and they charge less, which is why I use them myself.
I don’t know what the fix for the USPS is (other than getting rid of their unions — there are seven of them, and nine collective bargaining agreements between them), but none of these suggestions will turn the Titanic away from the iceberg. They are literally the equivalent of rearranging the chairs on the promenade deck while the band plays “Nearer My God To Thee” and the deck starts to tilt.