Postal workers have now gone on a hunger strike to protest
the cuts that will be made to the United States Post Service (USPS). Yesterday
10 postal workers stood outside in front of the U.S. Capitol to protest that Congress
has done little to help the situation. Representative Dennis Kucinich help lead
the rally of the so few. Kucinich made a statement that he would help try to
strengthen the Post Office and do what he could to try not to privatize it.
The Post Office is expected to lose $14 billion this year. Last
year the Post Office lost around $8.3 billion. With e-mail and texting becoming
a common place fewer and fewer people are sending letters. In 2006, Congress
required that USPS prefund their retirement health benefits (like most private
companies already do) which cost $5.5 billion per year. In order to cover some
of these costs the postmaster general Patrick Donahoe has mentioned getting rid
of Saturday delivery. The Post Office has a history of threatening to cut
Saturday delivery as mentioned in this
article however only did it once in 1957. This of course will help USPS lose less money
however won’t put the post office in the black any time soon. As I mentioned in
this
post last year since the Post Office opened it has lost more than $13
trillion.
Free market solutions like letting FedEx, UPS, DHL and
others take over will work wonders. People point out the jobs that
will be lost at the USPS if we were to privatize mail. UPS and FedEx would be
hiring the qualified workers from USPS to help them with the increase in
business. People would save hundreds of hours every year for not having to deal
with USPS. Also the increase in business for companies like UPS and FedEx would
cause them to earn more money which would lead them to pay more in taxes. At
the same time the taxpayers would be saving over $14 billion per year. Other
countries like Germany, The Netherlands, and even the EU mentioned in 2008 that
they wanted to eliminate national monopolies on the mail system by 2013. Let us
let free markets work when it comes to mail.
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