This week the coffee klatch took up a question that has some impact on every American – the U.S. Post Office.
Stirred by reports of impending financial doom, Congress seems to be reacting in standard congressional mode. Everyone seems full of criticism; few have suggestions. The liberals feel that the Nation and the New York Times should be delivered free of charge. The conservatives feel that since the postal service is a quasi-government activity, it is an abomination that interferes with business profits and personal liberties. To help clarify this political fricassee, Professor Lucius Flatley did some analysis.
It is nonsensical to think that an organization that is required by law to provide a common good can operate at a profit. Neither the fire department nor the police can run as a cash cow. The bottom lines of these services lie in public benefits, not in dollars.
The postal service does not receive credit for an outstanding management job. While there has been a drop in deliveries from 208 billion to 177 billion, the decline in workforce during that same period has been proportionately greater, making the overall per unit cost significantly lower. Any large corporation would be pleased at such operational improvement.
During the Great Depression, a first-class postage stamp cost 72 cents in today’s dollars.
Much of the current deficit problem results from earlier congressional requirements. When it established the postal service as a stand-alone operation, it saddled the new business with retirement costs that had been incurred as a government operation many years previously – a deficit estimated at $75 billion. Then, in 2006, the Bush administration required the post office to prefund 80 percent of reserves for health within three years – a sudden increase of 60 percent from planned actuarial accounting. At the same time, the service was prevented from applying for corporate subsidies available in Part D of Medicare, as can every other corporation.
So, what’s to be done?
Postal service is an immense and irreplaceable public asset. It is second only to Walmart as the largest corporation in America. It has 35,000 offices, 596,000 employees who travel more than 4 million miles a day, many in remote areas. Contrary to facilities within the beltway, 35 percent of Americans have no broadband Internet access; 50 percent of rural communities are not served by the Internet. The postal service has largest computer network in the world – one that could serve thousands of communities where there is no library. The possibilities for information and education are exciting.
The post office has great potential for improved voting. Absentee mail-in ballots save time at the polls and, even though unlikely to thrill Republicans, it would encourage voting. Mailed ballots cannot be “hacked” like voting machines – no “hanging chads.” If the Florida votes in 2000 had been by mail, we would not have ended up going to war in Iraq, which cost enough to fund the postal service for the next two centuries.
Periodicals – magazines, etc. – are by far the best source of information and public affairs. Much of the material on the Internet and blogs is drawn from them. In that sense, with low postal rates, the postal service subsidizes the nation’s education. A politically and culturally informed public is in the national interest. (Imagine a nation dependent solely on Fox News for information.)
Ben Franklin considered the postal service his proudest accomplishment and personally ensured that the service was written in the U.S. Constitution. How about the great constitutional scholars (the “originalists”) who cherish the exact words of the founding fathers in matters great and small? If two words in the Second Amendment can guarantee an automatic weapon in every hip pocket, how about Ben Franklin’s child?
The post office has served as a community nerve center for centuries. Maybe Newt Gingrich can abandon a sick, aging wife who had supported his early youth and raised his children, but can we abandon this all-American grandmother?
Congress can now adjourn and do what they do best: raise money for re-election campaigns.
Devil’s Dictionary Quote of the week:
Golf: The terminal stage of a wasted life.
Rodney Quinn, a former Maine secretary of state and university history and government instructor, lives in Westbrook. He can be reached at rquinn@maine.rr.com.
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