The postal service and its struggles
(Alyssa Hunter)
The United States Government Accountablity Office recently announced that the United States Postal Service is in danger of financial insolvency.
According politicsdaily.com the U.S. Postal Service had a $2 billion deficit which has jumped to $7 billion in the last two years.
To avoid further financial stress Postmaster General John E. Potter went to Congress requesting cancelation of Saturday mail shipments, reducing wages, and hours for employees.
According to MSNBC, the Postal Service will close 250 locations across the country, resulting in the loss of about 35,000 jobs.
The U.S. Postal Service currently employs nearly 730,000 employees around the country, with 633,000 of those being career employees. If the Postal Service is dismantled, that’s three-quarters of a million jobs gone.
The Postal Service ranks as the third largest employer in the U.S. behind the Department of Defense and the Wal-Mart corporation.
Yes, Wal-mart employs more people nationwide than the U.S. Postal Service.
Many people though have mixed views on the situation. Some view the Postal Service as a waste of government money and should be left alone all together in favor of email.
“Part of me wonders if the Postal Service is in denial of it’s future, with email and the electronic age making them almost redundant,” said Joshua Ramirez, a Saddleback instructor. “Yet at the same time when we have an outage like the one we had last week we would be in deep trouble.”
Many argue that the Postal Service should be privatized business and not a government run service.
According to abcnews.com, many European countries like the Netherlands and Germany have privatized their nationwide postal service.
Privatization aside, what if the American people chose to use already private businesses such as FedEx and UPS for their postal needs?
“I don’t think they should go bankrupt, not while the alternatives like FedEx are so expensive,” Jad Cantari, 20, civil engineer said.
For FedEx, a typical package weighing over five pounds can cost anywhere from $15 to around $100 depending on the rate of shipping to ship in the same area code.
UPS has similar cost rates from $10 to $100 depending on the shipping options chosen.
While privatization of USPS may have potential, there are many issues that come with privatization. Any private company such as FedEx, UPS and Amazon they can charge however much money they would like to ship a product.
The U.S. Postal Service was made to provide basic service to people who can’t afford to use private businesses. Now with probable privatization, we have a few choices, most likely for all around the same basic price.
(Alyssa Hunter)