Word: postally
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...that created it contains such glaring contradictions that the Postal Service is virtually destined to fail. On the one hand, it is expected to break even; Government subsidies are even now being phased out, with 1984 as a hoped-for cut-off date. On the other hand, it is expected to provide all kinds of public services-many of them money losing-that Americans have depended on for generations, and still depend on today. "The Postal Service," says the law, "shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the nation together through the personal...
Until recently, U.S. postal operations were no more supposed to pay their way than were the Army, Navy or dozens of other federal departments set up to serve the people. The Second Congress in 1792 started the practice of subsidizing the Post Office, and succeeding Congresses continued it. Those early legislators realized that the Post Office was something quite different from a business: it was a means of uniting a sprawling, diverse country and holding it together...
...private distributors are successful, the Postal Service will sink into much deeper trouble. The private carriers would take away business in cities and suburbs, where high volume makes it easier to turn a profit, and leave to the Postal Service the rural, low-population areas, which are gross money losers. The prospect would be a never-ending spiral of higher rates, lower volume and deteriorating service. As rates went up, more customers would flee, and rates would have to go up again...
Already the spiral is beginning. Since 1969, because of high rates and poor service, the Postal Service has lost about one-third of its parcel post business to private companies. This year, for the first time since the Depression, total mail volume-not just parcel post-is down. Reason: rising rates in a time of economic recession. Postmaster General Bailar, along with nearly everyone else who has studied the problem, warns that the vastly higher rates proposed by Wenner would shrink volume still further. Yet, adds Bailar, "the fixed costs of postal service would remain," and thus rates would have...
What should be done? One suggestion in Congress is to turn the Postal Service completely over to private enterprise, making it either a regulated monopoly, like the telephone industry, or setting up several competing postal systems. Illinois Representative Philip Crane has even introduced a bill to end the Government monopoly of first-class mail and open it up to private competition. Such systems might work in heavily populated areas, but there would be no profit in serving the rest of the country. Congress would then have to provide big subsidies to serve less populated areas or allow the private postal...