as seen on tv
Senator
I yield to no one in my effervescent joy at getting mail. Magazines I’ve subscribed to, “limited time offers”; pictures from distant relatives who aren’t internet savvy; even bills. It’s reassuring to get a physical reminder of what you spent and when it must be paid . . .harder to ignore than a blip in your email inbox which might be mistaken for spam.
So . .. I’m not a fan of ending Saturday mail delivery. But it’s a done deal, apparently. This follows other, decremental degradations of service over the years. Mail used to be delivered twice a day, or so my 'rents tell me. Remember that? If you do you’re old. More recently the post office stopped allowing you to put a mail slot in your front door, or a box next to the door, if you’re a suburbanite. The mailbox has to go at the curb, so the postal worker can deposit your stuff without leaving his vehicle.
That makes sense. And the next step is already upon us. If you’re contemplating purchasing a townhome in a “new development”, you must accept a cluster mailbox at the entrance to your community, which frees the mailcarrier from any obligation to actually enter your neighborhood – he stops once at the cluster of dozens of boxes, then leaves.
Recently, my local post office has gotten fidgety about passports. They don’t let you get in the regular line, don’t have passport hours which coincide with the facilty open and close (its shorter). I saw some guy forking over hundreds of dollars in cash for his passport the other day, which probably means he’s “unbanked” and doesn’t have a major credit card.
All of these steps, individually make as much sense to me as they did to the elves who dreamed them up as tactics to cope with ballooning costs (mostly healthcare and retirement) without having the “forever” stamps end up costing more than a combo meal at McDonalds.
But ending Saturday mail delivery and refusing to even enter your new townhouse neighborhood ultimately mean there will be fewer new jobs – the kind of job you could do with just a high school diploma, or even less. I don’t want to single out the health and retirement benefits as the sole cause of this “death spiral” – but it’s a significant factor, along with higher gas costs, and the refusal to phase out redundant and undercapacity post offices and sorting facilities because congressman so and so is “protecting his constituents”
My newspaper is delivered daily to my door – two of them, in fact. They come both in the same plastic sleeve, and are put there by the same delivery person, and it doesn’t cost anywhere near what a “forever stamp” does. If you tried to mail a daily newspaper it would cost a lot, and take 3 days to deliver. With the present system, its just a matter of a couple of hours between coming off the presses, and arrival at my door, before I have to leave for work. The cost has to be pennies per day, since I’m paying less than $15 a month for each paper – the delivery charge is ridiculously low.
This is ultimately what’s going to happen to the monthly magazines I love, the junk mail offers of things I didn’t know I needed, the LL Bean Catalogs . .. some person will deliver them straight to my door because the postal service doesn’t go to my door, doesn’t deliver on Saturdays, and is too expensive.
Which means another dramatic reduction in mail volume, 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] class postage revenue, and more pontification by the USPS elves on how to cut costs in ways that don’t annoy congressmen with underused bulk sorting facilities in their districts, or USPS benefits administrators.
Full disclosure – yes I enjoy a physical newspaper, which I can carry with me throughout the day. A magazine which I can read for a while, fold the page, then pick up again the next day. Reread a compelling article in it, a week later. I’m just that kind of person. I like to think I’m part of the solution, in maintaining a more measured pace of living, with traditional touch points, rather than someone who is causing the death of real newspapers and magazines. But that’s just me.
So . .. I’m not a fan of ending Saturday mail delivery. But it’s a done deal, apparently. This follows other, decremental degradations of service over the years. Mail used to be delivered twice a day, or so my 'rents tell me. Remember that? If you do you’re old. More recently the post office stopped allowing you to put a mail slot in your front door, or a box next to the door, if you’re a suburbanite. The mailbox has to go at the curb, so the postal worker can deposit your stuff without leaving his vehicle.
That makes sense. And the next step is already upon us. If you’re contemplating purchasing a townhome in a “new development”, you must accept a cluster mailbox at the entrance to your community, which frees the mailcarrier from any obligation to actually enter your neighborhood – he stops once at the cluster of dozens of boxes, then leaves.
Recently, my local post office has gotten fidgety about passports. They don’t let you get in the regular line, don’t have passport hours which coincide with the facilty open and close (its shorter). I saw some guy forking over hundreds of dollars in cash for his passport the other day, which probably means he’s “unbanked” and doesn’t have a major credit card.
All of these steps, individually make as much sense to me as they did to the elves who dreamed them up as tactics to cope with ballooning costs (mostly healthcare and retirement) without having the “forever” stamps end up costing more than a combo meal at McDonalds.
But ending Saturday mail delivery and refusing to even enter your new townhouse neighborhood ultimately mean there will be fewer new jobs – the kind of job you could do with just a high school diploma, or even less. I don’t want to single out the health and retirement benefits as the sole cause of this “death spiral” – but it’s a significant factor, along with higher gas costs, and the refusal to phase out redundant and undercapacity post offices and sorting facilities because congressman so and so is “protecting his constituents”
My newspaper is delivered daily to my door – two of them, in fact. They come both in the same plastic sleeve, and are put there by the same delivery person, and it doesn’t cost anywhere near what a “forever stamp” does. If you tried to mail a daily newspaper it would cost a lot, and take 3 days to deliver. With the present system, its just a matter of a couple of hours between coming off the presses, and arrival at my door, before I have to leave for work. The cost has to be pennies per day, since I’m paying less than $15 a month for each paper – the delivery charge is ridiculously low.
This is ultimately what’s going to happen to the monthly magazines I love, the junk mail offers of things I didn’t know I needed, the LL Bean Catalogs . .. some person will deliver them straight to my door because the postal service doesn’t go to my door, doesn’t deliver on Saturdays, and is too expensive.
Which means another dramatic reduction in mail volume, 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] class postage revenue, and more pontification by the USPS elves on how to cut costs in ways that don’t annoy congressmen with underused bulk sorting facilities in their districts, or USPS benefits administrators.
Full disclosure – yes I enjoy a physical newspaper, which I can carry with me throughout the day. A magazine which I can read for a while, fold the page, then pick up again the next day. Reread a compelling article in it, a week later. I’m just that kind of person. I like to think I’m part of the solution, in maintaining a more measured pace of living, with traditional touch points, rather than someone who is causing the death of real newspapers and magazines. But that’s just me.
