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Stop the Mail Fraud

By Frederick Corrigan

The United States is in a financial turmoil, high unemployment, low housing sales and government overspending.

We’ve handed out loans to save our automakers.

We’re printing money to pay for stimulus packages that haven’t got the economy going.

We’ve made loans to financial institutions and they hand out excessive bonuses to a privilege few.

Finally, there is one man who wants to take an action that makes sense. The head of the Postal Service wants to stop delivering mail on Saturdays. He must not be in an elected position!

The US postal service delivered 115 billion fewer letters and packages in 2009 than in 2008. This was a 15% reduction in deliveries. This also helps to account for the 7 billion dollar loss that was reported by the postal service.

Delivery of mail 5 days a week could have many benefits.

This move could mean up to 20% less employee payroll.

The post office could park their delivery trucks on Saturdays, which adds up to 20% longer useable life for the vehicles. Fuel consumption would also be reduced by 20%. The pollution from postal vehicles would be reduced by 20%.

The biggest savings would come from the future benefits and insurance packages that these federal employees receive. People are living longer and retirement packages are paid for longer periods now, then when these programs were started.

The post office is doing less business, yet their costs are increasing. You and I can’t continue to run a business that is losing money. How can we, the taxpayer, keep paying for a losing service?

Stop spending money that we don’t have! It is fraud to give away our money for a service that we don’t need.

Hats off to the director of the postal service!!!

Contributor's Note

I would love to have comments pro and con. How is the mail system in your country working?

PLEASE VISIT THE CONTRIBUTOR'S WEBSITE

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100% Agree!! Government must stop spending so much money. This is a good idea for a baby step in the right direction. If the Federal Government saves a $billion here and a $billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money

Thanks for your comments and support,Jim. Somehow, we need to get this message to congress.
Best wishes.
Frederick

You speak the truth Fredrick... I fear that the 20% savings realized from the service reduction will be immediately wasted else where though. But it is a move in the responsible direction, one can hope others will follow this lead.

Maybe the savings will help to balance the postal budget and then move forward to a better operation.
Thanks for stopping by and for your support, Brock.
Best wishes.
Frederick

I do not think that cutting back on services is necessarily a good way to save money, but if they do cut out a day, why Saturday? How about cutting back on junk mail instead? Why give a cheaper rate to people who are just being annoying?

Also, I've heard that the US Post Office uses a barely comprehensible amount of fuel just for ground service. How about using electric carts recharged with solar power, at least in highly populated areas? They could pay for them by charging for ads to be displayed on the carts, instead of stuffed into our mailboxes.

Thank you for your great comments, Janet. Monday through Friday is a normal work week. If you were to not deliver on any other day, the delivery person would be working a very odd workweek. Solar powered vehicles will be part of the future, as will electric vehicles.
Best wishes.
Frederick

We do not have mail delivery on Saturdays in Canada. I was not aware that US did.

Thank you for making me aware of the system in Canada, June.
Best to you.
Frederick

I never though about it before but its a great idea. There would be savings all around.

Makes sense to me too, Eliza. This is a start, now we need to push congress.
Thanks for your support.
Best wishes.
Frederick

I could definitely live without mail for two days. It makes every kind of sense to shorten the mail week.

We could all do without mail for two days to help balance a service that we need.
Thanks for your comments, Karla.
Best wishes.
Frederick

Money was made round to go round. If we all spend money than the profits roll on. Governments are spending money and offering stimulus bonuses so that others have money to spend so that profits roll on. Replacing the delivery vehicles with electric ones is a good idea. Money would be spent to purchase them and profits roll on. Profit is what drives economies. If the major parts of the Postal Service were privatized would the Service still be unprofitable?

Our deliveries are made by contractors. Lots of our smaller Post offices have been contracted out (or sold?).

Great comments, Reg. There is a need to close some post offices as well. The electric vehicles would also help to reduce pollution and reduce the use of fossil fuels.
Thanks for your support.
Best to you.
Frederick

Hi, Frederick,
The postal service is also a social service - and social services do not sit well with private business.

The Federal Reserve is an unaudited private company that has America by the short and curlies! Until the American public can get control of the American fiscal scene into the hands of qualified ELECTED representatives you are going to see many similar 'ostensibly sensible' schemes put forward to gradually reduce the level of services given at all levels of the social spectrum.

America is a country! It is not a corner shop selling sweeties. The collective knowledge and expertise of an elected body should be in charge - NOT - a small, unelected board of directors that is not even required to justify the decisions it makes (that is, of course, if you ever find out what those decisions are!)!

Thank you for your very thoughtful comments, Arthur. Some members of congress are already sticking their nose in to save Saturday deliveries. Elections are coming up for some of them in November.
Best to you.
Frederick

I forgot, the mail system in Spain works like everything in Spain - reliably and often amazingly efficiently. But, it is run as a service and our postmen and ladies do a grand job delivering the service.

Thanks for the additional info, Arthur.
Frederick

We don´t have a Saturday delivery in Spain. In fact, in the village I live in, we only get a delivery at all if the postman decides to work that day!

Thank you for stopping by and for your comments, Keith.
Best wishes.
Frederick

Perhaps the real crux of the matter is not that the postal services are losing money but why. Seems the internet and emails have more to do with the decline in postal services than any other cause. I can write, as I am now, a letter or note and it can be received around the world in seconds, no wonder the postal service is in decline. The problem of course for the service provider is how far to cut costs in an effort to save money? Because the poorer the service the less it is used and so we are on a downward spiral.
The only use the postal service seems to have now is the delivery of parcels and highly confidential items. It will be almost impossible for them to recover from this situation.

There are many things that we do on the internet, that we used to do through the mail, Adrian. We pay bills, file our income taxes, make bank deposits and withdrawals and have our pay checks and social security checks direct deposited to our banks. That's a lot of mail and paper. We're saving trees and that's a good thing.
Best to you.
Frederick

As said before, I'm willing to give up a Saturday mailing in the interest of saving money, but Adrian got me thinking...
I wonder how long it will take "them" to figure out how to charge for emails? Written out, it just looks silly, but I can't really take it back.

We know that we pay for internet service now, Karla. I believe that as time goes on, we will pay more, it's a fact of life. However, we pay $.42 to mail a letter that takes 5 days to get across the country. Now we know why we use emails.
Thank for your support and your comments.
Best to you.
Frederick

I think that the problem with this (keeping in mind that I am no expert on this) might be that if the Post Offices themselves are closed on Saturday (not just delivery), that means that mail will not be sorted on that day. This means that time-critical contents (say, for instance many checks) will not reach their destinations in a time-critical manner. Next day air will take on a whole new meaning if mailed on a Friday.

Methinks that this may end up being a can of worms. Again, I'm no expert -- but that never stopped me from giving an opinion anyway... :)

Jim, like your intels, your opinions are appreciated. Post offices would be open to sort mail, handle window customers, postal boxes and critical deliveries.
Six day work weeks require extra people or overtime. This is a large part of the savings.
Best wishes.
Frederick

First to Karla Whitmore's comment: Certainly, the post office could sort mails on Saturdays, which doesn't imply that delivery must take place then.

There certainly is much less offline mail traffic nowadays. If mail is urgent, a higher postal price should make timely sending and receiving an option.

I live on Tenerife Island, where mail seems to arrive faster from overseas than from within the island. But, this is not unique to the biggest of all Canary Islands. It also happens like that in Germany, I have been told. I wouldn't have a suggestion on how to solve this puzzle. By the way, postmen in Tenerife use scooters and other bikes. A problem, when it rains, one mailman said to me once...
Mail service on this Island of the former Guanches is pretty much reliable and I wouldn't have cause for complaints. But then, not too much makes its way to my house box.
I still remember my German childhood, where mail was distributed on foot. Also, this was the case in Durban, South Africa, where I lived for 25 years. There may have been some taking out of mail by bicycles. Also, post boxes are highly popular in ZA, especially for business in big towns.

Thank you for visiting and for your very informational comments, Gabriele. I appreciate learning about other parts of the world.
Best to you.
Frederick

Junk mail in Tenerife is delivered by private companies. The post office has nothing to do with it. Interesting... Isn't it?

Very interesting, Gabriele as are all of the comments that I've received on this intel.
Best wishes.
Frederick

I've been busy with a new website so haven't commented lately.
I agree that this is a good first step for the postal service to save money. My understanding is that if the junk mail was eliminated the service could not survive. It is too bad that all government agencies do not make a real effort to cut spending and waste.

Thank you for visiting and for your comments, Walt. They are going to have to make some adjustments as are the people who use this service.
Make certain that you list your new website on your profile page.
Best to you.
Frederick

Makes sense to me, but whether it makes the general population happy would be relative to whether business won't feel unnecessarily handicapped.

The general population may not realize that other countries such as Canada and Australia don't have Saturday deliveries. We can survive without this luxury.
Thank you for visiting and for your support, Paul.
Best wishes.
Frederick

Here in the UK at one time we used to have two deliveries a day. That stopped a long time ago though, so we just get the one delivery, which in my case can be anywhere from 8 am to 1 pm. Many business don`t open on a Saturday so I don`t suppose they`d complain if there was no Saturday delivery.

Thanks for your visit and your comments, Geoff.I think that the majority of people would choose less service, over increased rates or no service.
Best to you.
Frederick

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