Postal Service Plunges While FedEx Soars

Maybe it's time to privatize the whole thing:

Private postal services have flourished as the US public mail system struggles, and the differences were never more clear on Wednesday.

On the same day that FedEx Corp announced a booming 33-per-cent jump in profits, the US Postal Service (USPS) declared an emergency end to its contributions to the health insurance portion of the federal pension fund for its workers.

The move by the public mail deliverer, effective on Friday, will save it 800 million dollars between Friday and the end of the fiscal year on September 30, Dave Partenheimer of the USPS said.
Without the savings from the emergency suspension, Partenheimer said the USPS could run out of funds by October.

It's not only that private mail systems have cut into postal service income. The increasing use of the internet for communication has practically stopped the art of letter writing and snail-mail deliveries.

FedEx, UPS and other private delivery services do a good, fast and efficient job because they know if they don't they'll lose customers. They don't have a monopoly on certain mail segments the way the US Postal Service does. Although I've never had any serious complaints with the way my local postal officials do their jobs, the organization as a whole is going to have to step up and convince Americans that their services are worthwhile if they want to survive without being an increasing burden on American taxpayers. At some point, if first class postal rates continue to rise, people will just stop using them and seek alternatives, as they've already done with many forms of communication.

Electronic communication has become so commonplace that a couple of years ago I had to show my teenage son how to address an envelope. He'd never done it.  There's a whole generation coming up that will have no use for most USPS services.