The postal service is in debt due to a decline in the use of their services because of competing private companies such as UPS. The United States Postal Service is required to have across the board prices, which reduces its ability to compete with private companies that can change their prices at will. It also is in debt due to a congressional mandate that they must prefund retirement health care benefits. "Passage of legislation is urgently needed that provides the postal service with the speed and flexibility needed to cut costs that are not under our controll, including employee health care costs," said Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe.
The plant closings are the latest in a series of moves being considered by the Post office. The Postal Service is also considering cancelling Saturday services and hiking the price of stamps to 50 cents. Under the plan nearly every state would lose at least one mail processing plant with California losing 14, New York losing 12 and Illinois faces the loss of 9 plants. A single plant in Tulsa Oklahoma employs 600 people, and is slated to be closed. According to the Postal Service if nothing is done by the government to bail the Post Office out of debt then they will face 18 Billion in losses by 2015.
Question: How do you think the United States government can save the Postal Service? Or do you think they should allow it to dissolve by itself due to competing private companies?
Sorry, I pressed save instead of publish originally...that's why this is so late.
I believe that the United States Postal Service can not be saved at this point. The closing of the postal service will be devastating because of all the jobs it supplies to people but I can not think of a feasible way to help save it. In an age that is rapidly developping technology that will make processes quicker, writing a letter an mailing it is left in the dust. The only way I could possibly think of for saving it is closing all private companies and having the Postal Service have a monopoly over deliveries (since package delivery is probably on the rise due to online shopping). However, this would then put those employed by private corporations out of business and it would be unconstitutional to stop these businesses. Thus, overall, I do not think we should allow the Postal Service to dissolve but I believe eventually that is what will happen since with the rapid technology nobody is going to want to support the use of mail for much longer (other than for packages).
ReplyDeleteGenerally speaking I do not think that they should close down the postal service and I think that the government can help them save such a large company. The government could step in by providing them with the tools they need to out grow other businesses. Instead of raising the prices of stamps the government should help them keep their prices just as they always were. I do not think the postal service should just dissolve because many people work at this business and those people would be left with nothing. Most of these people would be fprced to learn completely new things after a good spand of theor lives going to the postal service and that is unfair.
ReplyDeleteGenerally speaking I do not think that they should close down the postal service and I think that the government can help them save such a large company. The government could step in by providing them with the tools they need to out grow other businesses. Instead of raising the prices of stamps the government should help them keep their prices just as they always were. I do not think the postal service should just dissolve because many people work at this business and those people would be left with nothing. Most of these people would be fprced to learn completely new things after a good spand of theor lives going to the postal service and that is unfair.
ReplyDeleteGenerally speaking I do not think that they should close down the postal service and I think that the government can help them save such a large company. The government could step in by providing them with the tools they need to out grow other businesses. Instead of raising the prices of stamps the government should help them keep their prices just as they always were. I do not think the postal service should just dissolve because many people work at this business and those people would be left with nothing. Most of these people would be fprced to learn completely new things after a good spand of theor lives going to the postal service and that is unfair.
ReplyDeleteI do not think that there is much as the U.S. government can do to save the Postal Service. I agree with Katie that the government could help them to keep the cost of their prices the same. I think that the Postal Service can help themselves by expanding their company to not only deliver mail but to also deliver packages. I believe that this will help their business because although many people are resorting to paying for their bills online and sending mail via e-mail, more and more people are purchasing items such as clothing online and packages will need to be delivered. I think that it would be extremely devastating if the Postal Services close because over 35,000 jobs will be at risk and that would mean that even more jobs would have to be created in order to recover from the closing down of this business. In other words, I don't think the U.S. Postal Service should allow itself to dissolve by competing companies but rather it should expand its business in order to continue to compete instead of closing for good.
ReplyDeleteI think that if the Postal Service failed, it wouldnt make much of an impact on the country. The reason it is failing is basically because nobody is using it, so why do we need it anyway? the few people who do use it may need to change the ways that they send and receive things and move to a more modern way of paying bills or sending mail. If the postal service is failing then I believe that we should let it fail. The last thing this country needs is for the government to bail-out another business, especially in this economy
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