"Under U.S. law, mail delivery is a "basic and fundamental" government function meant to "bind the nation together" by providing service to "all communities" at a reasonable price." [1]
There is an interesting article in today's 'Wall Street Journal' outlining plans of the US Post Office to
considerably reduce the number of individual post offices.
This article begins by saying, "The U.S. Postal Service plays two roles in America: an agency that keeps rural areas linked to the rest of the nation, and one that loses a lot of money." In consideration, I wondered, 'what about the primary role of delivering mail'? Which of course true, but that noted by the WSJ is true as well, if perhaps even more so.
Personally, I could more or less do without the post office, and have at times. Most of my correspondence is online, with any packages more usually delivered by UPS. But in a certain irony I happen to live in a place where the mail is hand delivered to my private mail box, without the need others have to walk or drive to wherever the US Post Office has deigned to put numerous gang boxes for their convenience. But all that may well be changing.
In
Colorado, for instance, one post office they tried to close, but were dissuaded from for now, is that of the small town of Glen Haven. It is the only example I know of personally, but would guess there will be others in Colorado. If guessing, I'd say they may well try to close the quite small post office of Carson, NM. Which is out in the middle of nowhere, save a lot of scattered residences, who would have a long drive into town otherwise. That could be the reality for a lot of people.
Beginning in March the US Post office plans to close 2,000 post offices, in addition to 491 already announced. That is but the beginning of a, thus far, slowly evolving trend. By law the postal service can only close post offices for maintenance reasons, lease expirations, or other reasons that do not include profitability.
Sometimes they stretch such definitions. Such as the recent closing of the post office for Prairie City, South Dakota, which had been in existence for 102 years. The given reason was "safety deficiencies," but in truth the only problem was a faulty furnace, that locals offered to fix themselves, but offer declined and post office closed.
The postal service would do away with any such pretense, and is asking for a change in the law which would allow them to close a post office solely for financial reasons. There are currently about 32,000 post offices in the United States, many of whom lose money. The postal service would like to put under review about half of them, or 16,000, towards possible closing. The implication of this, should it go forward, is that the United States, and quite possibly your neighborhood, will no longer have a postal service resembling anything you, your parents, your grandparents, or their ancestors knew, or could recognize.
Even though I do not use it much, in a sense I use and value our national postal service every day of the year. Beyond simply delivering mail, our postal service does act to "bind" this nation together. That was one of the reasons for its creation, and has well played that role ever since. In the example of Prairie City, SD, their post office served as a meeting point for local gossip and information. With the post office gone, only their church remains as such a focal point. But that can neither replicate the lost mail delivery, nor the subtle but strong tie to the greater nation, the sense of a larger community.
The US Post Office lost $8.5 billion in 2010. This the given reason why our government wishes to largely eliminate a unique service which has served this nation since the time of Benjamin Franklin. If but solely money, and priorities, one might remember that this nation spends only slightly less than $8.5 billion
every month in Afghanistan. So if a question of money, then how this nation spends it, and where. This article notes that the US Post Office is an independent entity, but quasi-official in being able to borrow money from the federal government. That is only because several years ago our government split off part of itself, created this entity so as to absolve itself from the responsibility. With the supposed idea the US Post Office should be self-sustaining and pay its own way. Very much as UPS perhaps, and with no more responsibility than to do whatever necessary for a balanced ledger.
Perhaps in the electronic age the legacy of our founding fathers is as outdated and irrelevant as the
Pony Express. We might see our postal service quickly downsize into a few large impersonal branches, then in time maybe even vanish if it cannot compete on the open market. Or maybe the citizens of this country will decide to have a say, to allow that, or perhaps decide that they would rather see a portion of their tax dollars support an enterprise which does not always allow a financial profit, but pays a real and intangible interest far beyond dollars and cents.
1) 'Postal Service Eyes Closing Thousands of Post Offices,' The Wall Street Journal
Postal Service Eyes Closing Thousands of Post Offices - WSJ.com
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