Toy Story fans can now affix the Buzz Lightyear stamp on their mail.
But what seems to be headed towards "To Infinity & Beyond" (Buzz's signature pre recorded phrase)
is the debt the Postal Service is racking up.
$10 billion in the red is no small chunk of change. Part of their problem is a mandate now convicted felon Tom Delay had a hand in- requiring the Postal Service to have pension $ paid ahead by 75 years.
That accounts for $5 billion of Postal Service Budget blues. The other part is dwindling use of "snail mail" in general. E mail & faxes have become the method of choice for quick delivery. If one must physically send something, places like Fed X & UPS have done a better job of tracking & delivering, for the most part. The postal service is now faced with shutting down many branch offices, and having to cut back 1 day a week delivery. Too bad they were not proactive about it a few years ago, when revenues were down, and gas prices soared. Now it looks like they will have to do both- office closures & reduced delivery. Still, at our house, we think about 80% of what we get in the mail is "junk" ads & things we don't want or need. As far as we are concerned, not having mail delivered on Saturday would be just fine. Our neighbors to the north, Canada has been doing 5 x a week mail delivery - business days only, for 41 years. Canada Post eliminated Saturday mail delivery across the country on Feb 1, 1969.
Frankly, I don't think we'd really miss Saturday mail deliveries.
Otherwise, the postal service, with ever decreasing revenues,
and gas prices skyrocketing, will hit the wall.
Wall-E
5 comments:
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday would just fine work for me.
Well, that's a great sentence. What I meant to say was:
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday would work for me just fine.
It may come to that, Jerry.... but for some reason we can't seem to let just one day go.
i wouldn't mind one less day a week either, but i would worry that it would mean even more jobs lost.
As it is Nonnie, they waited & did nothing for so long, running in the red, that now they are going to have to shut down a bunch of branch offices AND reduce a day. If they had saved $2 to $3 billion a year for the last several years, the situation might not be as dire as it is now.
Stalling only made it worse. Bummah!
On the flip side, they will wind up shutting down post offices, and having to open outlets in local grocery stores, etc.
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