The Post Office, A Fine Example of Government Run Business.

The Post Office, A Fine Example of Government Run Business.

So Tuesday July 6th the Federal Postal Service has announced it's asking for 2-cent rate increase to fight is financial crisis, as of 2009 the Federal Postal Service was three+ billion dollars in the red for that year and is still losing money. So their idea is to increase prices in a down economy, that is just about as brilliant as when customers were complaining about the long lines and wait times the Federal Postal Service removed all their clocks from the pick up areas, if the continue to complain will the next take their customers time pieces and any thing that could tell time? That would be really brilliant.

One of the biggest problems the Federal Postal Service has is that the Unions of the U.S. Postal Service, we have all seen it, the long lines with only one or two people to serve us, the other workers, if you can see them, are setting doing nothing ignoring the fact that they have a long line of customers. This is because of those unions creating rules that allow those workers to take long or multiple brakes.

Consider the  Federal Postal Service's main competition, (only allowed by the good graces of the government), United Parcel Service (UPS) and FedEx, UPS's net income for 2009 was 2.15 billion dollars in the green and FedEx's net income for 2009 was 1.18 billion dollars. Yet the Federal Postal Service was 3.79 billion dollars in the red, that's more then the net income of both FedEx and UPS, the total revenue for these companies for 2009 were for the Federal Postal Service 68 billion dollars, UPS $45.3 billion, and FedEx $37.95 billion. The Postal Service should be able to make some kind of positive income, and yet it makes five billion dollars less in net income, why? Simple the Postal Service is run by bureaucrats and politicians not businessmen, run in government fashion they pay for things in a way the no business ever would, like paying five thousand dollars for a five dollar hammer you could get at Lowe's.

Also I want to compare the size of the workforce of the Federal Postal Service and it's competition, the Postal Service employs almost 596,000 people, UPS employs approximately 408,000 people and FedEx employs approximately 280,000, this information that is important for a simple reason, when UPS has only two thirds of the employees and makes two thirds of what the Federal Postal Service they manage to make two billion dollars in profit, and UPS has a more global operation when compared to the Postal Service.     

As long as the Postal Service is run by bureaucrats and politicians and not businessmen it will continue to lose money just as Amtrak, which Joe Bidden loves, does. If the Postal Service was to be privatized and given the ability to get its house in order a rate increase might not be a problem, but as it stands now they want more of your money and give you less service, they also want to go after their major competition E-Mail with some kind of tax per E-Mail you send, or at lest that was an idea they had floated some time ago. Lastly I wanted to point out that the Federal Postal Service tries to compete with UPS by claiming they have a "greener delivery" then UPS, that one is a real winner Postal Service, especially when more Americans think Global Warming is a farce.

Solomon.