How the Post Office Became a Political Issue
The Post Office offends free market folks who believe private enterprise does everything better than government. With rapidly changing technology the continued existance of the Post Office now seems questionable. Odd for an institution that has always been seen as the most trusted government institution, noted for its professionalism, timeliness and reliability of their service. It used to be viewed as government at its best.
The current politicized Post Office can be traced back half a century. Ideological free market conservatives who thought what the Post Office did should be privatized found a willing ear in a government seeking to move a big chunk of its budget off the books so they could continue to try to pound Vietnam into submission. In 1971 President Nixon signed a bill making the Post Office no longer a direct arm of government but a seperate entity owned by the government but charged with paying its own way.
The Post Office as a separate entity did just fine for decades, frustrating the ideological free market folk as the Post Office continued to be a trusted institution. Then Republicans took control of all three elective branches of the Federal Government in 2000. The Republican Congress had a strong leaning toward ideological free market theories, and George W. Bush as President went along. In 2006, the Republican Congresss pushed through a law requiring the Post office, which was not in debt at that time, to pre-pay 100% of its employee retirement benefits for 70 years into the future.
This was an extraordinarily burdensome requirement. No requirement like this has ever been imposed on any other business or agency, public or private. Even businesses coming out of bankruptcy are treated better. This immediately added 5.5 billion dollars per year in cost on the Post Office. The Post Office still managed to cover costs until the Great Recession, sparked by same Republican mania for unregulated markets, happened two years later. Coupled with the raft of new technologies bursting on the scene — email, instant messaging, and social media sites — the Post Offices business model required a complete overhaul.
Today the Post Office is 47 Billion in debt, although recent parcel delivery contracts with folks like Fed-x and UPS and other commercial carriers, along with other new innovations in their business model, had brought the Post Office back to the point of covering costs before Covid-19. But the free market ideologues point to the 47 billion dollar debt to support of their desire to kill the Post Office.
As a nuetral party it is hard not to view this as free market ideologues cutting the legs out from under the Post Office so they could say “see, it can’t walk.” President Trump, being a man to wants to check off every box in the conservative wish list, put folks in charge of the PO who have drastically reduced mail sorting machines and elminated employee overtime — crippling the effectiveness of the Post Office. Seemingly a foolish political move in the midst of a pandemic with an election coming up where a lot of people are going to want to vote by mail.
So where do we go from here?
Republicans see the Post Office as a business — if it can’t make money it should fail. But our founding fathers and administrations down through history have seen the Post Office as infrastructure that helps build a stronger, cohesive nation. Deliberate policy choices in giving post office contracts played a big part in building our nationwide road, rail and air infrastructure.
Can the hole from killing the Post Office be filled by the private sector? Is some private company going to deliver to every household six days a week? Even in rural areas hours from the nearest town? I doubt it could ever be done by any company answering to Wall Street.
Voting is an even more compelling issue. Is a private company ready to step up to take on the task of accepting, processing and forwarding massive numbers of election ballots in a timely manner? I’m pretty sure not by this November. In the longer term do we to hand this responsability crucail to fair elections over to people whose first loyalty is to making as much money as possible?
More fundementally, is mail service something the private sector will actually do better? History suggests privatizing the Post Office will benefit Wall Street, but harm main street. In the early 1900’s Congress put a 4 pound wieght limit on Postal mail to allow private parcel delivery companies to service larger parcels. Within a few years the 4 largest private carriers formed a cartel to fix prices so in 1913 Congress let the Post Office step into the business and the public responded, overwhelmingly choosing the Post Office for parcel delivery.
Some developed western countries have recenty privatized or partially privatized mail delivery — but they are all geographically small countries, with dense populations and the jury is still out on whether even in those ideal conditions privatization results in a net benefit.
The private sector excels at innovation, at figuring out how to do things better and cheaper. For most of what the Post Office does that sort of innovation is rarely needed. The private sector is not good an repetivive drudge work — the only way for private enterprise to compete with one another for low skill drudge work is by firing workers to bring in machines, exploiting workers by paying as little as possible or fixing prices. Whoever treats their employees the worst, or is most willing to lie to customers, wins. On the nationwide scale immediate privatization will translate into more unemployed or underpayed working people, which will reduce the money circulating on Main street and GDP will drop.
The Post Office has a lot of issues but the immediate privization doesn’t seem wise or feasible at this time.