Nope. Don't shut it down. Don't need to, and it has nothing to do with my hatred of junk mail.

The Post Office may be relied upon by some for services, but it's going to collapse under the weight of its own ineptitude. At this point, it's a total self-licking ice cream cone. It might as well be mailing blank pieces of paper to everyone in the country to recycle, because that's essentially what it's doing right now. The Post office is accountable for almost as much of my recycling waste as Costco, but with fewer food products to show for it.

Don't kill it. Rather, live and let die.

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I blog, I tweet. When I'm not writing or goofing around on Seahawks.NET.

I agree. The USPS is at a point where downsizing needs to occur.

It has been downsizing for the past few years. Mail sorting centers are shutting down and consolidating, smaller, rural Post Offices are closing their doors, they are no longer hiring permanent carriers, all new work is for temporary employees that don't receive benefits. How this justifies milking them for future retirement still doesn't make sense. Its just kicking them when their down.

If you owned a business would you want to siphon off your budget to pay for excess future retirements at a rate higher than you can afford? Or would you want to do it the normal, pay-as-you-go way?

Physical letter mail is a dying industry. Period. 95%+ of all delivered physical items in 15 years will be packages, not letters/envelopes/anything flat and small.

I must be the only one that appreciates getting a real card or letter sent to me, rather than some obligatory e-card or even worse, e-mail.

Probably.

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2013 AAR: Chris Harper

Largent, do you also prefer renting a VHS tape from Blockbuster instead of watching a film on Netflix?

I love physical letters and cards! I get so excited when I see that flag on my mailbox go up, that I handcrank my car in no time flat! Those handwritten cards just make the message seem so much more personal than stuff you get via a telegraph or by semaphore.

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Okay, so maybe that pass rush is still an issue. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I'm with ya Largent, but I can wait til Monday to get that card. I don't want to see the demise of the postal service, but just the reverse, I'd like to see it be able to survive, but to do so, will require forward thinking and some revision of their business plan. Letters and cards just don't pay the bills. Packages is where the cash is at. They should never stop delivering standard mail, but to keep doing so means they need to continue to come up with ways to streamline the mail operations while focusing more on package delivery. This will enable a level of cash flow to continue mail service. If they continue on their current path, they'd end up having to shutter the operations eventually, or even worse, let Congress take them over

#1 easiest way of competing... drop the every address daily service.

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RIP ROAD WOES 12/2/2012

They are required to be revenue-neutral, meaning they can't be in it for profits. They have a monopoly on letter carrying, which I'm sure some private companies would like to exploit at for-profit levels. There's ways to streamline a changing industry without cutting a day of work and arbitrarily filling future retirement funds. The USPS needs innovative thinkers to break into the tech industry. Somehow offer email accounts, create postage apps that can send letters without stamps and that can turn pictures into postcards.

Really, the best idea is to start a national campaign and write a parody song of "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy" called "Save a Mailman, Write a Letter." I just don't think I have the chops to pull it off.