The structural problems facing the Postal Service are monumental. Despite a tiny uptick last year, first-class mail volume is slowly but steadily eroding as people pay more bills online, send Evites instead of printed invitations and shoot off e-mails rather than write letters. The agency also is facing massive and escalating personnel costs, especially for health care, even as it has embraced automation and reduced staffing needs. And finally, there is the federal government's attempt to change the structure of Postal Service regulation, an effort that postal officials regard as riddled with problems and with favors to private industry.Is it too hard to envision a time when the mail isn't delivered every day but maybe only three or four times a week? (There used to be mail deliveries twice a day, in the dim and distant past.) Anything we need immediately we can get via FedEx. Which we do already.
The Post Office gets a bad rap, particularly in urban environments, but all the problems of urban Post Offices are the same problems inherent in any urban service--yes, massive crowds at lunchtime, but where in, say, New York City at lunchtime aren't there massive crowds and long waits? The USPS, I think, has done a great job of applying technology (they even had an e-mail service long before anyone had heard of the term, which died because, well, no one had heard of the term) and understanding what its real problems are: the decline of letter writing (which the phone did more to kill than anything e- related) and now electronic bill paying. In fact, you may know that in the early 2000s the USPS offered "certified e-mail" for important messages. They also offered a e-bill payment service. They just never promoted them properly.
Oh, and FYI, a common Internet hoax that occasionally makes the rounds has it that the government wants to add a surtax to e-mail and that the USPS has backed it. Sorry, strictly an urban legend.
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