Do you pay your bills on line? How often do you use snail mail?

[HiPointDem]

81. Do you have packages delivered to your home after shopping online? That's 'snail mail'.

of course the crisis is manufactured, and the manufacturing began in 1970 when Congress made USPS a for-profit 'corporation' in competition with other 'corporations'.

FedEx was founded the next year, and was founded *because* of that legislation.

The crisis has been manufactured by decades of legislation that systematically took away USPS's business and put it at a disadvantage in the 'competition' -- BY LAW.

“For example, in the mid-1970s the post office was told to remove copy machines from post offices under pressure from lobbyists representing office equipment stores who feared that USPS was taking away its business. Later when the USPS initiated a “Pack and Send” service, the outcry from Mailboxes Etc. and other private packing stores successfully challenged the service. Years later, when Internet shopping took off, the delivery of packages to individual households should have resulted in a dramatic increase in USPS business. But parcel shipments were generated by large organizations and the usps was forbidden by law from lowering prices and not allowed to negotiate discounts and thus lost business. This resulted in the entirely incredible situation in the 1990s where the United States Government negotiated an agreement for the delivery of U.S. government package services with Fed Ex because the USPS was not allowed to negotiate for lower prices!”

Today the strongest force in shaping the future of the postal service, aside from Congress, is the bulk mailers. Indeed, bulk mailers are formally represented in the USPS through the Postmaster General’s Mailers Technical Advisory Committee. Bulk mailers don’t care about post office closings because big mailers present their mail at Bulk Mail Entry Units. Saturday delivery is not a major concern either because advertising mail would do fine with even three day delivery. Nor do they care about having a blue collection box on every corner, half of which have disappeared in the past 20 years.

What bulk mailers do care about is price. They receive huge discounts for pre-sorting that is far in excess of what the postal service saves by receiving mail pre sorted.

http://onthecommons.org/magazine/end-post-office-public-institution

The use of the USPS as a subsidized delivery system for junk mail can be laid at the feet of CONGRESS.

BTW, USPS delivers a significant percent of both FedEX & UPS packages, at locations those businesses find unprofitable to service.

I'll be laughing when all the people who said, "I have the internet, why do i need the post office" are crying when the rates for delivering the crap they buy online go up.