Businessman Hunter Likes Big Government Mail

Jon Hunter loathes big government. In Hunter's world, health insurance reform, financial reform, and energy reform are all efforts to shrink the private sector and grow government.

So how does the Leader Printing executive feel about scaling back the United States Postal Service?

The prospect of losing Saturday delivery from the Postal Service is a huge concern for Americans, and we should fight to retain it to better serve America.

...[T]he Postal Service should be considering improving its delivery performance and expanding choices for mailers. As the economy recovers, businesses and consumers will need a reliable and affordable deliverer of mail. Our nation's economic health depends on it.

South Dakota's congressional delegation supports ongoing Saturday delivery. But we'll need the help of other members of Congress to reject this idea and push the Postal Service back into fulfilling its mission of affordable, universal delivery. [Jon Hunter, "Now Is the Time to Fight to Retain Saturday Delivery," Madison Daily Leader, 2010.07.20].

By Hunter's logic, Americans may not have a right to universal health care, but they apparently have a right to receive advertisements six days a week mailed from Madison's convenient central location at the lowest rates possible, courtesy not of the free market of but Uncle Sam.

Hunter's business interest in cheap federal mail inspires not only political inconsistency but typical MDL illogic:

The irony is that the Postal Service blames an increase in the use of email as a contributing factor in volume decreases and financial losses. Yet they believe that reducing service will somehow reverse this trend? [Hunter, 2010.07.20]

Hunter's language in that last sentence is a bit unclear. What trend does he think USPS officials are trying to reverse? Obviously, reducing service will not reverse the trend of Internet-driven decreases in mail volume, and I don't think any USPS official has argued that it would. But when there's less mail to deliver, the logical way to reverse or at least mitigate financial losses is to spend less money, and reducing service is one logical way to do that.

Perhaps Hunter simply believes that it's more important for the federal government to continue stimulating the economy by providing printers and advertisers with cheap universal delivery and by employing lots and lots of postal workers. I'm fine with that. And heck, I enjoy sending and receiving mail on Saturday, too. But I don't have to square my support for reliable, efficient, universal government mail service with conservative Republican principles the way Jon Hunter does.

United States Postal Service -- Not Bad!

The United States Postal Service has been ridiculed by various conservative commenters as a poster child for ineffective government programs. Losing money, can't compete against Fed Ex and UPS,—proof positive the feds can't manage anything right, let alone compete with private health insurance, right?

But why exactly is USPS $7 billion in the hole? Is it inherent government waste and inefficiency? No: it seems the postal service is just subject to economic factors, like everyone else:

• 70% of households with computers are paying bills online, up from 64% last year.
• Increased use of e-filing for tax returns takes two bites out of postal paper volume: fewer papers sent to IRS, fewer refund checks sent to all corners of the map.
• The recession means less junk mail. USPS estimates its total volume will drop 13% this year, from 202B to 175B pieces [see Andrea Fuller, "As Internet Booms, the Postal Service Fights Back," New York Times, 2009.08.]
  

And they still deliver and pick up my mail five miles out of town, reliably, six days a week. Not bad.

The fact that USPS is losing money says nothing some inherent flaw in government services. The real reasons for the USPS's deficit—less paper waste, easier tax filing, fewer credit card offers and ads cluttering up the mailbox—are all reasons to cheer.