Market Watch offers a very detailed and thorough look at the problems and conditions that the USPS is currently facing. Excerpts can't really do it justice but a few are listed below.
1. Your failure to send your Mother a proper birthday card is the least of our problems
For four days at the end of June, retired letter carrier Jamie Partridge and nine other current and former postal workers didn’t eat. They were on a hunger strike to protest what the group saw as the biggest threat to the U.S. Postal Service’s continued existence: Not e-mail’s steady encroachment on snail mail’s territory, not a prolonged economic downturn or the growing popularity of corporate shipping services, but government-mandated payments to pre-fund health care benefits for postal retirees—75 years into the future.
2. Our retirees are just fine, thanks.
On Aug. 1, for the first time since the 2006 mandate, the Postal Service did not pay its $5.5 billion annual retiree health benefits bill, and announced that it’s likely to default on the next payment too, due Sept. 30.
3. Anybody want to buy an ailing government agency?
A USPS spokesman says privatization isn’t the answer, adding that it would be hard for even a private company to profit serving rural areas
4. We’re hiring our competitors to do our jobs for us.
The Postal Service increasingly relies on outside corporations for everything from sorting mail and transporting it by air and ground to advertising and I.T. consulting: Last year, the agency spent more than $12 billion on such contracts.
5. We’re addicted to junk mail.
Big Mailers—including banks and catalog publishers as well as presort mail companies—are a powerful force on Capitol Hill, and the Postal Service courts their business because the vast breadth of envelopes buoys mail volume. Through its work-share discounting program, the Postal Service offers reduced postage rates to companies with large stakes in the mail, from mass mailers like AT&T and Bank of America to mail-handling specialists like Pitney Bowes—that presort mail or deliver it part of the way.
In theory, the benefits should be mutual: Working with outside service providers increases efficiency and saves money, as contractors are often cheaper to hire than unionized postal employees. But the postage discounts the Postal Service offers contractors occasionally exceed the amount it saves in the deal; last year, 35 of these work-share arrangements were underwater.
6. Next thing you know, we’ll be asking you to trust us with your money.
The failure of postal products as well as declining mail volume has led some industry insiders to recommend that the Postal Service diversify its offerings beyond the mail. A July report from the Postal Service’s Office of the Inspector General recommended that the USPS assess the viability of non-postal offerings ranging from public Internet access to greeting cards to financial products. (The law currently limits the Postal Service’s ability to sell non-postal products.)
7. We’re sitting on a national treasure
One of the biggest landowners in New York City, the Postal Service is sitting on a valuable real estate portfolio in its edifices across the country, many of which are in prime downtown locations. In light of its recent financial problems, the Postal Service has begun eyeing its facilities as a means of generating cash through leverage or property sales.
8. ...And we’ll sell you a piece of it
It may sound crazy to invest in an organization that loses millions of dollars an hour, but some intrepid investors say they’ve made millions off the Postal Service—by becoming its landlords. Currently 75% of post offices, or more than 26,000 properties, are privately owned, and the Postal Service pays rent to people like Marvin Bakalar, a Rhinebeck, N.Y., resident who has been buying, selling and brokering post office properties (from the USPS and private owners) for more than three decades.
9. We’re a hotbed for crime
Alongside your friendly mail carrier is a dark history of the Postal Service: It has long been a target—or a medium—for swaths of crime ranging from mail theft to Anthrax attacks to murder. For that reason, the USPS has its own police force that has been charged with safeguarding and ensuring confidence in the postal system for more than 200 years—the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
10. Our greatest strength is supernatural
“When you have people going to people’s houses five or six days a week, they put out fires, they see people who are sick,” says PRC chairman Goldway. “They’re sort of an extra police force.”
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