Is the postal service still necessary?

I would like to think so, believe it or not, not everyone has a computer at their disposal,and I still prefer to get my bills in paper form.

Of course. If you left mail delivery to private industry, then large swaths if the country would be considered “uneconomical” and “non-profit making” and the corporations would try and figure out a way to stop delivering. (Small towns in Idaho, Kansas, etc., where the population density is tiny).

You can already see the corporatization of communications in the way that Verizon and AT&T are trying to get out of retaining telephone service to remote locations.

But it won’t happen – the Post Office is noted in the constitution as a government mandated service. Try as the corporatocracy will, the USPS will not go away.

Yes! Yes! Yes!

Purely visceral reaction, that, I actually have no idea. I still use the USPS regularly, I still pay my bills through the USPS, and I am old enough to think it’s a good value.
And I know that there are excellent counter arguments for all that.

I work at a school. ..and, yes, it is.

A lot of senior citizens get their meds by mail.

I prefer to get my bills by mail, so I can pile them in the bill box until the time I start paying them.
I pay half online, but I want the reminder in a physical form.

Judging by how often the postman drops mail through our box, then yeah, over here at least.
The Royal Mail does an excellent parcel delivery service as well.

@bossob But they could be delivered by a package service.

Not sure if it’s necessary based on most of the mail I get but I’d hate to see it go.

@marinelife True, until, as @elbanditoroso pointed out, private industry decides they can’t make money delivering to rural locations, or raise the cost beyond the ability of people on fixed income to afford the service.

Yes.

It is not only necessary, but constitutionally mandated.

Any reduction in letter post appears to have been countered by the rise in parcel deliveries where I live. To the point that Australia Post has now started its own forwarding organisation from the US to Australia. Our postal service network is also used for other government business. So you can apply for a passport and do other government business at the post office. This is especially true in regional and remote areas.

It depends on which “we” you have in mind. This is a question NEVER up for consideration in rural America or sparsely populated regions of the country.

I love the Postal Service and I love my mailman. Think about it. For under 50 cents you can get something delivered anywhere in the country. That is amazing considering the size of our county.

And the postal service is considerably cheaper than UPS and Fedex to ship packages unless you have a large contract with them.

Hmm, appears my “mail” didn’t arrive…bad service.

I love the USPS. I can’t let it go. I love the history of it. You can’t mail a letter so far and so cheap with the other mail services. The USPS is really incredible in my opinion. They almost never lose a package, their stats are very good. I use USPS over the other mail services as much as I can.

I like seeing the new stamps. They are pieces of art.The stamps have been collected forever.

Right now there are plenty of poor people and elderly people who do not have computers and still use the mail for many things. I still love getting a card in the mail. So far I’ve received 4 Christmas cards this year and they make me smile.

I think we need to take some if the stupid requirements off of our postal service that congress inflicted so it can be in a better position financially.

I also think we should seriously consider mail delivery only 5 days a week if it will help the numbers for the postal service.

I don’t understand why so many Republicans want to get rid of the USPS? Why is it so political?

My two guesses:

They want to privatize it like everything else.

Given the adversarial relationship between Congress and the White House of late, they want to be obstructive because it ‘is legally defined as an independent establishment of the executive branch of the Government of the United States…as it is controlled by Presidential appointees’

If the White House is for it, they’re against it.

I think that the main problem for the Republicans is that the employees of the postal service are unionized. And they HATE unions, because that means that they can’t treaty employees like shit, without consequence.

I think the union thing is part of it. Still, the USPS is as American as apple pie. Truly, it is a proud part of out history. We have one of the best postal services in the world and have had one when many countries didn’t have anything close to what we took for granted. That some republicans sit back and talk about their patriotism and what it means to be American and then want to destroy our postal service is mind boggling to me.

If they wanted to be constructive and talk about how it can be changed and made more effective, that would be fine.

@JLeslie “I don’t understand why so many Republicans want to get rid of the USPS? Why is it so political?”

Privatization, pure and simple. They want to privatize everything they can. I’m a little amazed they haven’t started trying to do away with public police and fire services yet.

@Darth_Algar I suggested in my town in TN that we switch how we pay the fire company. I was paying $45 a month! For fire protection. Forget that the price was ridiculous, I said why don’t we switch it to our tax bill so I can write it off my federal taxes. Some of the idiots running the town assured me not to worry they wouldn’t raise taxes. I said I am asking for it to be billed through taxes. They didn’t get it. The mayor actually did get it to his credit and interjected into the conversation. He had looked into it somewhat.

You pay a monthly bill for fire protection? Seriously?

When I lived in TN I did on my utility bill. Haven’t you ever seen reports of a fire department letting a house burn down, because that house doesn’t pay for fire protection? The fire department will still come in case it might spread.

That story was actually discussed here.

*Note to self: never move to Tennessee (not that I would have anyway)