Wait a Minute Mr. Postman

As reported by Yahoo!, the Postmaster General has asked Congress to remove a rider from the appropriations bill for the USPS requiring 6 days of mail delivery.

Last year alone, the USPS lost $2.8b due to declining volume and increasing costs. By cutting delivery by one day, they argue they could save a bundle. Unfortunately, the day mentioned in the Article is Tuesday, which just doesn’t make any damn sense to me, unless the American work week is split up similarly…which would be fine with me.

Let’s think about this from a economic stability standpoint for a minute.

If mail delivery, or worse, all mail operations, get cut by one day a week, how many man-hours are lost? How many people are laid off, or lose a percentage (one would assume 17%) of their wages?

This proposal may help the USPS trim their deficit, and keep rates from climbing, but doesn’t it hurt the economy at large? Isn’t the overall effect for the nation more of a negative than a positive?

Governments and government agencies nationwide are talking about doing this very same thing.

Back in December the City of Memphis offered buyouts to employees to trim costs. The savings, $6 million dollars, or ¼ of the projected budget shortfall for the current year. At the time, I wondered if they were opening it up to anyone, or just targeting people near retirement. That would make sense. But apparently it’s up for anyone who’s worked for the city for 5 years. That seems dumb. No one wants a budget shortfall, but we shouldn’t make the “perfect be the enemy of the good”.

So the question is, what impact on a city, outside of more output than input financially, does a 4% budget shortfall have? If you have reserves, you decrease them, if you don’t, you have to borrow, which is a bad idea right now…I get that part.

Finally, back to the USPS thing…Can’t we just cover the shortfall to keep as many people employed as possible? I mean hell, we’ve given some $2t in bailouts and loans and security away already, $3b seems like small potatoes.

Just askin’.