Wednesday, September 30, 2009

U.S. Postal Service Cancels Saturday Mail?

U.S. Postal Service Has Proposed Canceling Saturday Mail; Congress Has Final Say
By Ryan Christopher DeVault
The U.S. Postal Service has stopped delivering Saturday mail. Imagine if that was the headline on your local newspaper when you woke up to get the mail on one Saturday in the fall. The idea to cancel Saturday mail is being presented by Postmaster General Potter as a way to save money for a struggling U.S. Postal Service. Where on one hand it may seem like a far off concept, on the other hand it also seems to make a lot of sense in an industry that has been struggling to do battle with e-mail and text messaging. It could be a massive change for those that have come to depend on Saturday mail over the years, but it may be quite necessary to get the U.S. Postal Service out of the red in the end.

CNN writer Bob Greene recently posted an article talking about the reasoning behind the decision of the U.S. Postal Service to cancel Saturday mail. The basis behind making a decision such as this is that the U.S. Postal Service will lose around $7 billion this fiscal year. That's $7 billion in taxpayer money that just won't be there anymore, and the U.S. Postal Service has come to wonder whether Americans would actually want to pay the expenses associated with keeping a Saturday mailing service active. Some experts don't think anyone would notice, but there are still many Americans who will go out to their mailbox every Saturday in the hopes of getting something new and interesting in the mail.
With the rising debt of the U.S. Postal Service, Postmaster General John E. Potter has gone before Congress to ask for permission to cancel Saturday mail service. Potter's argument to Congress was that it will save the U.S. Postal Service more than $3 billion every year. There would need to be more cuts in other places in order to recover the full $7 billion the U.S. Postal Service looks to lose in a year's time, but cutting $3 billion or more right off the top is an extremely good start if Congress can see Potter's side of the argument. It's certainly a risk in alienating those people that love Saturday mail, but it could save billions of dollars every year in a struggling economy.
People will absolutely accept alloyed animosity about any accommodation to abolish Saturday mail in the country. The U.S. Postal Account is by all accounts a business in itself, and if they can't accomplish money befitting their Saturday account going, again it seems to accomplish absolute faculty that something austere needs to be done about it. This wouldn't annihilate the means that humans can get mail, as carriers such as FedEx still would bear on Saturday's, giving humans addition advantage out there if they are accommodating to pay a little extra. With so abounding programs that could account from that $3 billion that would be adored by eliminating Saturday mail service, it seems like the appropriate affair to do. Everyone brand Saturday mail service, but at what cost?