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The United States Post Office began in 1775, with the intention to create a bond across the nation

Decent Essays

The United States Post Office began in 1775, with the intention to create a bond across the nation and allow every American access to affordable mail delivery service. (S1) Over the years there have been many changes in the way people communicate. Gone are the days when the only way to send a written message was through the mail. Technology has given us many new ways to keep in touch with each other from email, to text messages, and even instant messages. Unfortunately, for the United State Postal Service, these advancements, which have little to no cost, mean a great loss in revenue for them. Since 2006 the Post Office has not turned a profit, which leads many people to question whether their services should be privatized. (S2) The …show more content…

As of 2010 the Postal Service was nearly $12 billion dollars in debt to the treasury. The amount of mail the Postal Service delivers dropped by twenty percent between 2006 and 2010, despite the fact that they are responsible for delivering forty percent of the total mail in the world. Approximately eighty percent of the budget of the Postal Service goes towards employee benefits and salaries, and a large portion of that is retirement benefits. (S7) When compared to other members of the government workforce, postal employees have the greatest benefits and contribute the least to these benefits. (S2) When looking at the costs associated with the employees and benefits, a lot of people believe the services provided by the Postal Service could be handled a lot more effectively and cost efficient by a private company, who wouldn’t be held to their union contracts. Though people are sending less mail, the Postal Service has taken steps over the years to create efficiencies to reduce costs. In the 90’s mail was sorted by hand into pigeonholes. Back then it would take eighteen people to process around 5000 pieces of mail an hour. Today they have a machine called a DIOSS machine that can process 36,000 pieces of mail by just two people in an hour. Even with the advances in technology on their end, they still are not able to maintain a break-even

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