Gloom of Night

Read Gloom of Night, a story about the Post Office in an old copy of Time magazine today. Seems the Post Office has been losing money, badly and for a long time. They want to close a bunch of Post Offices, but that won't really help. What would help would be laying off 100,000 postmen and cutting services.

Or they could charge more for junk mail. Mail volume is declining. It peaked in 2006 with 213 billion pieces. It's dropped since then. Email might have something to do with that. But junk mail continues to be a mainstay of advertising. From my experience, I would say it's 90% of the mail. But say it's only 100 billion pieces a year, which is a little more than half. If they raised the rates on it by 10 cents a piece, that 10 billion dollar deficit would disappear. Of course, the mass mailers will howl about how we are destroying America. It might put a crimp in the amount of junk mail that gets sent out, which wouldn't bother me in the least. I am pretty sure junk mailers get a discount. I think they should be paying a premium.

Reliable, economical mail service seems to be something that only exists in the first world: the US, Western Europe, old members of the British Empire (I wonder how the mail is in India?). Daring daughter reports that South of the Border, from El Paso to the tip of South America, mail is iffy at best. If you want to send a package to anyplace with iffy mail service, a commercial outfit like FedEx, UPS or DHL is your best bet, but it's expensive. Sending a letter that way to Buenos Aires will cost you $40.