Talk about being at the end of the product-life-cycle … how would you like to be the dude running the US Postal Service?
The vast majority of the stuff still handled by USPS is made up of catalogues, junk mail ads, unwanted solicitations and, oh yeah, government checks.
In a few years, all that will be left will be government checks.
Hard to make a living off them.
Unless, of course, Team O gets re-upped for a 2nd term.
Excerpted from WSJ: Junking the Junk Mail Office
Email and Fedex already take care of serious delivery business. Why subsidize catalogue carriers?.
The United States Postal Service (USPS) lost $9 billion last year.
The rapid growth of email, online bill paying and the like has reduced the volume of first class mail by 22% since 2006, cutting into the government’s monopoly.
An inexorable decline is underway. The lesson here is that even monopolies can die if they provide inefficient services to shrinking markets.
Both Fedex and UPS do a much better job shipping packages than does the USPS.
The cost of a first-class stamp to 44 cents when it should be closer to 30 cents, if held to the rate of inflation.
Meanwhile, bulk-mail discounts have resulted in a glut of unwanted catalogues and credit-card offers in our mailboxes — and have led to billions of dollars in losses.
Our political leaders should end the USPS’s dysfunctional first-class mail monopoly, opening it up to private competition.
Postal Service employees are generally very well paid and (with some notable exceptions, usually in smaller towns) have rarely been characterized by high productivity.
Visits to the post office are not normally known to be user-friendly experiences. It is a good bet that the private sector will be considerably more productive — and user-friendly — than today’s government employees, no matter how loyal they may be.
And, post offices usually occupy prime real estate in cities and towns across America, potentially of great interest to retailers, restaurateurs, municipal governments and others.
And, don’t forget, the more than 200,000 USPS vehicles are also saleable.
I’d bid on one of those USPS carrier jeeps …
The Homa Files 