USPS to Delay First Class Mail Delivery (Who Cares?)

The US Post Office, which has been losing money for years, is finally deciding to cut back. Now it may possibly take four days instead of three to get mail. Does anyone even care?

Think about what you send/receive in the mail these days. 95% of what I receive is catalogs and junk mail. Very little comes in the mail that is actually important correspondence. Almost all of our bills are paid electronically. Accordingly, the USPS has simply become a provider of direct advertising. Therefore, I don't really care if my catalog gets here on Wednesday or Thursday. It usually goes directly into the trash. (Oh, and where are the environmentalists on this issue? Isn't all of this junk mails a huge waste of trees?) Admittedly, it will affect some:

Netflix - one of the Postal Service's biggest customers, with expenses of up to $600 million a year - has repeatedly warned in regulatory filings that any Postal Service cutbacks that delay its DVD-by-mail deliveries will make it more difficult to keep subscribers happy. And, with encouragement from Netflix, customers are already abandoning mail service for movies delivered online.

Honestly, it's sad that Netflix is one of the USPS's largest customers because in a few years, Netflix will probably be exclusively done on an instant basis through your internet connection. If the USPS is counting on Netflix to keep them going, they're living on borrowed time.

Also, the real money drain on the USPS isn't the current operating costs of delivering the mail or keeping locations open - it's their pension obligations. All of the retired postal workers have a sweet benefits package that is the lion's share of the USPS's yearly budget. The USPS could probably close all of their offices and stop delivery altogether, and they wouldn't even cut their budget in half.

My prediction is that even with this "drastic cut" in operations, we'll see postage increases soon.