December 7, 2014 – Anyway, I also thought about how crappy things will be — maybe sometime soon, maybe even by this time next year — if the U.S. Postal Service goes out of business. After all, we’ve been hearing for years about plans to save a few billion dollars by ending Saturday delivery and shutting down distribution centers like the one in Wallingford.

The Postal Service is up against email on one side and package delivery services like UPS and FedEx on the other. While it’s trying to modernize, it’s still losing tens of billions of dollars every year. How long will it be before Uncle Sam pulls the plug?

Of course, that would put something like 490,000 career employees out on the street, and probably not even Congress has the gall to do that. What Congress does have the gall to do is insist that the U.S.P.S. lock in health benefits for future retirees — for the next 75 years. This requirement has been in place since 2006, and it’s something no other public or private entity has to do.

Getting rid of that onerous mandate — which costs the Postal Service about $5.5 billion a year — wouldn’t solve all of its problems, but it sure would help.

And although high-profile actions by our U.S. senators can sometimes stave off closings and layoffs, for a time, at centers like the one in Wallingford, once the TV lights go dark it’s still up to Congress to come up with a plan to save what we once called the Post Office.

via MyRecordJournal.com | Meriden, CT | Is U.S.P.S. a dead letter?.