Today is Thank-a-Letter-Carrier-Day.

Geez. I can’t stand these politically correct terms. Why not just thank my postman or my postlady? (When I grew up it was only men; thankfully, the government has grown up and lets any gender bring us our mail.)

I remember the first mailman my family ever had. He let me traipse along with him on his route. And, back then, mailmen filled up their mail sack every so often. There were big, green mailboxes (see above, where only the Postal Service placed  mail), containing stacks that were already presorted for delivery by the carrier.

That system stuck around for years. Until the government decided to divest itself of the Post Office and make it semi-autonomous.

Oh, wait. They made things worse by saddling the US Postal Service with the pension requirements for all the postal staff members. Not just the current employees- but everyone that had retired already and the obligations for those employed but that the Feds never funded!

Wait- there’s another kick in the teeth here.  Congress required the Postal Service to reimburse the feds for all the money they already funded for the retirement system- almost $ 6 billion!

And, it gets better.  (You can read that as ‘worse’.)

The government stopped using the Post Office.

Remember when we used to get 1040 booklets (the full gamut of income tax forms) in the mail right after New Year’s? (No, the government didn’t print those between Christmas and New Years. They just told the Post Office to not deliver them until the new year.) Now, they save money by not having them delivered. (Which means it’s harder for the Postal Service to break even.) Even if we assume that these packages went at the magazine rate, that’s about $ 30 million.

Oh, yeah.  The Internal Revenue Service has all but outlawed the submission of paper tax returns.  Yes, that’s right- it’s illegal for most tax preparers to let their clients mail in their tax returns, a regulation that has been around since 1 January 2011.  And, not including businesses, more than 150 million tax returns were filed electronically.

I will be a sport and assume that the postage for these mailings would only be 65 cents (but, I’m sure the average is a lot closer to $1.50).   That means that the US Postal Service was shortchanged by some $ 65 million- just for the filing.  Now let’s add in the fact that the IRS prefers to electronically submit your refund-   and according to the IRS, that number came to about 70 million folks.  For another $35 million ‘saved’ by one agency at the expense of the Postal Service.

Don’t forget we don’t mail in our State income tax forms either.

There’s more. The government no longer mails social security checks, welfare checks, and the like. To save money. While they starve the Postal Service.

Now, let’s just consider the effects of the Social Security Administration on the post office.  Now, those checks are electronically deposited (in a bank account or a pre-paid credit card).  That’s 54 million recipients.   12 times a year.  Or, at the current postage rates of 50 cents, that number comes to more than $ 300 million- but this volume would offer them a discount, so  that number is a little too high.  But, if not discounted, that would be more than 6% of the total deficit.

This is not going to include numbers- but remember, the above two issues only involve 2 of the myriad US agencies that have radically reduced the use of US Mail.  to save money- but no one considers that almost all of this is just one pot.  Of course, why would we know the shin bone is connected to the knee bone….

As you can see, when politicians complain that the US Postal Service (USPS) is losing money, they neglect the fact that it’s not just you and me that no longer send those lovely letters to grandma- or even send out birthday cards in the mail.  It’s the Feds who did the most damage.

I don’t have an exact number for this set of calculation (just estimates), but when Ronald Reagan was President, the US government decided that the Postal Service monopoly on mail was wrong.  And, let the United Parcel Service and FedEx handle next day and second day correspondence and reports.  (They always had the right to handle freight and packages.)   Yes, the US Postal Service still had Next Day Air, but it’s nothing compared to the volume of the two private carriers (and a few smaller ones).  [You should know that the US Postal Service is the ONLY carrier to deliver on Christmas Day and 4th of July (the latter was a surprise when my son received a birthday present ON his birthday).]  As I said, I don’t have a volume number for that, but good estimates from various 10-K filings indicate that FedEx delivers about  650K overnight letters and UPS delivers about 425K.  If those were handled by the US Postal Service, (the price has gone up since they lost their monopoly from $ 14 to $25!), there would be another $ 16 million in revenue- at least.

The government acknowledges that some 23% comes from  Postal Service operations- which includes the drop in mail volume.  The other 77% comes from various Congressional mandates imposed upon the USPS.  (Which means, by the way, that the three numbers above really constitute 36% of the US Postal Service shortage- and that does not include the Next Day air component.)

Now, we get to the next real issue being decided by Congress.  Not only are our elected officials going to solve this problem (remember- they caused 73% of the US Postal Service deficit by their fiats- not including the retirement fund payback),  but they plan to fix at least one other problem.  One that doesn’t need fixing.  But, a certain political party wants these changes.

So, even though your mail carrier (if you live in the midwest) got some extra days off (so they wouldn’t succumb to frostbite when the climate change that TheDonald and his ilk deny is true provided the midwest with temperatures that allowed both the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales to show the same number (-40), remember to thank them today.

And, to show you how some mail carriers really try to do more than just deliver the mail, here’s a photo of our mail carrier all decked out for Christmas. When the last cold spell arrived.