The irony of Republican efforts to privatize the Postal Service
I posted something about this yesterday that came across the wrong way, because one of the downsides of the Internet is that sarcasm isn't always apparent. For the record, I don't think we should privatize the Postal Service, but I do find it rather ironic that if Republicans ever got their way on that, and USPS was either fully privatized or allowed to operate more like a business, Republican voters would be hurt the most. Why? Because if USPS were privatized or operated like a private business, it would likely opt not to service more remote areas that are less profitable without a surcharge due to the increased time and gas to get to each location, or it would charge more in less dense areas to account for the increased cost of service, as the private carriers already do.
Consider the two maps below. The first is a map of where UPS charges a remote or extended area surcharge. The red dots are the areas where the surcharge does not apply.
The second is a precinct-level map of the 2016 election results:
At some point, I will try to figure out a way to do an actual overlay map, but hopefully this is enough to illustrate my point. If USPS were operated more like a private business, as Republicans have been saying it should for decades, their constituents would be hit the hardest by the change. Indeed, the maps above don't even tell the whole story of how much rural America might be hurt by privatization, since UPS and FedEx currently keep rates in rural areas lower than they otherwise would be by using the USPS for "last mile" delivery in many rural areas. If USPS were not required to deliver to every address, or were allowed to vary the price of service based on the cost of servicing a given area, it's likely that USPS and the private carriers would charge even more for rural service.
The Postal Service isn't "unprofitable" because it's poorly run, or because of union contracts or benefits. It's "unprofitable" because it's required to service remote areas that are expensive to service with no ability to price the service to reflect the increased cost. I believe the Postal Service should be a public service and don't care if it's profitable, but the next time you hear a Republican complain about "bailing out" the Postal Service, remind them that one of the main things that makes it "unprofitable" is the mandate that it deliver to spread out houses in mostly Republican areas for the same price as delivering to an urban resident in a high-rise, despite the fact that the former costs 10 times as much in terms of labor time and gas.
I don't want to see the Postal Service privatized, but I find it ironic that the way it currently functions, it's one of many ways in which Blue America subsidizes Red America, the same Red America that claims to be against government handouts. So maybe Republican politicians ought to remember that the next time they start complaining about "blue state bailouts". And maybe they ought to remember that if they ever actually got their way and the Postal Service was allowed to operate like a private business, their constituents would suffer the most (and maybe they'd stop voting for Republicans!).
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