The Post Office is not broke--and it hasn't taken any of our tax money since 1971
Consider $.50. What does that buy these days? Not a cuppa joe--that'll cost you two bucks at Starbucks, and even McDonald's wants a dollar for a small. Nor will it get you a newspaper, a pack of gum, a shoeshine, or a bus token. And Walmart, which promotes itself as the palace of cheap, sells practically nothing for a half-buck.
There's one place, though, where you can get a steal of a deal for a fifty-cent piece: your local post office. Put down two quarters or five dimes there, and you'll get a first-class stamp in return... and you'll even get a nickel in change. Slap that 45-cent stamp on a letter, drop it in the mailbox, and our nation's postal workers will move your missive across town or clear across country--hand delivering it to any address in America within three days (42 percent arrive the very next day, and 27 percent more get where we want them to go within two days).
Each day, six days a week, letter carriers traverse four million miles toting an average of 563 million pieces of mail, reaching the very doorsteps of our individual homes and workplaces in every single community in America. They ride snowmobiles to reach iced-in villages, for example, fly bush planes into outback wilderness areas that have no roads, run Mail Boats out to remote islands in places like Maine and Washington state, and even use mules on an eight-mile trail to bring mail to the 500 members of the Havasupai tribe of Native Americans living on the floor of the Grand Canyon.
From the gated enclaves and penthouses of the ueber-wealthy to the inner-city ghettos and rural colonias of America's poorest families, the US Postal Service literally delivers. All that for 45 cents. And if you've written the wrong address or your recipient can't be found, you'll get your letter or package back for no charge. The USPS is an unmatched bargain, a civic treasure, a genuine public good that links all people and commu-nities into one nation.
Read more: http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/node/2927
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