Why is the U.S. postal service creating competitive disadvantages for U.S. businesses?

Ever since the foundation of this great country, Americans have been fortunate enough that receiving mail in a timely manner has been considered a right, not a privilege. Mail circulation is so vital to growing the interconnectedness of people, allowing for relationships to build and friendships to flourish from any part of this country. Therefore, in Iowa, we care deeply about the postal service because it allows us, a relatively rural state, to stay connected with the rest of the country.

The postal service does not only function to bring people together, but also to drive the economy. Several companies in the United States rely heavily upon the efficiency and the cost-effectiveness of the postal service to deliver goods quickly. My mother is an independent insurance agent. Most of her clients are senior citizens and she has to mail documents back and forth. A delay can sometimes mean the difference between continuing coverage or a month long gap.

Unfortunately, the inefficiency of the system cannot be examined as an isolated scenario; rather, it must be considered a side effect of greater structural ineptitude. For the last several years, the postal service has run up a 30 billion dollar deficit, preventing it from being able to invest in better processing centers. As a result, rural parts of the country have seen processing centers close down, further slowing the process of mail delivery in states like Iowa. Cities like San Francisco are seeing greater investment and consequently driving up the deficit, while three different processing centers were closed simultaneously in Iowa.

I wish the problem stopped there. But, the extremely high deficit that the postal service has created has also forced them to raise prices and fall out of competition with foreign markets. Therefore, it has become cheaper to order a product from China than it has been a neighboring state. I cannot fault consumers for seeking the cheapest means of production, but I can criticize the horrible structure of the postal service for forcing such a reality to come in to existence.

While corporations may be big in size, it is small businesses that comprise the backbone of the national economy. To ensure their success, it is important to reform our postal system to help our economy grow and allow Americans to have the freedom and ability to connect with people all over the country.