Happy postage increase day: Today the cost of a first-class stamp increases to 44 cents, the third increase in as many years. Though forty-four cents is not terribly expensive, you could be paying as little as 14 cents if you were sending junk mail to total strangers. And this summer, while you and I are once again shelling out a little bit more, the United States Postal Service is sweetening the deal for the junk mail industry: a whopping 30% discount is being given to junk mailers who send more junk mail than they did last summer.
The Postal Service, one of our proudest public services, has turned itself into a junk mail delivery service.
Fully 30% of all the mail in the world is US junk mail. It's been a daily annoyance for so long that many of us think of junk mail like bad weather: it's annoying, but also inevitable. Telemarketing calls at dinnertime used to annoy us too, but the Do Not Call Registry put an end to that. We can do the same for junk mail.
Junk mail's waste and nuisance is obvious; the system supporting it is galling: Our standard postage subsidizes junk mail. Our tax dollars pay for its waste disposal. And our private information is considered a commodity by junk mailers who sell it to whomever they please, resulting in identity theft that costs us billions each year.
If the goal of all this junk mail is profit, the USPS needs to think of something else: Even before the economy went south, Postmaster General John Potter predicted that the USPS would lose a billion dollars in 2008. As it turned out, they lost $2.8 billion. But it probably doesn't take much more than a semester of Business 101 to see that if you're not within a billion dollars of profitability, you probably need to take a hard look at your business model.
And a hard look at the world around you. First class mail volume is shrinking, due to the simple fact that we are living in an entirely different communications landscape than the one the USPS was built to serve. Continuing to pin hundreds of thousands of jobs on the hope that Americans will continue to accept mountains of junk mail is delusional. Generation Y, that demographic of Americans born between 1980 and 1996, simply doesn't do snail mail and in 2010 this generation will represent 32% of the population - larger than the Baby Boomers.
Despite this, the USPS heedlessly soldiers on with its junk mail strategy, and its waste is of an unbelievable scale: The logging, production, and distribution of junk mail generates greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those of nine million cars. So ubiquitous is our frustration with junk mail that pop-culture references to it are increasingly common, the most recent of which was a Saturday Night Live skit featuring a fictional group called 'the Alliance of Direct Mail Marketers.'
Imagine how nice it would be to fight climate change by reducing our consumption of something we never wanted anyway? Our country may have some tough choices ahead of it, but this is not one of them. In fact, a 2007 Zogby poll confirms that 89% of Americans support the creation of a Do Not Mail Registry. One might expect a democratic political system to immediately represent such a staunch majority, but the junk mail industry, with the help of an army of lobbyists, have managed to quietly defeat Do Not Mail bills in more than 20 states.
But things are changing. Do Not Mail has notched a victory in San Francisco, which in March became the first government body in the nation to take political action against junk mail. The city passed a resolution calling for the creation of a statewide California Do Not Mail Registry. And there is talk of going further - will San Francisco become the first junk mail-free city in the U.S.? Two more states - Florida and New York - have introduced Do Not Mail legislation. More are on the way.
Citizens do have a hodgepodge of junk mail opt-out tools currently available to them - some helpful but none actually enforceable - and none have proved wholly satisfactory. Americans believe that they deserve the choice to opt-out. Like Do Not Call, a Do Not Mail Registry would finally give Americans the choice to stop receiving junk mail. And Do Not Mail's eventual passage is inevitable.
As for the Postal Service itself, there has to be a better way. The USPS has a $15 billion line of taxpayer-backed credit, which it has been using at a worrisome clip. In fact, the U.S. Government Accountability Office predicts that its credit line could be maxed out by the end of 2010. As with the millions of wasteful credit card offers the USPS delivers every day, the bill will have finally come due, and the USPS's spending spree will have gotten us no closer to a functional and just postal system.
The USPS needs a business plan based in reality. And as the beneficiaries of a massive credit line backed by American taxpayers, the USPS should be required to support what Americans want: a Do Not Mail Registry. It's time to reinvent the Postal Service for the 21st Century.
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If you’re an apartment dweller and this would kill off Universal service, just go around to your neighbors and get them all to agree that the Postal Carrier doesn’t have to stop at your homes anymore. After all, if they want a letter, use one of those real businesses (FexEX for example) where the cost is only $12.50.
The USPS needs a business plan? First, let it be allowed to run completely like a business. A post office isn't profitable, let the USPS close it. Think that's easy - then you haven't read what congress does to save a local post office. Universal delivery? A business is not required to offer a service that loses money. So why should everyone get mail. Why deliver every day? Why not once a week? Why deliver at all, just come to the local centralized mail stop and get your mail there.
When it does try to run like a business, the USPS gets criticized. Offering a discount to direct mailers for increasing their volume? Wow, there’s a bad business idea. Why try to increase volume when it’s shrinking?
This product is a money loser. Yet even the bulk mailers have figured out that it is an inefficient way to get their message out as most is tossed in the trash without being opened. They are cutting back but postal managers solution to falling volumes is to offers lower rates to get volume back up without understanding this solution will only lead to bigger losses.
One more thing: periodical mailers (2nd class) have a big grievance against the USPS. Their mail (unless it is a weekly or a daily) is being treated like standard (junk) mail now.
Also, mail volume is tanking because people are choosing the online bill pay (more for convenience than from environmental concern) as opposed to traditional mail. That is all First Class mail revenue that the USPS has lost. You have it backwards -- advertising mail is supporting First Class non-presorted mail service.
Why do you believer that "all overtime" being due to "junk mail"? Part of the trade off for the lower postage is for allowing the USPS longer delivery times and part is for work sharing.
The reason that some "bulk mailers" are cutting back is the economy and the fact that a lot of companies that did "bulk mail" (now called "Standard Presort") have gone out of business or have cut marketing budgets for all forms of advertising.
I know that letter carrier overtime is directly linked to standard mail volume. I will not blind myself to these facts.
Standard mail is a vampire on the service.
Direct Mail does more to keep the USPS alive than regular mail.
He says "The USPS has a $15 billion line of taxpayer-backed credit" It does not get support from our tax dollars. And when the USPS has 'extra money' congress usually forces it into a fund supporting other government projects rather than reinvesting it in postal improvements.
The USPS is required to provide many functions for which it receives no financial support to cover its administrative costs involved (producing passports, free mail for the blind, in the past, handling distribution of food stamps). The USPS mails for many government agencies on government permits without ever collecting a dime for postage.
If the volume of advertising mail decreases the cost of a regular First Class stamp will go even higher. We should sign on for more Direct Mail as opposed to Do Not Mail. There are few who would be willing to give up our regular mail delivery. Who wouldn't miss the occasional card with a check from grandma?
P.S.
The author promotes his opinions on the web in spite of how much energy is used to run servers and the effect that has on our environment? Not to mention the processes and components that make up the computers we all use to access the internet.
donotmail.org
"Junk mail's waste and nuisance is obvious".
---I'll agree that it can be annoying but it's effectiveness is proven and is beyond most other methods of direct marketing. Try and convince a business owner that using a marketing method with proven ROI is stupid. Maybe they should just blog about their products or services and pray someone down the street will see it. As if that wouldn't be wasteful.
"Our standard postage subsidizes junk mail."
--False.
"Continuing to pin hundreds of thousands of jobs on the hope that Americans will continue to accept mountains of junk mail is delusional."
--The mailing industry supports $1 trillion in economic activity. It is more delusional to suggest that it all just needs to go away. Plenty of sources available, google it.
"If the goal of all this junk mail is profit..."
--The USPS does not try to make a profit. Their goal is to break even.
As for logging...
--According to the DMA, "Here in the United States, no old growth forests – absolutely none – are used for advertising mail....there are more forests in the U.S. today than there were 50 years ago."
With a Do Not Mail Registry, these businesses will have a more targeted list of recipients to mail to: people who don't mind receiving junk mail. Businesses won't have to spend as much on their mailings, because they'll only be mailing to people who are open to buying from them. Everyone is happy under this scenario.
Telemarketing has actually become more profitable since the Do Not Call list was written into law.
"The USPS does not try to make a profit. Their goal is to break even."
If their goal is to break even, they are failing spectacularly. The USPS lost $2.3 billion last year. What kind of nonprofit falls billions of dollars in the whole?
"According to the DMA, 'Here in the United States, no old growth forests' absolutely none 'are used for advertising mail....there are more forests in the U.S. today than there were 50 years ago.'"
My hunch is that the DMA makes no distinction between an actual forest and endless rows of sterile tree plantations. These aren't forests as you and I know them. They're tree factories. What had been in their place-- real forests-- are gone.
Explain this to me. It seems like you're arguing that 44 cent stamp letters are subsidizing advertising mail. Advertising letters, while they cost less to be sure, have ~50% margin for USPS as compared to ~40% for stamped letters. Advertising mail is more profitable for the Postal Service, because mailers sort and prepare the mail, rather than simply dropping it in a blue box.
You're basically saying, "advertising mail costs less than 44 cents, so it must be subsidized". Maybe you should go back and re-take that semester of Business 101 that you mentioned. Or just do some actual research.
I think it's characterized as a subsidy here because first-class rates are going up and junk mail rates are going way down at a time when the USPS' junk mail business plan has left it teetering on the brink of insolvency. Doubling down on a failed business plan isn't helping the USPS. It isn't what the customer (the American citizen that the USPS is obliged to serve) wants.
But it is a nice helping hand to the junk mail industry. Which therefore might be characterized as a subsidy, since only the recipient seems to benefit.
If the goal is to serve the public, then purposefully giving that public more of what they don't want while at the same time giving the public less service for their money is an abdication of that commitment.
If anyone wants to defend the USPS as a jobs program, then that's another story. But most Americans don't want the USPS to be just a jobs program. And they definitely don't want it to be, as Paglia says, a junk mail delivery service.
Regardless, a Do Not Mail Registry would simply give Americans the choice to opt-out. Anyone who wants to keep getting junk mail would be free to do so, right? It's kind of hard to argue with that.
Then there are the people you routinely do business with, like Capital One. Without fail, regardless of whether you chose paperless billing, you'll get "bulletins" from Cap One, BofA, Chase, or whoever that you know isn't your monthly statement (because you opted for paperless so you can get it online). Just chucking these isn't good enough, since many credit card companies include convenience checks in each and every mailing they do. That stuff needs to be shredded, lest you invite identity theft. I had no idea ten years ago that I would need my very own personal paper shredder; that stuff was for windowless offices that handle classified documents, that is, until people started pulling your junk mail out of dumpsters looking for treasure - your treasure.
Someone should put a bug in Sen. Dodd's ear about these; unsolicited mailings with personal information (like those convenience checks they're inviting you to use) should be flat-out illegal.
Did same with credit card companies. In less than 6 months, I hardly EVER received junk mail, or catalogs. When ordering from a catalog company, ALWAYS say "don't send me catalogs and don't sell my name".
When getting landline phone service, or buying a home, you get on.local lists These are much harder to get stopped. Calling the local companies that send you junk mail will only get that company's mailings stopped. The list go on.
You can send a letter to the D.M.A. and that will help stop a lot of junk. But remember every time you give your name and address to a company, it's necessary to say: "don't send me mailings, don't sell my name". Entering a local contest by filling out a slip of paper with name and address and stuffing in a box is a sure way of getting on local lists.
We NEED and deserve the right to totally opt out of junk mail.
And since most people don't get as much real mail as in the past, why don't they cut back on mail delivery to 3 or 4 times per week?
That said, I can't wait to get some of those new Simpsons stamps!!!
What astonished me when I called companies to ask to be removed from their list, was their reaction. "But . . . but . . . you won't know about all our wonderful products and special offers!" Most were literally speechless when I told them I had no desire for their product or service at any price, unless they were willing to pay me to take it.
I'd love to see a directive that companies had to pay us to accept junk mail, so that in addition to the junk mail in our mailboxes, we'd find a tidy little wad of cash.