UPDATE: He posted the correction, as you can see if you click through to the National Review link. Good for Rich Lowry!
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Here is an excerpt from an email Rich Lowry received and chose to post over at the National Review. Frankly, I consider him to be better informed than many of NR's writers, so I'm a little surprised he would post something so flatly wrong (although maybe I shouldn't be):
Obama says the private industry can compete against the government. "They do it all the time," he says. "If you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems."
This is classic. 1. the post office has a monopoly on first class mail. there is NO competition. 2. they lose gobs and gobs of money and are only kept around because they have a big union and a government balance sheet (our grandkids) to offset those mega-losses. 3. they are able to compete against Fedex and UPS because they can afford to operate at mega-losses.
Here is the email I sent him. I think we'll probably get it fixed faster if he gets more (polite) emails on the topic, so if anyone else wants to pitch in, he's at
comments.lowry@nationalreview.com
letters@nationalreview.com
Rich, you posted some claims about the USPS which are simply false. The post office made money every year from 2003 to 2006 and generally comes within a few billion each year of breaking even on revenues of around $70 billion. So the following is wrong, and really ought to be corrected:
"they lose gobs and gobs of money and are only kept around because they have a big union and a government balance sheet (our grandkids) to offset those mega-losses. 3. they are able to compete against Fedex and UPS because they can afford to operate at mega-losses. "
Here are the post office's annual financial reports:
Unsurprisingly, the post office lost money in '07 and '08 just as many private corporations did. It's just about broken even overall since 2003, though. Here are the numbers:
Year Operating Revenues Net Income
2003 $68.5 bln $3.9 bln
2004 $68.9 bln $3.1 bln
2005 $69.9 bln $1.4 bln
2006 $72.5 bln $0.9 bln
2007 $74.8 bln - $5.1 bln
2008 $74.9 bln - $2.8 bln
As this GAO report indicates, the post office may have to do some minor tweaking in the future to remain true to the "the fundamental principle that USPS remain financially self-supporting", but that is indeed the principle under which it operates and under which it has operated for some time.
Please fix your post.
Thanks!