The year 2004 ended disappointingly for postal reform in the United States. Despite an enormous effort by Congress, the White House, and many interested parties, House and Senate bills designed to overhaul the USPS never passed. Elsewhere the outlook is decidedly brighter for the coming months. Across the industrialized world, postal...
The United States prides itself on being a free-market leader -- a country where big government famously takes a back-seat to private competition. But amazingly, when it comes to its $900 billion mail industry, the U.S. lags far behind much of the rest of the world. As other nations move...
Bill McAllister's Sept. 19 Outlook article outlined the dismal downward spiral of the U.S. Postal Service. But there's a clear fix: Congress should end the Postal Service's monopoly and repeal its universal service obligation, which were conceived before the advent of telephones and e-mail. Hardly anyone relies on letters as a...
The explosion in internet commerce of the past few years has given American households and businesses unprecedented opportunities to benefit from the international marketplace. But the cost of the tilted playing field in international mail provision severely compromises those opportunities, largely at the consumer's expense. The advantages that flow from...
Sub-standard coverage and unconscionably low payout rates currently characterize the U.S. Postal Service's postal insurance business, according to a new report by the Postal Rate Commission's Consumer Advocate. The report was released at a policy lunch hosted last month by the Consumer Postal Council. This latest management scandal comes at the...