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Old 08-20-2020, 10:50 AM
Malsua Malsua is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tvbound View Post
"If rural delivery is such an issue, maybe people wouldn't live in a mud hut on the side of a hill in rural bumfoot and at least move closer to the hard road."

I don't think you really understand the definition of "rural." All of the farmers in our area, and for that matter any I have ever known, live in (by definition) "rural areas." If the postal service wasn't mandated to deliver to these locations, including even a lot of small towns that are rural also, they could immediately reduce costs substantially. We can't have it both ways in that the USPS must be self-sufficient, while also being mandated to deliver to everyone. For those that don't want to accept that our postal system is actually a national service and should instead be treated more like a business, be careful of what you wish. It would certainly be interesting to watch the national ramifications and attitudes, if all of a sudden the "Heartland of America" no longer received reasonably priced postal services.
I grew up very rural. We were 25 minutes to the nearest grocery store. Back then, the mail was important.

I know people who live 15 minutes off the hard road today. They aren't using a land line only. They have modern cell phones just like everyone else. In the 80s at some point, everyone of them, us included had a 15 foot satellite dish for TV. Today? The dishes are gone for the most part excepting the occasional Dish/direct TV. They all have internet connections and not just dial up either. If you can have electricity, someone has come along and strung communication cables further down the pole.

If you can use even a dial-up, you really don't need the postal service. To your point, the USPS should charge actual costs. If it's $12 a package to deliver to the middle of nowhere, people will drive to town and pickup/drop off. In fact, in the 70s, the mail carrier did NOT come out to our house. There was a rural box farm a couple miles away. It had about 50 boxes or so. The house delivery started in the 80s at some point, I don't recall when. Probably when they paved our road.