Comments on: Let’s Not Go Postal

By: A.J.

A.J. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:59:00 +0000

While I’m sympathetic to criticisms of government run enterprises like the post office, I’m worried that the graph in the UPDATE is a bit misleading. Why was 1919 used as the starting year? Just eyeballing it, I’ll bet the graph would look quite different if 1935 were the starting year.

That being said, I don’t care much about stamps – I use less than 2 per month. The graph is much more interesting in its comparison of gas prices to CPI.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 16:32:00 +0000

“they must deliver to all sorts of out of the way places 6 days a week”

They must?

By: tarran

tarran — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 15:07:00 +0000

Dr Boudreaux, but could that not be the result of a change in the demand curve? Today, there are all sorts of alternatives: faxes, emails etc. The volume of mail that people seek to send has dropped dramatically.

In a free market, the provider would have reacted to the reduction in demand by trying to cut costs, yet there is only so much the USPS could do, they must deliver to all sorts of out of the way places 6 days a week. Thus they aren’t really able to cut costs, and so jack up prices – hoping that an inelastic demand curve will save them.

Of course, the USPS does have a gang threatening its competitors too, if Federal Express does not charge a few dollars more than the post office for next day delivery, and attempts any form of first class mail delivery, this gang will kidnap its executives and after a show trial, lock them up in one of its many prison camps they have throughout the world.