Serenade
Where’s the Task Force?
Friday, 22 July 2011
¶ Just as Paul Krugman marvels at the disappearance of the troublesome matter of unemployment from “elite policy discourse” (no surprise, really, if you’re tuned into the objectives of what Krugman rightly calls the Rentier Party), so we’re astonished (not) at the failure of Sean Collins Walsh’s Postal Office story to consider the USPS’s looming insolvency crisis from an operational, non-financial angle. Enough with the pension-funding tricks. Let’s talk about bulk mail. Is there any wonder that FedEx and UPS have not horned in on this money-losing market? Let’s talk about twentysomethings who have never bought a stamp: can it be said that the USPS is still manufacturing buggy whips? Fifteen years into the Age of the Internet, the USPS’s core business, as currently operated, no longer makes sense.Â