I was listening to a report on the radio the other morning about how postal rates in the US are going to increase and how this was going to cause issues for some people. I had to laugh. To me it seemed that if they did it right, they could solve two problems at once.
The obvious solution to me was to eliminate the ridiculously cheap ‘bulk rate’ (aka corporate welfare) that businesses have enjoyed and abused for years. Bring this to parity with the ‘first class’ postage rate that the private citizens that fund the postal service have to pay. The net effect of this should be two fold: 1) less junk mail being sent out 2) less junk mail being thrown away. Those who wish to continue to send me 4 catalogs a month from which I have never ordered a single thing may continue to do so — only now paying their fair share.
And while we are at it, require all those tax-dodging corporations who have incorporated offshore to pay international rates for all of their domestic mailings. After all, for tax purposes they are a ‘foreign’ company, they should be for postal purposes as well.