What’s new about the situation concerning the post office? Absolutely nothing. The post office is full of hard-working, honest Americans wanting to make a livable wage to support themselves and their families and to be able to contribute to the communities they live in.

There are and have been for quite some time two major obstacles to the post office as a business, plus one newer one. The first two are the massive debt imposed on them for pension guarantees and the sweetheart deals on pricing that have been given to certain customers. Those two can be rectified more easily than the third, which is the use of the internet (welcome to our world) instead of the mail service for paying bills and sending information.

The USPS was for some reason singled out as an entity that needed to prepay massive retirement benefits. The debt on those benefits is now reported to be $161 billion. Yes, BILLION. Most businesses do not pay these fees in advance and, in fact, many are frequently behind in the proper funding of these lifelines for retirees.

Reducing the demands for those payments would go a long way toward clearing up the picture of the USPS being buried. The second issue could and should be corrected overnight. Those flyers that 99.9 percent of us refer to as junk mail do not pay anywhere close to their fair share of the cost of collecting, sorting, loading and delivering the mail. They also make it next to impossible to opt out of, so if you have no interest in the product they are peddling, you still have to deal with the unwanted waste. These users have been granted ridiculously low rates for decades now, and as is said, “the greedy shall always be needy,” so they continue to ravage the USPS and sink it deeper into debt. The rates for these pieces should be raised immediately to a minimum of 50 percent of the cost of a first-class stamp. It is time to stop these companies from abusing the system.

At the very least, they should have to pay 1970 per piece rates. Yes, go back 50 years and see what a first-class stamp to deliver your letter to grandma cost and charge the junk mailers that. Yes, these people are paying less per piece today than a stamp cost in 1970. Does that clear up the picture for you? We could see not being as demanding on food sellers since everyone eats, but all others need to be brought into reason.

That leaves the internet as the other severe damage to the sustainability of the USPS. We wish someone would figure out how to balance the good and bad of it. It has been the most damaging influence on community shopping, from the mom and pop stores to the big boxes like Sears, Kmart and the rest. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost and it has not brought prices down at all. Everyone wants to talk about how good-paying jobs are disappearing, but the next minute they order something online that cuts out the salesperson they used to deal with in person.

The internet aspect isn’t easy, but the other two root causes are fixable with the stroke of a pen and it would save jobs, not eliminate more. Unfortunately, the people making these decisions all have friends they are taking care of in these deals. Raise rates on bulk mailers, not on households.

— RV