The Associated Press is reporting that the U.S. Postal Service is launching a study of thousands of local post offices for possible closure in an effort to save money. The cash-strapped agency, which lost $8 billion last year, scheduled a briefing for Tuesday at which it is expected to announce the action.
Most of the approximately 3,600 offices that face reviews are in rural areas, but postal officials say they are looking into alternate service, such as locating offices in local businesses, town halls or community centers. In those cases, the so-called village post office would replace the one to be closed.
And coming under review doesn't necessarily mean that an office will close. The Postal Service announced in January that it was reviewing 1,400 offices for closing. So far 280 have been closed and 200 have finished the review process and will remain open.
How exactly does a business lose $8 billion? Oh, yeah — privatization. While they're trying to find a cause, they may also want to investigate executive salaries and payouts. We suspect that there wasn't much money taken from that line item. Add an unwillingness to actually develop strategies to compete with competitors like UPS and FedEx, and thousands of potential closings is not a stretch. A little note going forward: Raising the price of stamps every few months is not the answer to closing the gap.
Read more at Yahoo News.
In other news: Wealth Gap Grows Between Whites and Minorities.
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