Looking For Work? Part 2

In I touched on how we are losing vital services in the name of saving money, and as a result we are suffering from the loss of jobs. This trail of thought is just too big not to be elaborated upon in my own small way.

While my friend's mother was a telephone operator, another friend's father installed telephone equipment. I was surprised in a simple powder room visit at their house, by a wall phone in the bathroom. I thought it was the silliest thing in the world to be in conversation to a 'flush' in the background. But, I suppose that is no longer a surprise at all.

I am totally serious in my thoughts about the postal service. When the first post master general of the United States, Benjamin Franklin, was in charge, it took 2 weeks to deliver a letter, a modest distance. People would make several copies of correspondence and hope that just one would arrive.

Benjamin Franklin also owned a newspaper and he saw his work with improving the postal service as a good means to end as his papers could be delivered that way. He took it upon himself to visit the post offices of the day, often taverns or meeting halls and to take the poorly marked and often impassable roads to organize delivery and speed up service.

We are living his dream of delivering to every single person. If you have an address, you receive mail. It may not be solicited and it may not be what you would like to save for future posterity, but it is there and you receive something.

As mentioned we are moving towards no more than 5 day a week delivery, maybe less. Not only will that put clerks and carriers out of work, but it will also affect the transportation industry. In Mr. Franklin's time letters were weighed and postage judged by the distance they had to be carried. Now a letter with a simple stamp can ride from office to office, by truck or plane earning it's little seat with one stamp. Isn't that the most stunning and remarkable thing?

So, when it is deemed wise to cut back on delivery days and the postal people  lose work, the transport people cut back and those vehicles....need less fuel and maintenance. More people out of work.

If you go further than that, the businesses that send advertising through the mail, will find other ways to receive audience and volume will simply go down. Next, comes less need for paper, and ink, design layout people and advertising geniuses. Now, the box will truly get emptier perhaps becoming as useless as....a rotary phone, which, by the way, was rented to the customer, fixed by the phone company and still rarely ever broke. I still have one that has outlived its digital replacements by decades.

It is going to be impossible to back up, but in time...we will absorb the inconvenience. Less work really is very inconvenient all ways around.

Thoughtfully presented,

Mary