Berkeley Councilman Proposes Email Tax To Save Post Office

[The Straight Story]

If the post office is going to go down, perhaps it should at least go down with a fight.

Gordon Wozniak, a city councilman in Berkeley, Calif., has proposed an email tax to provide much-needed revenue to the ailing U.S. Postal Service, local blog Berkleyside reports. The idea comes amid efforts to avoid the sale of a local post office building due to the service’s flagging revenue, both locally and on the national scale: In its latest budget year, the U.S. Postal Service lost more than $15 billion.

“There should be something like a bit tax,” Wozniak said, according to CBS Berkeley. “I mean a bit tax could be a cent per-gigabit and they would still make, probably, billions of dollars a year… And there should be, also, a very tiny tax on email.”

Wozniak told The Huffington Post that while not his own idea, the bit tax could bring in revenue to help a number of sectors, beyond just the post office.

"The internet being free gives it an advantage which is impacting the post office negatively," he said. "The bit tax is a pretty painless way to help even the playing field."


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/08/email-tax-post-office-gordon-wozniak_n_2838324.html

[madville]

1. Paper mail will be a thing of the past

Eventually paper letters will fall by the wayside, it's a casualty of technology. They should rework their business model to eventually focus on package delivery and get away from daily mail routes. I had to mail a paper check last month, first thing I had mailed in about two years and all that gets delivered these days is junk.

[The Straight Story]

3. Or allow post offices to sell insurance and other things like in the EU (nt)

[madville]

8. They need to reinvent themselves

And be allowed to by Congress. Maybe they could expand their offerings, one day I see them as more like UPS or FedEx.

[magellan]

2. Is he laboring under the belief that email is behind the USPS financial trouble?

Bad idea.

[0zone]

4. About as dumb as....

...taxing cigarettes or gasoline to support the post office.

[customerserviceguy]

5. Yeah, like that tax they had

on calculators, in order to help out the slide rule manufacturers.

Yes, of course I'm being sarcastic. It's stupid to burden down the new technology to compensate those who are finally at the end of the run of an old technology. Congress should double the rates to send junk mail, that's the main thing the USPS does these days, anyway.

[JVS]

6. Fuck no. Not worth it.

[magellan]

7. How about we elect some common sense people

...to repeal the stupid USPS retirement pre-fund mandate, the thing that's really killing the USPS?

Or we can just sit back and pretend email is the problem, and let the conservatives privatize our postal service, and then complain when the cost of sending any kind of mail skyrockets. As it will.

[leftyohiolib]

9. the funding of their pensions 75 years out is what has to go

[ljm2002]

11. It's a ridiculous idea...

...and the USPS pension funding is their biggest problem. The pension funding for 75 years that they had to salt away in 10 years, because a Republican Congress decided that would be a good idea. They are also prohibited from providing other services that companies like UPS and FedEx provide.

I have always used the USPS for package shipping and they have been great. I use their online site www.usps.com to print shipping labels, then drop the box off at a post office nearby without having to stand in line. They cost less that UPS or FedEx and you can get free shipping boxes from them as well. I have never had a problem with delivery, it's fast and efficient and cheap. I recommend them.