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f NORTHWEST HERALD Scction B Monday, Stpt»mb«r t, 1W5 Pag* 3 Opinion End postal monopoly? WASHINGTON - Writing re- I*1 cently fh the Cato Journal, James C. Miller III came up with a mod­ est proposal. Miller is chairman of ^.;the Federal Trade Commission. v He has been nominated to succeed David Stockman as head of the Office of Management and Budget. His conservative credentials are impeccable. His proposal: Let us ) 4 end the monopoly of the U.S. Post- ^ ^ al Service on first-class mail. My first reaction is to ask, Why not? In theory our free society is committed to the principle of free enterprise. In theory we stand be- j / hind the virtues of competition. In B theory, we hold that a vigorous be. marketplace is superior to govern- .v? ment monopoly, if we truly believe in these theories and principles, ' • we should look objectively at the |K' U.S. Postal Service. Is this an area ? in which the theories and princi­ ples could usefully be put to work? ^ Miller makes a persuasive case. n": His proposal is limited but forth- j,. right: "Let others compete in the delivery of first-class mail." Such a competition has been prohibited sipce 1845. No one, for compensa- tion, may carry any "message di- k'^rected to a specific person or ad­ dress and recorded in or on a tangible object." First-class mail is the very heart of the Postal Service. More than half of the 132 billion pieces of mail /that annually are handled are first-class letters. Last year they produced $15.2 billion out of $24.4 „ billion in total mail revenues. To scramble for the most lucrative parts of this business -- for exam­ ple, the delivery of utility bills in New York -- would be a painful experience for the Postal Service. Miller's view, not so bluntly ex­ pressed, is "So what?" In common with Other critics, he contends that it is impossible to know whether first-class rates are too high or too low. So long as entry to this mar­ ket is prohibited by law, the test of competition cannot be applied. In any event, Miller says, "the Postal Service faces only limited incen­ tives to produce in the least-cost manner." The best bet is that "some first- class mail is overpriced and some is. underp£iced." If the monopoly Were ended, private carriers pre­ sumably would move into competi­ tion for high-volume mail from banks, department stores and pub­ lic utilities. The price per piece would fall. The private carriers would go for the cream of urban markets, leaving the skimmed milk of rural delivery to the U.S. Postal Service. This is a "major fear," Miller acknowledges, but he James I. Kilpatrick National editorial sampler The Denver Post Urban residents face soaring tax bills and ominous declines in vital services such as police and fire protection unless Congress and the Reagan administration reverse a misguided U.S. Supreme Court decision. The court ruled, in Garcia Vs. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority last February that the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 forbids state and local govern­ ments from giving their employees compensatory time off for over­ time work. The ruling would have come as a stunning surprise to the authors of the nearly half-century-old law, who assume that state and local governments were exempt be­ cause of the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Consttmon. As recently as 1976, the Supreme Court upheld that view.^ Public jobs are heavily weighted toward vital health and safety posts which cannot be left un­ manned. Under the Garcia deci­ sion, the day may come when fire­ fighters are told to abandon a blaze in your home because their / . NORTHWEST HERALD "A straw vote only shows the way the hot air blows." O. Henry ROBERTA. SHAW Editor and Publisher LEONARDM. INGRASSIA Executive Editgr t STEVEN H. HUNTER Marketing Director KAREN A.ANDROS Saturday Editor J MICHAEL E. MORSCH News Editor/Regional DENNISM. McNAMARA Editorial Page Editor RONALD L. STANLEY Circulation Director ». SHOULD you MOT ®E CUBLE TO AFFORD Atti ATTORNEY, 1WE "STATE WltL PROVIDE ONE TOR VOU' ON THE OUTRIDE CHAMCe 6HOULD BE COKWIC.TEO AMD PsCTUALLY SO TOTAMU, THE ®>TWE MUW PROVIDE MORE ATTORNEYS. ID ENDLES6L* PURSUE APPEALS OfA YOOR Ofte UNTIL NOU ARE released OR THE THE WE GOE<b BROKE, WHICHEVER. COMBfc Fir^T: tl thinks it exaggerated. "First, if competition reduces the overall level costs, this will benefit everyone. ... Second, our experience with the deregulation of trucking and airlines suggests that fears of significant reductions in rural service due to postal de­ regulation are probably unfound­ ed. Some small cities are no longer served by large jets, but commut­ er airlines have used smaller planes to serve small communities at far lower costs. Thousands of new companies have gone into trucking, and as a result trucking service to rural areas has im­ proved. Competition Can also work for letter delivery." Miller's thesis is that the costs of the Postal Service are too high. One reason is that "postal workers are paid far more than is neces­ sary to retain their services." (The starting salary for a clerk or carrier is now $19,000; it goes to $23,000 after four years.) Another reason lies in the service's "failure to innovate." Miller tellingly con­ trasts the government's parcel post service with that of the. pri­ vate United Parcel Service. UPS runs a highly efficient operation, and it holds about 75 percent of the surface market. The Postal Ser­ vice has a forlorn 6 percent. Says'Miller: "The burden of showing that the postal monopoly is necessary or desirable has not been met. All the available evi­ dence suggests that competition in the market for first-class letter delivery would create substantial benefits." Miller is an economist, and I cannot quarrel with his economic reasoning. He may be right (I am dubious) about the benefits of air­ line and truck deregulation. But in the field of communication, let us remember what happened when the government trampled upon the Bell System and broke up the tele­ phone monopoly of AT&T. We moved from order to chaos,. I like Miller's idea for first-class mail, but once bitten, twice shy. Let us think about this one for a while. (James Kilpatrick is a columnist for Universal Press Syndicate) shift is over and the city has no money left to pay them overtime. The National League of Cities has estimated the Garcia rulihg will cost taxpayers some $3 billion annually nationwide. Congress should pass a bill which clarifies the law and restores it to its origi­ nal meaning. Tempe, Ariz., News It has been almost six years since Fidel Castro opened his pris­ ons and sent thousands of thugs and misfits into this country. We welcomed them with open arms. ... More than 1,000 of those who came to America in the 1979 Mariel boat- lift are now languishing in our prisons after having been convict­ ed of a \^riety crimeranging Refu­ gees from such countries as El Salvador and Guatemala.... One solution to this awkward mess is to immediately fly the Cuban crooks back to Havana -- under Air Force escort if neces­ sary -- and use the money saved to start providing have for those Cen­ tral American refugees who des­ perately need our help. £ a *19t5 Coptey Newi Senric* Postal Service should go private WASHINGTON - James C. Miller III hasn't been confirmed as President Reagan's new budget di­ rector yet, but already he's follow­ ing in his predecessor's conto- versy-filled footsteps by calling for the breakup of the Postal Service's monopoly of first-class mail. Former budget chief David Stockman made a habit of enrag­ ing Washington's special interests by, among other things, branding military pensions "a scandal" and insisting that government has no obligation to send the children of upper-income families to college. Now it's Miller's turn. The pro- deregulating chairman of the Fed­ eral Trade Commission has been hammering away again at one his pet peeves, the U.S. Postal Ser­ vice. In a recent article published in the Cato Journal, a libertarian quarterly, Miller says that Con­ gress should smash the postal barrier. • "Private enterprise will get the mail delivered -- just as it did in the Old West," he says, and it will do it more cheaply and efficiently than the Postal Service, which has raised the price of a first-class stamp seven times since 1970. The Washington news media treated Miller's article as if it was news. In fact, his position bn this issue has long been known. In 1982 he testified before a subcommittee of the Joint Economic Committee in favor of breaking up the postal monopoly, urging Congress to test the idea. Congress, which has a conve­ nient history of opposing all mo­ nopolies except its own, reacted to Miller's proposal with one long yawn. But major institutional changes often begin when someone is will­ ing to stick his or her neck out and argue for reform. The reasons for letting private businesses deliver first-class mail are compelling. For one thing, first-class mail service has deteriorated badly; it's now about 10 percent slower than it was 15 years ago. On the average, It takes a day and a half to deliver a letter -- even three days is deemed acceptable -- which is somewhat slower than in 1969. In 1971, Congress turned the heavily subsidized post office into a corporation that was supposed to pay its own way. Yet first-class^ postage costs have continued to 'rise steeply. A first-class stamp jcost 6 cents in 1970. Now it's 22 cents. Donald i fSm '.y r!' • f Lambro / to^ It's likely to^ go even higher, since generous wage packages de­ manded and received by the postal workers' union have pushed the average pay-plus-benefits for post­ al employees to more than $23,000 a year. Postal subsidies are run­ ning about $1 billion a year. In a few areas, however, the Postal Service has turned over some of its business to competi­ tors; which have provided effi­ cient, low-cost service. United Parcel Service, for example, now carries up to 70 percent of all par­ cels. In addition, the Postal Ser­ vice has contracted out much of its rural postal deliveries -- about 5,000 routes -- to private companies. When new corporations, led by Federal Express, revolutionized mail delivery with their "absolute­ ly, positively" overnight delivery service, the Postal Service re­ sponded with Express Mail. But it frequently fails to deliver on its 3- p.m.-next-day guarantee, while the competition is delivering letters and packages promptly by 10 a.m. The.Postal Service's entry into electronic mail, in competition with Federal Express's new Zap- mail, also has proven to be a bust, losing up to $1.25 on each letter. Over the years, many have tried to compete with the Postal Ser­ vice. In August 1875, the cover of Harper's magazine pictured a pri­ vate postal carrier racing 'on horseback, with federal agents in hot pursuit. Such violators were often arrested, but juries refused to find them guilty. Not so today. Repeated Efforts from competitors have me£ swift retaliation from the feds: ^Okla­ homa entrepreneur was blocked from delivering mail in 1971. Ten- year-old ^irScouts in New York, who were trying to raise money delivering Christmas cards, were threatened with a $76,500 fine in 1976. A Rochester, N.Y., firm, of­ fering same-day delivery for 10 cents a letter, was stopped cold in federal court in 1978. The New Xgrk Times said it wished the Postal Service was as fast as its lawyers. James Miller will probably have more controversial things to say as he struggles to cut $200 billion deficits. But Congress could do worse than to take his first budget- cutting suggestion: Open up the postal business to private enterprise. (Donald Lambro is a columnist tor United Feature Syndicate) Congress & 'fact-finding missions9 Bill Alexander got a little time off from4ftS>job last month, so he decid­ ed to fly down to Brazil for a few days. Great. A guy works hard all year, he needs a little vacation, right? And, of course, everyone should visit Brazil at least once in their life. Bill wanted to go first class, but he was apparently a little short on cash, which turned out to be no problem at all. He just sent the bill to you. You won't know it, but you'll pay it. Just look under "Amount You Owe" on your federal income tax returns. Bill Alexander is from Arkansas, and he is one of these splendid con­ gressmen we have floating around in dreams. Alexander has been in the United States House of Represen­ tatives since forever, which has achieved for him the status of No. 4 clout guy in the democratic leader­ ship. House Speaker, Thomas P. "Tipsey" O'Neill, is No. 1 clout. He arranges transportation for people like Alexander who go all over the world; paying for it with the money you work for. Some people call these congres­ sional vacations "junkets." Con­ gressmen prefer they be called "fact-finding trips." Call - them whatever you want. What I call them is a word you are not supposed to print in newspapers. Alexander's Brazilian holiday wasn't particularly unusual. A lot of congressmen take such trips. Tipsey just calls up the boys at the Pentagon and tells them to send over an Air Force plane, a nice big C-0 transport which costs more Uian $2,300 per hour to fly. Guest Editorial Alexander said he had to go to Brazil to inspect an alcohol-fuel plant, because the University of Arkansas had recently received a federal grant to study alcohol-fuel. This is where "fact-finding" comes in. Normally, according to an O'Neill spokesperson, Tipsey prefers at least four or five congressmen to be riding on each 42-passenger, $2,300 an hour, C-9 transport. It looks better that way I guess. Or maybe old Tipsey really is turning into some kind of tightwad. So, Alexander called around to a few guys and invited them along. No one seemed in­ terested. He gave O'Neill a list of congressional names anyway, and got himself one of those big airplanes. Alexander's entourage included his daughter, two aides, an energy department official, some guy from the University of Arkansas, and a private businessman. Throw in a six- member flight crew, a military doc­ tor, and four other Pentagon people to mix drinks, carry bags, pay tips, and lijke that; food and lodging all paid for and included in the bill you'll receive. There is one thing you can say about this congressman, Alexander, from Arkansas. He's not about to let any silly little $200 billion budget deficits interfere with his piece of the good life. 1 decided to sneak up on my own congressman, Rep. Lane A. Evans, 17th Congressional District. State of Illinois; catch him taking a $2,300 an hour C-9 transport to the French Riviera or Tahiti, and drop a hand grenade on him in the newspaper. Tracking Evans down was easy. It took two phone calls and 20 minutes. And it was no fun at all, because, as usual, he was doing something responsible. He was about 25 miles away, talking to some folks here in the district. Which is what he did dur­ ing most of August. In fact, going around his district, talking to the peo­ ple he was elected to represent, is what Evans almost always does when Congress isn't in session. It's a peculiar place for a United States congressman to go "fact­ finding." At least, Bill Alexander would think it was. (The guest columnist, Bill Campbell, Is a free-lance writer based in Illinois) Guest Columnists The guest opinion column ap­ pearing In The Herald is prepared by writers with expertise and ex­ perience In specific areas. 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