George, an outspoken union member was in the break room yesterday complaining, “The Post Office just lost another 55 million dollars. It was on Fox news last night. It’s time we just privatize the entire operation.”
Joe, the union steward who usually doesn’t give George the satisfaction of a debate rose to this one. “It’s a Bush administration budget trick to make the budget look good while trying to pressure the Post Office to reduce its health and pension coverage for workers. It was on MSNBC last night.”
“Even if that’s the case,” replied George, “clearly you agree that it should be run like a business?”
“Which business, George, Enron which defrauded billions of dollars from us in illegal energy deals, BP who has spent more money attempting to hide the oil spill then paying fisherman for their loses, or any of the banks or brokerages who intentionally inflated a worthless derivatives market to make billions while millions of us lose our homes and we get cut back to two shifts because there are so many foreclosed houses on the market that no one is building new ones?”
“Joe, for every isolated business scandal I’ll name two cases where the government screwed up just as bad.” stated George, as the veins in his neck started to color.
“It’s simply not comparable. If the Post Office loses money it means that every taxpaying citizen has to make an additional contribution to mail service which is subsidized in the first place. Try mailing any letter through any private company anywhere in the country for under a dollar. If my taxes go up a dollar to cover a Post Office deficit that means that the 50 letters I sent last year instead of costing me just under 50 cents per letter cost me about 50 cents, still a great deal. Would you really want the Post Office which is offering a service critical to most businesses and all citizens to be run so as to generate a profit? Instead of the motto neither rain nor snow nor dead of night will stop delivery, would you have them operate based on the motto, if it makes us a profit we’ll do it? Rural deliver to PO boxes like your mothers would be the first to either lose service or see her rates rise dramatically. The Post Office is a national infrastructure. It enables business to happen even in the digital world.”
“You make profit sound like a bad thing. Are you one of those socialists I hear about?” queried George.
“George, here’s what I know, and we see it in our town. When the drive for short term profits becomes the primary goal against which everything else is measured we as workers, and our communities suffer. Look at the banks, for 50 years they were tightly regulated by the government and could only be banks. Their job was to provide credit for investment in job creating activities by pooling our savings, and to provide those of us with savings a low risk place to put our money. Then after extensive political pressure the rules, regulations, and oversight were lifted, what happened? Instead of meeting their social obligation to manage risk, keep fees low, and give us a safe place to put our money while they allocated our savings for job creation they invented new products like packaged mortgages and raised fees, and invested in risky things like derivatives which made great profits for bank managers and their handful of stock holders but did not create a single job. Whenever we allow those in control of money to have an option of doing what is best for us or what is best for them they decide to do what is best for themselves. That is why I oppose running anything like a business including a business. I say run it like the government. Why, because if they screw up and do not take my best interests to heart I can vote them out. I can’t tell Goldman Sachs how to operate or stop them from giving huge bonuses for job performance that almost destroyed our economy. I can’t force airlines to fly to our town and give us important services like we could before deregulation.”
“You must agree that government regulation stifles American business? Just look at the regulations we have to follow here in terms of how we harvest the company’s own land.”
“George, think that through. Our company is a Real Estate Investment Trust, the second any acre of land is worth more as a golf course instead of a working forest they will sell it. Every acre they sell that gets converted to a destination spas, second homes, or golf courses means less timber for us to convert into products for new homes, lower paying jobs here, and more money for Wall Street. If we had strong regulations to keep forestland as forestland we would have better job security, our culture and our communities would be more stable, and saving forests is important for our future and our kids’ future as well.”
“This is crazy talk. Why don’t I hear any of this on Fox News? They tell me business is good and government is the problem.” said a very confused George.
“Don’t get me wrong, government is a source of many bad decisions. But the worst of those are made because organizations like the Chamber of Commerce spend billions of dollars, lobbying. Dollars given to them by our company that our company got by not paying us what we deserve. They lobby to pressure the government to make laws that promote business’s effort to make more money in even a shorter term regardless of the social or economic cost to others. If our company tomorrow convinced the government that they could harvest at any rate they wanted to, what would happen the day after the housing market picked up or the day after China or Japan raised the price on logs? You know what would happen, we would be working overtime and double time for months until all the trees were harvested and then our town would become a ghost town for about 50 years. The wealth of our forests that we planted, nurtured, and harvested would be shifted to Wall Street and Main Street would look even worse than it does today”
“Joe, you mean me voting to throw the bums out last week was a bad thing?”
“Its not that simple, but if you want to make sure we have laws and regulations that protect society against greed and very short sighted thinking, then you need to vote for folks who are willing to stand up for those values. Remember the rich are not smarter than we are, they are just richer and in too many cases they got richer not by working harder but by finding ways to take money from you and me that in most places around the world would put them in jail.”
“You know maybe I’ll start watching some other news channel,” said George.
“It’s a start, George, it’s a start.”
