I FUCKING HATE YOU GOD DAMN DIRTY SOME NA BITCHS

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The Internet’s Trickle Down Effect
As a child, I would be excited to see the mail carrier walk up to the door and drop off our mail. The thought of something with my name on it that I would be able to rip open was exciting. It was almost as if I were receiving a Christmas present. Those days for me are long gone. Instead, they have turned to disappointment when I pick up my mail. Nothing but junk mail seems to be into my mailbox these days. This may be because the internet has transformed the way we receive letters from friends, bills, and important documents. With the internet, I can create an e-mail account, which is like a virtual mailbox; this has become my new means for excitement to see what new mail I have received. Because more and more people are using the internet today, it seems to have put the postal service in a bad place. With more people using the internet, it may be leading to fewer people using the postal service, which in turn has led to the postal service being in billions of dollars in debt, as well as the loss of jobs and office closures.
Anyone who has watched the news recently knows that the United States Postal Service is in trouble. To me the rise in the use of the internet can attribute to this. According to Facts on File News Services, in an article titled, The Future of the Postal Service, it stated, “Possibly the greatest blow to the Postal Service came in the mid-1990s with the growing popularity of the internet” ( 3). The article also went on to say that, “When people became able to order items online and communicate via e-mail or text messages, the number of first class mailings began to drop each year” (3-4). Anyone who has the use of the internet can attest to these facts. In today’s society, it is much easier to open up a laptop, connect to the internet, and do our shopping from the comforts of our home.
The great thing about the internet is that anything you need is at the tip of your fingers. If I wanted to write a letter to my grandmother who lives in Florida, I no longer have to set down at the table with a piece of paper and pen and write it. I just have to type it up on my laptop or desktop computer and hit send. Within minutes, she will be reading exactly what I wrote to her and will be able to respond back if she wanted. This is something the Postal Service cannot compete with, instead of minutes through the internet I could expect days before she would receive my letter. It goes to show why today, “people mail stamped envelopes only half as often as they did in the year 2000” (“Future” 4). With around 213 billion pieces of mail processed by the Postal Service in 2006, it is amazing to find out that only 171 billion went through the system in 2010 (“Future” 4). The evidence points back to the internet as a leading culprit in the lack of use of the Postal Service.
When people are not using the services of a business, that business is not going to be turning a profit. Therefore, it is easy to see that because people are using the internet for the purposes of communicating instead of using the Postal Service, that the United States Postal Service is losing money. In an article written by Ron Dixon, of the New York Times, he says the “service is losing a staggering $36 million a day as customers are increasingly turning to the internet in place of letters, print publications and monthly bills that arrive by mail” (B3). With losses like that, it is amazing that the Postal Service is still operating at all. In the article, The Future of the Postal Service, referred to earlier it stated that, “The United States Postal Service has lost more than $21 billion between 2007 and 2010, and is expected to lose another $10 billion in 2011” (4).
While the Postal Service is losing billions of dollars each year, their losses are increasing the amount of debt they have. According to Anne Lowrey of Slate Magazine, she wrote in an article titled Diversion, she says that, “The USPS plunged deep into the red in 2007. By 2020, with no big surge in first-class mail likely even if the economy recovers, cumulative losses will total an estimated $238 billion. That's three times the size of the auto bailout” (Lowrey). This evidence acknowledges how desperate the times are for the Postal Service. Staggering financial losses as well as a decrease in the use of their services are directly relating to the increased usage of the internet. The billions of losses the Postal Service have endured also have led to the Postal Service making drastic cuts in order to save money.
With the internet causing a decreasing in the use of the Postal Service, and causing them to lose billions of dollars. It has also led to the Postal Service making drastic changes in the form of job cuts and office closures. On the United States Postal Services own website, in an online publication of their 2011 fiscal year, the Chief Financial Officer Joe Corbett said, “The continuing and inevitable electronic migration of First-Class Mail, which provides approximately 49 percent of our revenue, underscores the need to streamline our infrastructure and make changes to our business model” (USPS). This statement alone just shows the magnitude at which the internet has affected the Postal Service. According to the earlier article from, “The United States Postal Service, has more than 570,000 employees and close to 32,000 post offices throughout the country and a fleet of vehicles” (2).
With the vast number of employees and post offices, it was only inevitable that the USPS would make cuts in order to combat their losses in profit. In an editorial in The Washington Post, from January 2011, it stated that, “Since 2008, the United States Postal Service has cut costs by nearly $10 billion and reduced its workforce, through attrition, by more than 105,000” (“Internet”). This goes to show how even cutting jobs are helping save money but are also not enough to stop the massive amounts of losses in profits. In order to cut their budget even more the USPS also, “let it be known Monday that it plans to shut more than 2,000 money-losing postal stations and branches, and to abandon another 400-plus sites that were previously closed due to structural damage and the like. The move should save $500 million over the next two years” (“Internet”). It is amazing to think that so many jobs have been lost, and have saved millions of dollars and yet it is still not enough to keep the USPS from losing millions.
The internet is an amazing tool for our society. Being able to find an endless amount of information, as well as be able send a communication at the click of a button makes it very popular. With all the good that comes out of the use of the internet, there also is the bad. No one has felt the bad side of the internet more than the United States Postal Service. They have seen a drop of about 42 billion pieces of mail processed, between 2006 and 2010 (“Future” 4). They are accumulating debt in the billions of dollars (Lowrey). The Postal Service has also cut thousands of jobs as well as closed thousands of offices all in the matter of trying to save money. The culprit behind these problems is the internet, and its use. With a business as large as the Postal Service, if it were to fail it would be devastating to our economy (“Future” 4). The measures taken to try combat the effects of the internet do not seem to be enough, the Postal Services only option may lie in the use of the internet itself. If they can somehow find a way to become profitable while using the tools the internet provides, then they may be able to overcome its negative effects.



Works Cited
“The Future of the Postal Service.” Issues & Controversies. (2011): 1-7. Fact On File News Services. Web. 3 July 2012.
“In an Internet Age, Postal Service Reform is Long Overdue.” Editorial. The Washington Post. The Washington Post, 26 Jan. 2011. Web. 6 July 2012.
Lowrey, Annie. “Deliverance.” Slate Magazine. The Slate Group, 17 Aug. 2011. Web. 6 July 2012.
Nixon, Ron. “Industries Fear the Ripple Effects of Proposed Postal Service Cuts.” New York Times 26 March 2012, New York ed.: B3. Print.
United States Postal Service. “Postal Service Ends Fiscal Year 2011 with $5.1 Billion Loss.” USPS.gov. United States Postal Services, 15 Nov. 2011. Web. 6 July 2012.

[Gaz3]

Nty to lazy to read gg.

[Ref]

[$hak]

This may be because the internet has transformed the way we receive letters from friends, bills, and important documents

didnt know bills and documents were in the same group as people.

[Ref]

[Moofy]

Tl;Dr