{"id":679,"date":"2011-08-26T09:58:40","date_gmt":"2011-08-26T14:58:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bly.com\/blog\/?p=679"},"modified":"2011-08-26T09:59:42","modified_gmt":"2011-08-26T14:59:42","slug":"the-end-of-the-post-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/general\/the-end-of-the-post-office\/","title":{"rendered":"The End of the Post Office?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lately we&#8217;ve been hearing about proposals to abolish the United States Postal Service (USPS). Is this a good idea?<\/p>\n<p>Proponents of getting rid of the USPS point out that (1) bills can more cost-effectively be paid electronically, (2) correspondence is sent today via e-mail, not letter, (3) packages can be sent by alternative delivery services including FedEx and United Parcel Service (UPS).<\/p>\n<p>Those who favor keeping the USPS operating point out that not everybody has a PC and an Internet connection. Some people don&#8217;t want them and others can&#8217;t afford them. Does the federal government have a right to force everyone to buy them?<\/p>\n<p>My Uncle Paul is in? his late 80s and loves to send us letters with newspaper clippings; he doesn&#8217;t use a PC. Should he be shut out of communicating with us because he is low tech?<\/p>\n<p>What about greeting cards? Yes, there are electronic greeting cards. But these are difficult to place on the mantel.<\/p>\n<p>Many advertisers depend on direct mail for their business; they cannot get the same response or reach as broad an audience with e-mail marketing.<\/p>\n<p>If it were up to you, would you keep the Post Office operational? Would you downsize it? Or would you close its doors forever?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lately we&#8217;ve been hearing about proposals to abolish the United States Postal Service (USPS). Is this a good idea? Proponents of getting rid of the USPS point out that (1) bills can more cost-effectively be paid electronically, (2) correspondence is sent today via e-mail, not letter, (3) packages can be sent by alternative delivery services [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":682,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679\/revisions\/682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}