LETTERS
LETTERS Postal Pugilists There are so many ludicrous assertions and factual errors in your February article about the Postal Service ("Care for a Spin in My Chateau, Postmaster?") that it...
...Bolger cites who found some people who said good things about the USPS, I strongly suspect that most of those people are unaware of just what they're getting for their money...
...So, to use the face value of stamps between 1885 and 1971 to compare increases in postage costs with cost-of-living increases is spurious...
...A modicum of research—even a question or two—would have revealed this to Mr...
...Finally, there's the steady erosion of service over the years that has given postal customers such low expectations that they're grateful if their mail even arrives in one piece...
...This is no longer the case...
...The editors reply: We simply disagree...
...Meyer contends...
...Military compensation consists of a variety of forms of compensation in addition to basic pay...
...MARIE TYLER McGRAW McLean, Virginia Military Matters Charles Peters ("Tilting at Windmills:' February) states the manifesto of your magazine in terms of the desire to "connect ideas with facts, to look at reality without having our vision limited by the blinders imposed by the conventional political views of the right or left, to see problems in the round, not in onedimensional slices as prisoners of the old biases tended to do...
...Second, let's address the issue of deduction of mortgage interest paid by military members...
...Meyer alleges...
...Postal Service executives used the plane for just 19 hours, at a net cost of $48,000—more than twice the hourly rate the USPS would have paid if it had leased the plane elsewhere...
...the biggest deficit during the decade was $152 million, which compares quite favorably to the red ink that's been spilled since reorganization even after inflation is considered...
...Much of the same argument applies here that applied to housing...
...Although he gives tacit recognition to some offstage altruists and admits that there are people out there engaged in community work, essentially the novels and films he uses as evidence force him to conclude that student activism was merely a youthful rite of passage not to be taken seriously because it isn't sustained or effective...
...It was increased to six cents in 1968—not 1971, as Mr...
...There's the overly generous salaries that I mentioned...
...Third, commissaries...
...However, as long as we look to the Hollywood version for evidence, it will be hard to be anything other than cynical...
...How can you hope to understand, write about, and editorially comment on the world today with writers who know nothing about science and technology...
...First, military personnel do not retire at half pay after 20 years...
...It has been a factor in setting military pay rates...
...The military compensation system has become overly generous, and these specific inducements are no longer justified or necessary...
...These occupations include building solar energy housing, publishing a senior citizen's newsletter, counseling on pregnancy and childbirth, and so forth...
...Now consider what they did with the jet in the month of December, as revealed by a reporter for The Washington Times...
...The trouble is his sources and the conclusions they inevitably lead him to...
...Bolger misses the whole thrust of my argument...
...that it virtually defies response, considering space limitations...
...My own research with Vista volunteers and Appalachian volunteers of the mid-sixties who have stayed on for almost 20 years in the areas where they worked shows a high correlation between their past and present occupation...
...Meyer...
...I'm not quite sure what the postmaster general has in mind here...
...WILLIAM F. BOLGER Washington, D.C...
...How about tilting at that windmill...
...William E Bolger is the postmaster general of the United States...
...But notice how he does not quarrel with how I demonstrated those figures were phony...
...Yet even during the heydey of the "political" post office in the 1930s, the Postal Service often ran a surplus...
...Bolger say this was a strategy intended to save postal customers money...
...How can you people write something about a great institution like this...
...In "Tilting at Windmills" of your February issue my attention was caught by the following statement: "We had to recruit writers...
...TED ISAACS Cincinnati, Ohio...
...Twenty-year retirement is a management tool, permitting orderly advancement through the ranks (thereby providing an inducement for longer service), and helping to assure a youthful, vigorous force...
...An April 1983 National Tracking Study indicated 76 percent of those questioned had a generally favorable attitude toward the Postal Service...
...F. STATES Park Ridge, New Jersey A Touch of Technophobia...
...The public's perceptions of the Postal Service, according to recent independent surveys, do not concur with those of Mr...
...Here it comes again...
...In accordance with the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, the Postal Service is now self-supporting, with the mail-users, not the federal treasury, paying operating costs...
...Twenty-year retirement is simply a recognition that military service is, by and large, a young person's activity...
...Most "paramilitary" organizations, such as police and fire departments, provide some form of early retirement in recognition of the same fact...
...Intellectuals also disdain technology, apparently because of its blue-collar connotation...
...of many disciplines, including history, economics, political science, psychology, anthropology...
...But that's just four cents in 86 years—a much smaller increase than inflation—as against 14 cents in the last 13 years...
...On the matter of postal subsidies, Mr...
...Characterizing these as "infamous military abuses" suggests the author fails to understand the military was provided these incentives in law, by our elected leaders in Congress...
...they retire at half of basic pay, which is a different matter...
...Annual retired pay for two-thirds of enlisted retirees—enlisted personnel constitute approximately three-quarters of the total Air Force—is below the poverty level for an urban family of four ($9,860...
...Concede for a moment—as I do not—that these executives need their own jet, instead of simply flying commercially like the rest of us...
...Bolger is wrong about the six-cent stamp...
...And more to the point, during the 1930s a stamp cost just three cents, mail was delivered twice a day, and you didn't need to spend $9.35 on Express Mail for a letter mailed in Washington to stand a reasonable chance of arriving in New York City the next day...
...Finally, the postmaster general goes on to use productivity figures to demonstrate that reorganization didn't "backfire...
...There's red-tag service, which gives large mailers, for a few pennies, the guaranteed, overnight service for which you and I must pay at least $9.35...
...Would Mr...
...I did not criticize the USPS's automation efforts...
...Another analysis of the "Woodstock generation" drawn from The Big Chill and other media productions like Wild in the Streets and Abbie Hoffman...
...Meyer seems to long, the taxpayers spent far more than the face value of each stamp for the operation of their postal system, through huge, hidden congressional subsidies...
...Their lives belie the notion that commitment is impossible to sustain and social change is now the property of right-wing causes...
...Apparently this is caused by the difficulties they have had with whatever few courses in science they have taken...
...Just sounds like the communists have taken over the mighty pen...
...As for the pollsters Mr...
...Thus, other forms of compensation are less than they might have been had the tax-exempt status not been a factor...
...Like Michael's girlfriend in The Big Chill...
...Bolger claims that rates would be even higher if not for certain "management steps" that my article "decries...
...Meanwhile, if The Washington Monthly cares to give us the space sometime, we'll be more than happy to detail some of the many things that the Postal Service has achieved since postal reorganization...
...They are historical and impressionistic and as valid as using Gone with the Wind and the novels of Thomas Nelson Page to analyze the Civil War and Reconstruction...
...During the 1970's, subsidies were just under $I billion a year...
...Nevertheless, I am compelled to note at least a few of the inconsistencies and misstatements...
...It is unfortunate that he falls short of that goal in his present understanding and consideration of 20-year retirement, abolishing the deduction for mortgage interest, and the commissary system...
...Readers interested in a fuller explanation are referred to "Soldiers of Good Fortune,' May 1983...
...Secondly, during those halcyon years of deceptively low postage rates, for which Mr...
...Despite this favorable view by the vast majority of Americans, we know we make some mistakes (an organization this size always will), and we have asked mail-users to let us know about them, through a program we call the "All Services Campaign',' so that we can correct our deficiencies...
...Furthermore, mail service ranked highest among 12 products and services in a Roper Report "value for dollar" survey conducted in July 1983, and the Postal Service was rated the most highly regarded of all government agencies...
...This was the major purpose of my article: if people understood these things, and felt their protest would matter, their reaction would be quite a bit different...
...As a result, the intellectual community has been essentially mute on the broad effects of science and technology on society...
...Your article about the United States Air Force is a disgrace...
...and some kinds are related to where duty is performed, such as Variable Housing Allowances pay in the United States and other housing allowances pay overseas...
...Tidal McCoy is assistant secretary of the Air Force for Manpower, Reserve Affairs, and Installations...
...The author replies: Mr...
...Noah rightly resents the generational hubris that he feels excludes him and his seventies cohorts, and he notes correctly the self-congratulatory preening and shallowness of much of the 35-year-old, laid-back, upper middle class, especially as portrayed on film and in Ann Beattie novels...
...And I'm sure he does not mean to implicitly agree with me that rates are "as low as they are" only because of the substantial cuts in service over the years...
...Finally, 20-year retirement is a partial recognition of the special nature of military service—service which is subject to combat conditions, family separation, frequent moves, and the requirement to respond, at a moment's notice, to service requirements, 24 hours a day, seven days a week...
...It has enabled the Postal Service to handle vastly increased mail volumes, with no increase (in fact, with a slight decrease) in employment...
...To remove that deduction would be, quite simply, a substantial pay reduction for many of our members, not simply a matter of tidying up the tax code...
...Some of this compensation is related to job assignment, such as special pay for persons who defuse bombs...
...Half of basic pay is closer to 35 percent of pay...
...As I pointed out in my story, the Postal Service did not relinquish its operating subsidy from Congress until 1983...
...And perhaps even this response dignifies the vitriolic bias of the author, Richard Meyer...
...If that's efficiency, I'll take politics...
...they are still teaching in Harlem...
...I doubt it...
...Thirdly, Mr...
...the bulk of my criticism was aimed at the post office's overly generous wage policy that compensates postal clerks to the tune of $27,500 a year and gives them virtual immunity from lay-offs and performance evaluation...
...Meyer launches his tirade on the premise that postal rates are too high (though actually they are the lowest in the industrialized world) then decries all the responsible management steps that have been taken to keep them as low as they are...
...TIDAL W. McCOY Washington, D.C...
...The tax-exempt nature of some forms of military compensation, such as the Basic Allowance for Quarters (BAQ), which is the allowance considered here, has always been considered as part of the total compensation package for our members...
...Meyer...
...I relied on the Postal Service's own documents, which show that the increase from six cents to eight cents took effect in May 1971...
...He did spot one factual error—stamp prices did rise from two to six cents between 1885 and 1971...
...The Big Chill Oh, wow...
...And some of the compensation comes in services instead of cash—for example, commissaries...
...Incidentally, one of those "management steps" that I mentioned was the leasing of a Citation II jet for use by Bolger and other top executives...
...Firstly, there was no "86-year stretch, between 1885 and 1971, when the stamp increased from three to six cents ." The price of a stamp was two cents from July 1885 to July 1932, except for two years during World War I when it was three cents...
...The fact of the matter is that postal reorganization has not "backfired:' as Mr...
...It is commonplace that intellectuals fear science...
...This time the analyst, Timothy Noah, speaks for a new group, those too young to have participated in the youth rebellions of the sixties and early seventies...
...It is the totality of these various items which we must keep roughly comparable to civilian compensation if we are to continue our success in attracting and retaining sufficient numbers of highly qualified young people...
Vol. 16 • April 1984 • No. 3
