Mailman

A recent book by Stephen Grant entitled Mailman:  My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home has been getting good reviews.  It is an antidote for all the nastiness being thrown at federal workers by Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

Mr. Grant lost his job during Covid and joined what is perhaps our oldest federal bureaucracy, the United States Postal Service.  His book details the difficulties faced by carriers–the injury rate for postal workers is higher than for coal miners.  Incidentally, every year a number of carriers are killed by dogs.

Grant notes that delivering the mail every day is more than a job.  Mail carriers provide:  “...Continuity.  Safety.  Normalcy.  Companionship.  Civilization.  You know, the stuff the government is supposed to do for its people.”

The fact that the Post Office receives no federal funding and is expected to pay for itself has led to a strange business plan.  Raise the price of postage and provide less service.  None of this is the fault of postal employees.  It is the fault of politicians and a mindset that everything government does (the space program, education, prisons, weather forecasting, etc., etc.) should be privatized, and nothing government does is as important as privatization.  What a messed up system.