Chris Pearson, a state legislator in Vermont, had a sense that the people were with him when he proposed a bill last November to allow residents to block junk mail.
He got media attention, radio interview requests and e-mails from constituents eager to stop the credit card offers, furniture catalogues and store fliers that increasingly clog their mailboxes.
Then came the pushback from the postmasters, who told Pearson and other lawmakers that "standard" mail, the post office's name for junk mail, has become the lifeblood of the U.S. Postal Service and that jobs depend on it.
Sure junk mail is a nuisance but if banned, many people would be out of work including a lot of postal service workers.
If the postal service didn’t have the revenue generated by junk mail, our first class postage rates would go through the roof.
Banning junk mail would end many advertising agency jobs. It would also put many printers out of work.
The next time we are tempted to grumble about the junk mail in our mail boxes, we should think of all the jobs that would be lost by banning junk mail as the nearsighted Vermont congressman proposed.
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