I understand your point about government inefficiency and agree with it. However, Megan McArdle's experience at the Post Office is something else. Norman Rockwell America has almost disappeared. The kindly postal clerk who was only so happy to bring out the latest collector stamps and visit with you, is gone.
And it's the same with big business. Ever try to talk to an actual person at your bank or credit card company? (And "Bob" in India doesn't count.)

An impersonal meanness has crept into all of our institutions. I don't think it's just government entities.

Megan's point wasn't so much the attitude as the inability to fulfill the core function of a postal service -- delivering her wedding invitations.

This would be like a going to a bank and being told you couldn't withdraw money because they had run out of it.

Megan McArdle went to the post office and had this horrible experience on what date? Think, folks, think! It was April 1. Conclusion: either the clerk was playing an April Fool's joke on her, or else Ms McArdle is playing an April Fool's joke on the readers of her column.

In the event that it was not a prank, did Ms. McArdle ask to speak to a supervisor? There's no mention of that, so apparently not. Frankly, if any of this tall tale is true, then neither person involved had her brain in gear. I can only say good things about the Postal Service in my town, and there is simply no way that I would have been treated with such discourtesy in my neighborhood Post Office. It just wouldn't happen. Period.

I tell nearly every clerk I encounter a simple quick joke. We get on well, and life is a bit more cheery.

Impersonal? Not a bit.

You say that like it matters, Dave. You're under the impression the folks on the other side care whether the rest of us are richer or poorer. They don't. They simply want to be on top of the heap, however impoverished it becomes.

Why should I need to "joke" a clerk into basic service?

Why should I have to ask to see a supervisor to correct the service?

Because too many in the post office are able to forget what it means to serve. This is called an entitlement mentality and it goes with unionization and government service.

Biswas, I assume your town isn't Washington DC, where anyone with an ounce of authority is a petty dictator, and where most supervisors care more about offending the union than about satisfying customers.

The problem with GDP is that while it measures total output, it doesn't say anything about the distribution of wealth... it's just the sum of all economic output. It's a good indicator but I wouldn't call it the most important factor, and I certainly wouldn't bet the farm on it.

The GDP could be going up while the majority of the population is getting poorer and we'd be none the wiser. The strength of the USA is in its middle class as well as its productivity, and the middle class could disappear while GDP still appears to be doing fine.

It really depends on who you are dealing with. I've never had problems with postmen, indeed, I've been on first name basis with all 3 of them that I've had (including the postmaster of the local post office)

Conversely, I've had a lot of problems with FedEx. They just leave stuff at the end of the driveway, so anyone can steal it.

Anyway, I can never understand why bloggers seemed obsessed with that woman. She's not that bright or interesting (typical think-tank liberal), but it seems like everything she posts, Instapundit either has to link to it, or a post about it (this). If I wanted to read her blog, I would.

"I can only say good things about the Postal Service in my town..."

Notice the emphasis on "town" and how it points out another problem with government. Mis-allocation of resources.

I called my tax assessor the other day about my current tax assessment. I have been in my house 19 years and have never disputed my tax assessment. When I called I was told I missed the deadline by 1 day. 3 weeks to receive the assessment, make an appointment and meet with the board. I asked the guy on the other side of the phone, what if my assessment was greatly out of whack, what would I do? He told me you would have to live with it for the year and appeal the following year. Talk about being unjustly treated. Although I have been treated bad by the private sector, it has never been as bad as the government. I always have a way to appeal something that is wrong and find a solution. Not with the government. Do we really want these people in our health care?

"...like a going to a bank and being told you couldn't withdraw money because they had run out of it..." and that could never happen [again], especially with the state-owned ones (BoA).

BoA now has a sign stating that non-interest accounts are no long FDIC'd. The SEC recently changed rules such that Money Market accounts can stop you from withdrawing from them if they perceive a "run" on the bank. And, many of us have our savings accounts in the form of Money Markets.

as part of the internet generation, this is my biggest disappointment with obama. he appeared new and fresh, which in this era should not mean top down, limited menu control from a group of unresponsive bureaucrats. truly an opportunity lost.

MM still believes!!! Don't break her heart. She and millions like her prove it is possible to live in the West an entire lifetime and never experience reality. The miracle of modern life insulates educated privileged women. She and the Atlantic are laughable.

I have said many times. I'd rather go to the dentist for a root canal than to the US Post Office for any service. I'm treated better at the dentist, and there is LESS PAIN than having to deal with the sluggos behind the counter at the USPS.

I can believe Megan McArdle very well. I had a postal service mail carrier leave a notice in my residential mailbox that it had been "abandoned" (for some reason he had the idea we had not picked up mail there for some indeterminate period of time, even though we had picked up our mail daily) and therefore our RESIDENTIAL MAILBOX was basically being closed. Gee whiz. We wound up having to talk to the local postmaster, and somehow the problem went away, although she NEVER admitted fault or apologized on behalf of the Postal Service.

There probably are post offices that are run well and beloved by their patrons, but it does depend on where you live and how capable the local postmaster is.

@Christopher on GDP

In the real world you can't have rising GDP with a disappearing middle class, even if it's mathematically possible. If the hypothetical super-duper rich you suggest were to force everyone else to work for free by gunpoint, they could never increase or even remotely sustain productivity. A person's productivity is directly proportional to thier ownership of the results of their effort. Period. Until we all become linked into some kind of mystical hive-mind, our motivation will be based on the personal benefit we derive from our labor.

Freedom is always better for every person. Trivializing choice and effort by attempting coercive equity-modeled distribution of benefits only drives people to be protective and sparing of their own efforts. It may seem like God or the Universe is unfair for not stacking everyone's deck with the same number of good and bad cards. But as soon as some good-hearted folk step in to stack the deck themselves, we shouldn't be surprised if the best players leave the game. Life, unlike cards, is not a zero-sum gain. All who put their efforts out there have something to gain, because most wealth is created through effort, not dished out by life's lottery.

"You're about ten times better off being in the lowest quartile of the rich, unequal United States than a median forcibly equalized Cuban or North Korean..."

Just so.

In the U.S., if you cannot afford what we deem the basic "necessities" you are the designated poor. The extent of the gap between rich and poor is virtually meaningless, if everyone can supply their own essentials. It is a pragmatic, pass/fail system.

In the European model, poor is an entirely relative term, based on median income. Anyone who falls below the median, is suffering from what they deem to be "income poverty." You're graded on a curve; someone will always be poor. The greater the gap between rich and poor, the greater the "inequity" to be remedied through redistribution. It is an ideological system.

It's been hard to sell the later in the U.S. -- till the latest "crisis." In this perfect statist storm, ideological liberals programmatically ignore the government's hand in the financial fiasco. You will hear, instead, about the evils of "privatizing the wealth and socializing the risk" (capitalism!) from which the collective power of society (or religion!) cannot protect us. Regulating our baser instincts, thus becomes the moral imperative of the state.

I went to a local post office for the first time in about 2 years to mail a package to my daughter at college. Mind you, this post office is in a large suburban area on the outskirts of Minneapolis so no "small town" excuse.

When I approached the clerk with my fixed-rate box (about $10 to mail anywhere) she immediately informed me that, since I was mailing in-state, I could save $5 if I repackaged it in a different mailing box. Of course, I was in a hurry and didn't bother to repackage it but it was nice to see a postal employee

There was no requirement for her to spend her time helping me get the best price, naturally. She just believed in customer service.

--- Copper Quark
You write:
"Why should I need to "joke" a clerk into basic service?"
Because being civil and outgoing is simply common decency. Postal clerks and the like are not automatons - and we ought not to treat them as such.
Expend the little effort required to be affable to people who work in crap jobs and you will reap great dividends.
And you'll feel better about yourself.
That said, let's get back to the real work of getting the Marxists out of our government.

For free health care, there is nothing wrong with making people wait in line like they do at the post office. Government-run healthcare will be nowhere near as bad as people are saying it will be as long as it is run by Democrats. If the radical right-wing (oxymoron, I know) every controlled it, the first thing they would do is make sure that Big Oil and Wall Street got healthcare first, and would let as many women, gays, and minorities die as they could.

Christopher · April 3, 2010 03:35 AM

"The GDP could be going up while the majority of the population is getting poorer and we'd be none the wiser."

No, it cannot. The rich are a finite subgroup. There is only so much that they can consume, just so many calories a day, just so many minutes in the day that they can water ski behind their yachts. Rising productivity produces goods and services which must be consumed by someone.

Well, OK, there is one way we can have rising productivity and the public never see the benefit of it. That is if we have borrow massively from foreigners and we have to ship our increasing production abroad to be consumed by the peoples of other nations in order to pay back imprudent loans taken out on unfavorable terms.

We are so screwed.

This may seem like a minor issue, but as someone from eastern european dissent, i find it troubling and frankly offensive that you would so mangle history as to suggest those countries were striving to become communist. They were taken over by a russia, with the consent of western democracies. Many of those countries had freedom fighters fighting for decades after WWII to try and regain their countries independence. To suggest become part of the soviet union was their goal is simply ignorant.

#Eastern European:

Unfortunately one can only wish that was an accurate reading of history. Pretty much every European country had an active native communist population, generally one which the Soviets installed in power for the Eastern European nations (and usually replaced with figureheads later on once the true believers became problems). They were very much 'striving to become communist' at the exact same time as there were freedom fighters opposing Soviet dominance.

May Brian G always find himself at the back of the line when he goes for his free health care, because you know, that were the freeloaders are always found, in the back waiting to have a crumb thrown their way.

And he believes that all is well as long as the Dems are in charge. I suppose he does have a point. Free crumbs for everyone.

And our betters? Gourmet health care. But they are my employees Brian. They don't get better than they are willing to allow me to have. That doesn't smell like the real world to me.

A clue for you Brian. Check out the heads of Wall Street, a whole lot of Democarats there brother.

The USA is the only country in the world where the poor people are fat.

EE,

(I'm the author of this post) Hey, believe me, I'm the first one to agree with you. The betrayal of Eastern Europe (esp Poland) was one of the most shameful chapters in Western history. My argument was directed not at the people, but only at the governments; illegitimate as they were, they made policy.

The GDP could be going up while the majority of the population is getting poorer and we'd be none the wiser.

That's always been the statist argument (and they will cite household income as proof things aren't getting better, but in actuality HHI trands by themsleves are fairly meaningless because as people get richer they establish their own households), but in truth that's actually unlikely in a consumer economy like ours, because productivity benefits flow to the consumer; you generally only see that kind of growing disparity in poor countries where a valuable commodity is being exported by a cartel.

egoist,

Not funds, banks do go under. I mean a bank branch telling you they don't have any cash like it's some ordinary thing that happens all the time.

For free health care, there is nothing wrong with making people wait in line like they do at the post office.

The health care line will be six months long. Except for the nomenklatura.

For free health care, there is nothing wrong with making people wait in line like they do at the post office.

Let me add that it will amount to a reduction in service for most people.