Classifications of Market Structures in the US

In the United States economy most merchandises can be sort go forth into four different markets structures. only, each and every market in the United States is completely unique from the others. chiefly the best type of market structure for the general public is per-fect competitor because it creates the lowest possible monetary value for the public. on that point are some exceptions were perfect competition isnt the best choice for the public on account of various reasons. The United States Postal supporter is one of them and since the Postal dish is a monopoly, it is its experience market.This paper will discuss the budget dilemmas that the postal service has faced for the past twenty familys and if it is in the best interest of the economy for the United States Postal advantage to continue as a monopoly. The first time there was talk of privatizing the Postal do was in 1979 when the Postal Service was losing big tallys of money in the long run. But since the Postal Service is a necessity for America, the goernment had to subsidize the service in order for it to continue in operation. In 1979 the United States Postal Service had a cash flow of $22.Billion and was additionally receiving $176 one thousand thousand from investing(1, Intro). Even with this added revenue the Postal Service was pipe down greatly under funded on its own (1, Intro). During this time it was discussed to privatize the postal service and introduce competition because of the extreme losses that the service was experiencing. A positive argument for privatizing the Postal Service was with numerous competitors in the market there would be more efficiency and the public would receive lower prices. But this would as well increase the usage of resources, for example airplanes and cars.One of the problems the Post Office had was its receipts from consumer purchases that were submitted the next day aft(prenominal) the transaction (1, i). If the receipts were submitted earlie r the postal service would receive more money because they could invest that money sooner (1, i). Another way the Postal Service could increased profits was by competitively selecting banks that would generate them higher interest rates and such (1, ii). Probably the most relevant and final way to reform the budget of the Postal Service is to improve the bookkeeping poli-cies and banking techniques (1, ii).Not only did the Post Service drive to increase profits plainly they also proposed to cut costs in a number of ways. on that point were three methods that were proposed in 1946 for the protection of salaries that no longer exists (2, Intro). These sustain to do with the rural mail carriers. infra this antiquated method of demonstrateing mail the Postal Service was los-ing money to any mail that went to rural areas (2, i) There are 48,000 mail carriers that deliver mail to millions of families that are considered to be living in rural settings this osts the postal Service 8 58 million dollars a year (2, i).This is a fairly easy problem to fix considering how much(prenominal) money is being lost. It was proposed that money loss could be significantly cut down if the Postal Service corrected the following problems. The rural mail carriers were assigned a certain amount of time to deliver to a specific rural area, this method was out of date and because of this the carriers have free time for which they got compensable for (2, ii). The next problem was that other mail routes based pay on how many miles he route covered, so the carriers were getting paid by the mile (2, iii).With this problem fixed the Postal Service could rescue 26. 8 million a year (2, iii). There was also an hourly rate that was in order which indirectly promoted in expeditious service (2, iii). A stop to this could have saved the Postal Service $255,000 a year (2, iii). From the num-bers mentioned above, it can be seen why the United States Postal Service was losing so much money. These problems did and then eventually did get solved over the past fifteen years and this instant the Postal Service is making record reaking profits.Now in the first quarter of the fiscal year 1996 the Postal Service already has a net income of $1. 2 cardinal (3, 1). Now not only is the Postal Service just breaking even, but they are also making a profit. On top of that, the 1. 2 one million million million dollar figure is 115 billion dollars better then the quarterly forecast predicted (3,1). It is marvellous that they are not only making a reasonable profit but it is increasing over the years. The Postal Service is also now reducing debts.An example of this is when the Postal Service redeemed a 1.5 illion dollar loan two years in advance which will save them 22 million dollars of interest in the next two years (3,1). The Postal Service isnt stopping with the revenue that it is receiving now. The Postal Service is planning to increase its international revenues of $1. 2 bi llion by twice the amount in the next five years and ten-fold by the year 2005 (5, 1). The Postal Service is continually running(a) to streamline their operations for the future that they are now run-ning. The Postal Service is continualy looking to cut hind end on borrowing money.All of the recent financial borrowing has been through the Federal Financing Bank, but the Postal Service now is looking into outside sources, such as bonds in the public markets (5, 2). line of reasoning are starting to get jealous of the Postal Service because of the great prof-its it is experiencing. The Postal Service is now making a major impact on the United States Economy (6, 1). Business are pointing out that in 1995 the Postal Service had records of $1. 8 billion in net income and a 1. 7 billion dollar debt reduction (6, 1).The $54 billion revenue that the Postal Service is ringing in would retch them in 12th place on the muckle 500 list and 33rd on the Fortune Global 500, with the worlds lar gest corpora-tions (6,1). A recent study showed that domestic direct mail sales were at $333 billion in the year 1994 (6,1). This figure is expected to reach over $500 billion by the year 2000 (6,1). It can be seen throughout this paper how the United States Postal Service in-creased profits and does not have to borrow as much money as before. It seems that the Postal Service is doing just fine charm it is a monopoly.But there are still two arguments for and gainst the Postal Service continuing to persevere a monopoly. On one side compe-tition is thought to make industries in the market more efficient and practice more innova-tive (4, 1). But on the other hand the competition is also thought to pass off to a wide-spread cream skimming, with the postal service left only the high-cost, unprofitable markets (4, 1). So who is to know which market would be better for the American economy as far as the Postal Service goes. But it is speculated if the United States Postal Service does keep increasing its profits over the years, maybe it will be privatized.