Post Office Layoffs

The U.S. Postal Service has announced that many thousands of layoffs will soon be made of middle-level postal service employees (Aug. 7). They announced further that the alternative would be a five-cent increase in the cost of a first-class letter.

I am not now, nor have I ever been a postal service employee, but I think someone has his priorities wrong. Has anyone totaled up the cost of dumping thousands more currently unemployable workers onto the streets? What about the car loans that will not be paid off? The mortgages that will go in default, possibly in foreclosure? What about the college tuitions that will not be paid? What about the restaurants that will no longer serve these people? The list is practically endless. What will all of these things cost the rest of us?

When I consider these things, I am not shocked by the cost of a five-cent increase in the price of a first-class letter. Perhaps these job reductions can be accomplished more slowly, through attrition.

Perhaps there are other places in our economy where a small price increase would keep thousands of people working, at a negligible cost to the rest of us.

SHELDON STARK JR., Pacific Palisades