Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

The LA Times warns budget cutters, who are disproportionately from non-urban districts, who the big losers are likely to be from their efforts:

The recipients with the most to lose are the ones in rural America, who are almost twice as reliant on federal largesse as city dwellers and suburbanites. A recent fight over subsidies for flights to small-town airports is a good example of the battles likely to come. It also illustrates the trade-offs that Congress will confront as it tries to close the yawning federal budget gap.

Another good example is the postal service. Mail volume is down and they’re hemmorhaging money, so among other things they’d like to close 3,700 underused post offices. And guess where most of those post offices are? They’re in the same place as all the underused train stations that rural congressmen fight like crazed lemmings to protect: small towns and villages.

This is why the postal service has never been fully privatized, and it’s why the free marketeers in the Republican Party have never quite brought themselves to permit private companies to compete with the postal service outside of parcel delivery. The postal service is required to provide universal service at a fixed price, even though service to rural areas costs far more than service to cities. The first thing a private competitor would do is specialize in junk mail, which heavily subsidizes ordinary letters, and the second thing it would do is restrict its service to densely populated areas. This would give it far, far lower costs than the USPS and allow it to siphon off its most profitable business segment. To compete, USPS would have to match private sector prices. Then they’d have to (a) raise prices substantially on first-class mail and (b) either pull out of rural areas entirely or else raise the price of delivery to small towns even more. The fire-breathing tea party conservatives responsible for this would find themselves in the unemployment line at the next election.

Eventually, of course, something like this is going to happen anyway. But the free marketers will put it off until catastrophic losses finally force them to admit the obvious: it costs a lot for the federal government to service rural America. Personally, I’m happy to do it, for the most part. We’re all part of a single country and it’s worth a little subsidizing of non-urban areas to keep everyone feeling that way. I just wish the residents of rural America would stop their endless whining about Uncle Sam’s grasping tax bite when they’re the ones who get the biggest piece of the pie. We can even things up any time they’d like.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate