The Right Answers.

Q. What is the typical salary of mailman?

W.B.W., Gainesville, Ga.

A. According to the U.S. Postal Service letter-carrier pay schedule for mid-September 2001, a "City Carrier Grade 1" makes a yearly salary starting at $32,156 and rising to $42,635. That doesn't include overtime, which can range between $23.19 and $30.75 per hour.

The biggest expense of the Postal Service, with an annual operating budget of almost $70 billion an some 800,000 employees, is labor. That accounts for 78 percent of costs. "Expenses are supposed to be covered by fees charged for delivering mail," Insight magazine reported. "In reality, the Postal Service rarely operates without a deficit."

Q. How many Americans can't afford health insurance?

B.F., Waycross, Ga.

A. As noted by the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA): "A common assumption is that most uninsured Americans simply cannot afford the cost of coverage." Yet, during the past decade or so, according to study author Devon Herrick, "it is the more affluent households where the ranks of the uninsured have swelled, while significantly decreasing among low-income families." The study found that almost one-third of the 38 million-plus Americans without health insurance could afford to buy at least a minimum level.

Q. I know a lot people cross our borders illegally, but how many immigrants enter this country legally and then simply stay here indefinitely?

L.U., Casselberry, Fla.

A. Some authorities estimate that there are 400,000 illegal border-crossings annually into the United States. Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies has pointed out that last year the State Department issued some 7.1 million nonimmigrant visas, yet the government has little idea whether the non-immigrants left when their visas expired. There are between three million and four million people living in the U.S. who entered legally but did not leave, perhaps 40 percent of the illegal immigrant population.

Q. How much is the airline industry expected to lose this year?

P.D., Leawood, Kan.

A. With the crash of Flight 487 in New York on November 12th, the expected losses for the industry jumped even higher. Losses for the year, predicted analyst Samuel Buttrick of SBS Warburg, will likely total some $6.4 billion.

While one can make a case for some compensation for airlines that were ordered closed following the September terrorist attacks, further subsidies are likely to prove counterproductive. Professor Gary Becker, a Nobel laureate at the University of Chicago, notes that the industry was already in poor condition. Acknowledging that, without assistance, some airlines could be forced to declare bankruptcy, Becker argues that the stronger among them "would continue to operate while in Chapter 11, and they would shed debt and gain greater financial strength."

Subsidies, he writes in Business Week, "mainly delay their adjustment to reduced travel and other effects of greater concerns over safety. Moreover, propping up weaker companies hurts the strong ones, since they then have to cope with subsidized competitors." Nevertheless, government-backed loans of up to $10 billion have been authorized, plus another $5 billion made available in grants.

Q. Before the Berlin Wall was built, how many Germans were leaving East Germany for West Germany?

M.L., Lovington, N.M.

A. Prior to the wall's construction in August 1961, the East German Communist leaders were being embarrassed by those choosing a freer, more prosperous life in West Germany. In 1959, for example, 81,073 citizens left East Germany, according to the Communist regime's figures; the West, on the other hand, counted 143,917. The following year, the exodus was even greater: The East counted 159,768; the West 199,188. The next year's total was more dramatic still.

When the Communists decided to build the Berlin Wall, East German propaganda chief Albert Norden visited the police units to tell them how the barbed wire was providing a "bulwark of freedom." Some of Norden's 1961 specious remarks were reprinted in the Frankfurter Allgmeine to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the wall. Norden emphasized, "You, comrades, are standing on the border between war and peace, between imperialism and socialism. Whoever dares to reach a hand over the border will rip his finger bloody on barbed wire. Whoever sticks his swinish snout in our socialist garden will pull it out bloodied. We thank you, comrades, and know that the working class can rely on you."