Postal Service - Death Imminent

US Mail is less expensive. There will still be junk mail because businesses will always send junk mail. There will be no competition because FedEx and UPS will collude and fix prices.

Typical neo-con logic: neo-con gets a dog; dog food costs money so Neo-con stops feeding the dog, neo-con gets upset because after several weeks dog no longer barks, runs, or plays; neo-con then takes dog to the pound to have it euthanized.

US Mail is having problems not because there is anything wrong with the model but because their resources are being drained to give tax cuts to private corporations who don't need them and who are not using the money to create jobs.

 

$75,000 divided between 100 million tax payers comes to $0.00075 per tax payer.

 

Very good. That's one person's cost socialized over the entire tax base. Now add everyone else's costs.

 

First, its in the Constitution, second, the private sector contracts to the postal service, ergo they are not more efficient. The problem is in how the Postal Service is forced unlike every other agency to pay so far ahead in pensions and this is bull(*)(*)(*)(*) and was set up by Congress, not by their request.

 

It's still cheaper. Now what?

 

Let me say again IF Congress would stop forcing the Post Office to pre fund retirees, even future generations of retirees, then the Post Office would be self supporting.

If you truly believe that someone else could just step in and run a constitutionally mandated national mail service and do it as well as the business set up to do just that, for anything remotely near what the P.O. charges, then you have a serious reality problem.
Somebody llving on a moutain top in Idaho pays just what some guy in downtown NY pays to send a letter. NO ONE else could do this. Not sure why you think they could.

Not sure why you believe that UPS or Fed Ex could just step in and magically take the place of the post office. That's about as bright as believing that Blackwater contract fighters that Bush used in Iraq could step in and take over our national defense.

I have people close to me that work for the Post Office. You have no idea what it takes to deliver mail to literally 600 to 900 individual households a day for day after day, year after year, decade after decade.
You can't get competent people to do this job without pensions.
If you want third world qualilty service (theft of mail, non delivery, etc.) then do away with the Post Office, hire a bunch of McDonalds minimum wage stooges and see what you get.

Perhaps you missed the information I just posted that UPS workers have pensions.

 

That's not "the problem". The problem is out of control unfunded liabilities and declining mail revenue. Since the invention of the internet people have been using the post office less. Their business model is structural and becoming more outdated.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/45018432/The_Truth_About_The_Post_Office_s_Financial_Mess

They started funding their pensions to avoid the unfunded liability time bomb that is sure to bankrupt that branch of Government soon enough. Just like our entitlement programs as they are, they are unsustainable. So you can continue to run it as it is, if you like greater and greater deficits, that is.

 

I doubt it.

 

False.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/45018432/The_Truth_About_The_Post_Office_s_Financial_Mess

Just like with our entitlement programs, which are unfunded by the tens of trillions, the current model is unsustainable and needs to change sooner than later.

It's sad that a self described "conservative" could have so much faith in a bloated, wasteful Government and fear free markets as much as you do. Do you support universal health care, also?

Why can't they? If the post office ceased to exist, do you really think the private market wouldn't come in and fill the void? Do you think competition wouldn't be a good thing? How about the fact that the businesses providing this service won't be allowed to go 16 billion in debt on the dime of the taxpayer?

So you're biased. Amazing how people can forget about what's best for the country when they or someone they know might take a pay cut or lose a job. I guess that's why Obama got reelected.

Nonsense. There are a lot of hard working people out there in more demanding jobs than the Post Office who don't get pensions.

Baseless sensationalism and fearmongering.

I missed nothing. Pensions are on their way out in the private sector in general. They still exist, but they are the exception now. That was my point.

 

You think it is a simple and light weight transition, you have no idea the level of effort. Mail is still the main source for correspondence. Paying bills, notices, et al, are done through the mail.

 

No reality, no one can replace the USPS, it is far too large and their effort is colossal.

 

So we must continue to feed the beast. "Too large to fail".

 

Get creative. Reduce their coverage. Allow local cities to take care of local deliveries. State to take care of states. There are many things that can be done that won't destroy the planet earth.

 

The Post Office is making many changes (I think five day service is in order) but due to forces out of it's control, i.e. rising fuel costs, a decline in first class mail, etc., progress is hard going.
Still, the P.O. generates billions of dollars of revenue. To think you can simply privatize national mail service is sheer idiocy.

No. Do you support privatizing our national defense, speaking of bloated wasteful government?
I hardly "fear" free markets.
I'm just not stupid enough to believe the free market is a magical panacea that can fix and do anything. What about you?

Either the idea of an organization that can move mail, documents and packages around the entire nation efficiently, and at a relatively cheap price, is worth having or not. I think it is. You seem to think not.

No. Absolutely not and your ignorance of this subject is staggering.

No one has the multi billion dollar infrastructure it takes to collect, process and distribute billions of daily pieces of mail around the country. And it would take a huge massive investment by anyone attempting to imitate the Post Office...for what?

What do you suppose the profit margin is in moving grandma's birthday card to her little nephew from Idaho to Florida? How much postage do you think it would take for Fed Ex to make a profit delivering a single piece of mail cross country? One dollar? Two dollars? Five dollars? You really have no idea.
What business would attempt to make a profit on such a lengthy costly process?

You simply cannot take a McDonalds business model when it comes to public services. No doubt there is a lot of bureaucratic bloat and inefficient business practices that the Post Office has to address (like six day service). But like most dim thinkers you like your mail being dropped at your doorstep every day with no consideration of how it got there so cheaply. You would be the first to scream at one dollar postage stamps to send a simple letter.

I have a little more than a simple surface knowledge of the issue and a sheep's perspective of privatization of public services. How about privatizing the Navy?
I bet you are for that too.

Deliver a thousand individual stops every day for decades and see if you can do it. I'll bet not. You would stop six months into the job (if that long) without a carrot at the end of a stick.

It's the absolute truth. You want fast food style mail service?
You want your checks and business statements at the mercy of some minimum wage kid that handled the fryer machine just last week at Burger King? You are a typical hypocritical whiner that wants something for nothing.

Yet they exist...even at UPS, who you hypothesize will step in and take over the Post Office's business if we get rid of the P.O.
You really didn't think this through, did you.

 

That's all they have to offer though. Let the private sector do it, so they can have one more monopoly over our everyday lives. Private sector this, private sector that. Yada yada yada. Same old song and dance, same old vomit in a bag.

 

50 years of public sector investment has resulted in the highest povery levels. Yeah...its the private sector doing that.

 

Not thinking things through. You cannot change the structure of the USPS and expect no affects. Those small towns do not have the resources to deliver mail.

 

50 yrs ago, the US's economy was much smaller than it is now. 50 yrs ago, banks, airlines, et al were far more regulated than today.

Your ilk doesn't even have its history correct, stop playing political dungeons and dragons.

 

Billions in revenue, with many billions more in costs. 16 billion more than it brings in, actually. If it stops funding its unfunded liabilities, it will be 100 billion in the red. This is something to celebrate?

Thank you for your baseless say-so. I disagree with it.

I believe the free market and competition allows for better service and lower costs. Government monopolies are rife with inefficiency. $60,000 in welfare costs per household, and only $29,000 of it gets down to the people. The rest is pissed away in the wastefulness of Government. The Post Office is no exception.

It's not a "cheap cost" just because you, personally, pay 45 cents. Not when they are running the kind of deficits they are and piling up 100 billion in unfunded liabilities before the end of the decade. You're paying a lot more than that, as are other tax payers.

I'm not the one cheering on an inefficient branch of Government as it racks up billions and billions in debt. That's ignorance.

The private sector can build that infracstructure. Why couldn't they? Are Government workers magical beings that have powers not bestowed upon other workers? The Post Office has been losing billions in revenue due to people using its services less and less, yet the Post Office resists downsizing, mainly because it doesn't have to. It can just increase it's deficit an extra billion here or there, and "conservatives" like you won't have a care in the world about it.

You think the Post Office is flying planes and driving vans filled with single letters from Idaho to Florida?

You continue to fail to see how this "cheap cost" is just an illusion. Dim thinkers would look at a 45 cent stamp and say "hey, that's cheap!" and ignore the 16 billion in annual debt they are racking up. See my "heart transplant" example of your folly. Same thing.

 

You're right, to a certain extent(I know you were trying to be sarcastic, but you ended up telling the truth in the process). It's not the public sector that has shipped millions of jobs out of this country and replaced them with low-wage, no opportunity service sector ones. The government didn't do that, the private sector did.

 

If the public sector and liberal policies didn't tax and regulate businesses to the point where their costs kept them from being competitive in the market place, maybe they wouldn't have shipped jobs overseas. Ever think of that?

 

If the government did not regulate business, nobody would, certainly not the businesses themselves. There's no self-interest in a business playing on a level playing field. There is an interest in skewing the playing field to benefit THEM. They already manage to do that, even with government regulation. I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like without it.

There has to be balance, but business, especially big monied behemoth's, have no interest in that. They aren't supposed to and you shouldn't expect them to, which is why you need an entity with the authority and the power to handle that task. The only thing worse than a big government regulation like we have today(which I would completely agree needs to be scaled back in certain situations) would be a small government that didn't get involved at all.

Show me a successful country with demographics comparable to ours that is succeeding while allowing business to do whatever they want and not taxing or regulating them. You're not going to be able to because it....doesn't....work.

 

People are also forgetting a) rural letter carriers that require the USPS, and b) the fact that it is one of the few Constitutional agencies in government.

 

The bottom line is - don't complain about jobs getting shipped overseas if you want to continue the high tax, high regulation model of running an economy. In the real world, far removed from your fear mongering, businesses need to compete with other businesses around the world who do not have high taxes and high regulations placed on them, which allows them to sell their products at a lower cost. Unless American businesses can produce superior products that people are willing to pay more money for (an advantage we once had, but has been lost for a long time), they won't be able to compete.

 

I'm all for privatizing a lot of things, the police force for example so there is a feedback loop. But even UPS and Fedex piggy back off the USPS for many things: databases, overnight handling, and rural delivery because they are efficient at these things.

Just because some private industry does it better doesn't mean they all do. Look at when logistics was removed from the military before the Iraq War. We had troops without water, without kevlar, etc. Had the military been in charge of their own logistics this would not have happened.