Yeah, the increased revenue and profit from Amazon was the only thing keeping the USPS solvent after the stupid Republican 50+ years of benefits mandate. Both marketing and First class revenue is declining, package shipment growth is the only thing keeping their balance sheet from going to hell.
The USPS may have some unique advantages, but it also has unique obligations. It has to deliver mail anywhere, for rates fixed by Congress, and it can't adopt efficiency improvements without Congressional approval. The letter monopoly the USPS has is getting to be a smaller and smaller amount of the mail, and it's making more money on the parcel business, which is wide open for competition. The USPS has been innovative in those areas.
They've made changes. Not the best changes, and I don't know why.
Private letter delivery needs to be portioned out for much larger regions. Allowing companies to deliver letters only in counties with major cities leaves the taxpayers on the hook for most of the area of the country.
The Post Office does have drives for efficiency. They just can't do a lot about it. They don't need to be profitable, but they do want to stay afloat.
We warn the reader in advance that the proof presented here depends on a
clever but highly unmotivated trick.
-- Howard Anton, "Elementary Linear Algebra"
It's not as though the USPS does it for free! (Score:1)
Amazon has to pay for all the packages it ships; it's not as though FedEx, UPS and USPS do it for free.
The USPS is an independent agency of the US government, and receives minimal subsidies...
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Yeah, the increased revenue and profit from Amazon was the only thing keeping the USPS solvent after the stupid Republican 50+ years of benefits mandate. Both marketing and First class revenue is declining, package shipment growth is the only thing keeping their balance sheet from going to hell.
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Re: (Score:2)
The USPS may have some unique advantages, but it also has unique obligations. It has to deliver mail anywhere, for rates fixed by Congress, and it can't adopt efficiency improvements without Congressional approval. The letter monopoly the USPS has is getting to be a smaller and smaller amount of the mail, and it's making more money on the parcel business, which is wide open for competition. The USPS has been innovative in those areas.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
They've made changes. Not the best changes, and I don't know why.
Private letter delivery needs to be portioned out for much larger regions. Allowing companies to deliver letters only in counties with major cities leaves the taxpayers on the hook for most of the area of the country.
The Post Office does have drives for efficiency. They just can't do a lot about it. They don't need to be profitable, but they do want to stay afloat.