On the end of USPS 1st Class Saturday delivery:
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A better job (Score:2)
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Same here. Frankly, I don't care about Saturday deliveries. Parcel integrity, that's a different story.
Re:A better job (Score:5, Insightful)
And I'd rather the oposite. don't bother dropping shit off at my house Mon-Fri I wont be at home. How about just Saturday/Sunday delivery. Cut costs that much more.
Re:Externalized costs (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, "those bastards" are practically the only thing that keeps the USPS running at all.
Re:Externalized costs (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry to hijack the thread here but everyone should read an article in this month's Esquire entitled "Do We Really Want to Live Without the Post Office? [esquire.com]"
The fact of the matter is that the postal service does not LOSE money, but they are being forced to pre-pay their pension obligations (something no other government entity has to do). Other entities simply rely on the full faith and credit of the United States for their pension payments. Congress is using the pension payments to pad the budget. It's politics, pure and simple. The post office is one of the few things that makes our nation great.
Also, when you think about the postal service and what they do, it's not just mail. It's the infrastructure and standards to send mail. Without standardized addresses, ZIP codes and the like, the private delivery businesses built on top of that model would never be able to succeed. What, FedEx is going to directly interface with every county in the nation to maintain its address database? I don't think so. Sure, in the digital age we send less physical mail, but the post office is uniquely positioned to get into the identity business, something we really need and something I don't trust the actual government to implement. In many other countries, the postal service also became the telephone company or internet provider, because they were already well versed in the procedures to manage communications. An IP address isn't that much different than a street address, when it comes to delivering packets. With IPv6, it's certainly possible for the USPS to acquire and assign an IP address or subnet for each physical address it knows of and give everyone in the country their own location-sensitive IP address. I think the list of other things they could do could be expanded drastically with a little thought.
Re:Externalized costs (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually yes, they do. A zip code is not required by Fedex, in fact, they don't want to rely on it because their shipping routes don't match up to zip codes. Zip codes are for USPS facilities and delivery routes.
Fedex maintains their own database, which is why they can handle out-of-zone fuel surcharges and the like. And believe it or not, there are places without physical USPS addresses that Fedex will deliver to. Think houses way out on back-country farms that have an in-town or near-highway shared mailboxes, but Fedex can deliver directly to door.
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Actually, "those bastards" are practically the only thing that keeps the USPS running at all.
Waiting to hear why those of us on the receiving end of the paper firehose should give a shit.
Re:Externalized costs (Score:5, Informative)
How about some actual numbers?
From USPS Q1 2013 financials [usps.com], page 27:
Volume:
1st Class 17,723 million pieces (a decline from the previous year)
Standard (Bulk) Mail 22,622 million pieces (an increase from the previous year)
Revenue:
1st Class $7.507 Billion (down from $7.744 the previous year)
Standard (Bulk) $4.633 Billion (up from $4.492 the previous year)
So 1st Class still represents more revenue than Standard, but less volume. 1st Class is in decline while Standard is growing, although they note that much of the growth in Standard was due to the election campaigns.
Rock & A Hard Place (Score:5, Insightful)
There are plenty of other things we could do, too. Like toss out all those union fucks making $35/hr and hire twice as many people from the welfare pool at a reasonable living wage. They'd have jobs, and we'd cut costs.
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The big problem isn't really that the USPS isn't government funded, it's that congress requires them to over-fund the pension fund for postal workers. When the postal union agrees with the USPS, you can bet it's true.
Re:Rock & A Hard Place (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as I can tell Congress is every bit as retarded as any wall street owned corporate management I've ever had the pleasure to work with. We have all the right pieces: idiotic shareholders (we call them voting taxpayers) who expect infinite return for little or no investment, dominated by a board of directors (i.e. wealthy elite) with only their selfish best interests at heart, a figurehead CEO (we call him the pres) who pushes an agenda tailored to ensure the shareholders who can get him fired are hoodwinked, some mindless middle management (congress) and a whole lot of employees who, to varying degrees, don't give a flying fuck (civil servants).
Normally I'd say the best solution to this problem with government is the same as with large multinationals: split them the hell up and let the fragments manage themselves. But I don't think our state and local governments have anything like the infrastructure to manage themselves, so many of the states founding articles are antiquated and inconsistent. Note that I ignore hte "efficiency" argument, it's as much bullshit on the government level as it is on the corporate level.
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As far as I can tell Congress is every bit as retarded as any wall street owned corporate management I've ever had the pleasure to work with.
That's because they're often the same person, in different stages of life, or acting through straw men.
They sure don't represent the people - around 1% of the American people are millionaires, and over 40% of congress is. Around ten percent of congressmen have fortunes over $10 million. Very representative, that.
And when a congressman is not a wall street company man, guess who pulls the strings? The voter, or the corporation who financed his election?
We have the finest government money can buy, and a po
Re:Rock & A Hard Place (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Rock & A Hard Place (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the question should be "Why is the federal minimum wage set so low?" If it had kept up with inflation from when I was a kid (1960's) it would be in the $12-$14/hour range. It's people with good middle class wages like USPS workers who keep the economy healthy because the have money to spend on more than just the bare necessities.
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Because minimum wages cause job shortages. If you increase the minimum wage, you will increase unemployment among those affected. It's a choice you have to make. Minimum wages are essentially a form of price control, and you get similar results. You can find this info in any basic economics textbook.
Wrong on all points.
Re:Rock & A Hard Place (Score:5, Informative)
Because minimum wages cause job shortages. If you increase the minimum wage, you will increase unemployment
I hate to have to point this out, but there's an inverse correlation between minimum wage in a country and rate of unemployment.
One of the reasons is that when minimum wage is something you can actually live on, attrition decreases, which in turn increases average worker productivity. The higher wage pays for itself.
Really low wages look really good to the MBA who runs the company, and then he wonders why he spends so much on training and get workers who don't take pride in their job and don't stay. That is because economic models don't take into account human factors.
Re:Rock & A Hard Place (Score:5, Informative)
In the US, that would be mainly teenagers. And look at their unemployment rate.
The published unemployment rate in the US is artificial. Unlike most countries, long term unemployed are removed from the statistics. That's mostly older people, which skews the figures towards showing a too high rate for young people.
Neither does it take into account those who, against their wishes, but in order to survive, will take early retirement or SS disability. That's mostly older people too, who disappear from the statistics without having found employment.. In countries where unemployment benefits aren't as time limited as here, this is less of a problem.
Our statistics also doesn't count the under-employed, i.e. those who do have a job, but don't make enough to make ends meet, so they're still looking for jobs.
The problem is that some money is better than no money, so workers will take jobs with almost no pay, because the alternative is even worse. Decreasing the minimum wage will not improve this; rather the opposite. It may make the unemployment statistics look better, but only in the same way as in the Soviet Union, where people didn't get paid enough to live on, but there was no unemployment. It's the same scum that floats to the top of the corporate world as to the politbureau, and the only ones who think they create jobs are the severely gullible.
Ask people: Do you earn enough to keep you or your family with housing, energy, meals and clothing? It's the amount of positive answers to that which needs to go down, and lowering the minimum wage won't do that.
tl;dr: Two people making $4 an hour isn't better than one person making $8 an hour. At least with the latter, you may have one person who doesn't starve.
Re:Rock & A Hard Place (Score:5, Informative)
No, what minimum wage says is that it's illegal to compete with the guy down the street by cutting your worker's wages below a certain point. Prevents a race to the bottom, or at least sets what the end point of the race is. It's true that if the market can't bear the price that results from wages being set higher, then you have unemployment. But it's also true that up to the point where that happens, you have no change in employment.
Unemployment is so high among unskilled laborers because there's no demand for their work—we have machines to do that, and the machines are getting better every day. Every unskilled worker who is needed has a job, but not enough are needed.
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You're from the future? Nope, I earned minimum wage in the late 1980's when the minimum wages was $3.35 an hour. Now, it is double that, but inflation has not doubled in that timeframe. Of course, that depends on who's numbers you follow. If you look at the price of consumer items (as opposed to the Consumer Price Index), then inflation has doubled in the last 4 or 5 years.
What makes you think inflation hasn't doubled? You could feed a family of 4 on $30 for a week in 1990. Now it's closer to $150.
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Re:Rock & A Hard Place (Score:4, Interesting)
You're looking at it the wrong way. It should be "why is the minimum wage so ridiculously low".
That is less than half of the minimum wage in the country I live in. And almost noone actually gets paid the minimum wage here (government or private sector). No company paying only the minimum wage would be able to attract and retain employees. Even my first ever job when I was a teenager, stacking shelves at a supermarket part time was paying $19/hr (and significantly higher on Sundays/public holidays).
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Meanwhile, here in Australia we have 2 federal politicians who each decided that later this year they would leave politics.
Their pensions will be about $250,000 a year ... for life ... indexed to inflation ... irrespective of any other sources of income. And they're not old at all.
(Australian dollar ~ US dollar)
link [michaelsmithnews.com]
Re:Rock & A Hard Place (Score:5, Insightful)
And the federal minimum wage is still $7.75/hr, last I checked. Why are we paying them so much more than the private sector? They already get cushy benefits!
I see that this spawned a long thread on the efficacy of the minimum wage, but that covers over the more major flaw in this argument: if you are going to make a comparison in compensation, it should not be against the minimum wage but rather to the typical compensation for the same work in the private sector; that is, FedEx, UPS, etc. To compare to the minimum wage is directly implies that postal work would be a minimum wage job in the private sector, which it is clearly not.
Re:Rock & A Hard Place (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Rock & A Hard Place (Score:5, Insightful)
If we let the USPS operate as they should (a taxpayer-funded government agency) then they wouldn't have to worry about financial solvency, and we could get mail every day of the week.
Or if we don't admit that USPS should be a taxpayer funded exercise, let them choose only the cost-efficient routes as other carriers do. You'd get daily delivery in urban centers and once-a-month visit anywhere in the wilderness.
My understanding is UPS/FedEx already use USPS to execute delivery in "unprofitable" areas, because USPS has to cover them, even if these routes lose money. A business that has to perform unprofitable work is pretty much a government service as far as I am concerned.
Re:Rock & A Hard Place (Score:4, Insightful)
There is more to it, it's not that easy.
As postal service, they're a common carrier. So that means they're not allowed to look into your parcel or to read your letter, and they're not responsible for the content of the delivery (if a mail man delivers a parcel bomb that kills you the mail man is not responsible for that). They also must accept mail from any postal address, and deliver it to any other postal address, at a fixed cost.
Urban delivery is highly profitable, cost per letter is far less than what the sender pays. That makes up for the losses of the rural and wilderness addresses.
Also the postal services are allowed to place mail collection boxes all over the place, giving them a huge competitive advantage over commercial competitors (like FedEx, UPS, etc). In many countries the postal service still has a monopoly on letters - usually defined as postal items less than a certain weight.
And for those unprofitable areas: the USPS will be happy to take FedEx parcels as well. It's a win for both sides. With all the extra parcels it may even become profitable overall, as there is now only one person running that route, instead of two persons, saving a lot on salary and vehicle costs and so.
Re:Rock & A Hard Place (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes, that is the argument known as "austerity." Which is a great way to drive something floundering into the ground.
It's like this: If you have $100 of discretionary income a month, should you put $90 into a retirement account? Or save it for emergencies?
Re:Rock & A Hard Place (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you one of the people who makes more than $35 an hour, and is resentful of somebody else making as much as you?
Or are you one of the people who makes less than $35 an hour, and is jealous of somebody else making more than you?
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Re:Rock & A Hard Place (Score:4, Insightful)
As somebody else said, very few people in the post office make $35 an hour.
I think everybody should make at least $25 an hour. Anything less and they're not making enough to support themselves in American society, and the rest of us -- government -- are going to have to make up the difference between what their employer is paying them and what they need to survive.
Minimum wage jobs don't pay enough for people to buy health insurance, so when they get sick, they go to the public hospitals and the rest of us have to pay for it.
If you can't pay your employees $25 an hour, you're an inefficient enterprise and you should go broke and be replaced by somebody who can.
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No, the economists I've read say that we could raise the minimum wage to $25 an hour before we start losing efficiency.
Re:Rock & A Hard Place (Score:5, Interesting)
In Finland, most people make $25 or more. Their economy is doing pretty well. Their high school students have better scores in the international exams than ours.
Our service industry should be decimated. I don't need to stay at luxury hotels where maids making the minimum wage clean out my room. Pay them enough to live on or shut down your hotel.
I don't need to buy hamburgers at MacDonald's for $2 served to me by counter girls who don't make enough to buy health insurance. The people working for the same MacDonalds corporation in Europe get health insurance and better benefits than American workers. Pay Americans as well as you pay your workers in Europeans.
You want Americans to live in poverty. You want America to be a country of inequality and poverty. That's the conservative vision of America.
You think you're doing pretty well now. Well, a lifetime is a long time. Sometimes during your lifetime your technology may become obsolete, which happened to a lot of workers. Or the bosses may figure out a way for somebody in India to do your job for a fifth as much as you charge, which happened to a lot of workers. Then you'll be one of those service workers who gets $7 an hour or whatever your minimum wage is. And you'll be competing with a lot of younger and more energetic people for that $7 an hour.
Re:Rock & A Hard Place (Score:5, Insightful)
I mentioned Finland because they are the most egalitarian country in the world, and one of the wealthiest (and least corrupt). They have a pretty good standard of living.
Hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of students went through City College of New York free on the taxpayer's dime, and practically free through the New York State University system, the California State University system, and the land grant colleges around the US. They also worked hard, and CCNY graduates like Andrew Grove created the computer revolution. Up to about 1980, you didn't have to put yourself through college on your own dime. If anyone has to put himself through college on his own dime now, he should blame the politicians who changed the rules and made him pay for college, including himself if he was stupid enough to vote for those politicians.
Yeah, I'd rather pay that dishwasher $50,000 a year on unemployment benefits if Denny's can't pay him $25 an hour. I don't want people living in poverty in the US. We don't need it. We're a rich country that benefited from technology (most of it from government-subsidized research). We have rich bastards like Dick Cheney who can well afford to pay more taxes.
If Denny's can't run a restaurant that pays its workers at least $25 an hour, they're incompetent. Let them go out of business. Let's invite German and Swedish fast-food chains in here that can pay their workers $25 an hour and still make a profit.
But they won't, because American workers have turned into a bunch of suckers. Employers don't give you a high income, you have to demand it. Now that the Bible Belt has taken over America, we have a work force that doesn't know how to join a union, or how to demand anything. They're content to be making half as much for the same skills and job as workers in countries like Germany, and content to be facing an old age in poverty when their employers don't need them any more.
If you're not making at least $100,000 a year (and probably more), you'd be better off in a European industrial country like Germany.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2011/12/21/germany-builds-twice-as-many-cars-as-the-u-s-while-paying-its-auto-workers-twice-as-much/ [forbes.com]
Frederick E. Allen
12/21/2011 @ 5:42PM |60,178 views
How Germany Builds Twice as Many Cars as the U.S. While Paying Its Workers Twice as Much
In 2010, Germany produced more than 5.5 million automobiles; the U.S produced 2.7 million. At the same time, the average auto worker in Germany made $67.14 per hour in salary in benefits; the average one in the U.S. made $33.77 per hour. Yet Germany’s big three car companies—BMW, Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), and Volkswagen—are very profitable.
How can that be? The question is explored in a new article from Remapping Debate, a public policy e-journal. Its author, Kevin C. Brown, writes that “the salient difference is that, in Germany, the automakers operate within an environment that precludes a race to the bottom; in the U.S., they operate within an environment that encourages such a race.”
There are “two overlapping sets of institutions” in Germany that guarantee high wages and good working conditions for autoworkers. The first is IG Metall, the country’s equivalent of the United Automobile Workers. Virtually all Germany’s car workers are members, and though they have the right to strike, they “hardly use it, because there is an elaborate system of conflict resolution that regularly is used to come to some sort of compromise that is acceptable to all parties,” according to Horst Mund, an IG Metall executive. The second institution is the German constitution, which allows for “works councils” in every factory, where management and employees work together on matters like shop floor conditions and work life. Mund says this guarant
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$25/hour amounts to around $52,000/year gross pay. That gets you into the middle class but I wouldn't call it a shitload of money.
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Maybe $35/hr is a ridiculously high wage where you live or something?
Re:Rock & A Hard Place (Score:4, Interesting)
USPS was entirely self-sufficient on postage fees alone, with surplus revenues, up until Congress passed legislation that mandated USPS pay forward *75 years* of retiree health benefits within *ten years*. No other organization, business or government, has such a mandate.
"Taxpayer-funded" kicked in after that point, as you'd expect it would.
Wealthy congresscritters want to kill off USPS so their cronies in the private sector will benefit, IMO.
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/07/20/how-congress-is-killing-the-post-office/ [reuters.com]
http://www.politifact.com/georgia/statements/2011/nov/11/sanford-bishop/bishop-signs-letter-saying-post-office-faces-big-p/ [politifact.com]
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When the government starts treating my money like a finite resource and stops funding shit like Star Wars laser guided missile defense systems, aircraft that the military doesn't want, and other funding that brings our spending to more than the next several countries put together -- shit that folks like you tend to argue for -- then you can tell me the government is not a magic money tree when I want to keep Saturday delivery.
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Okay, I take exception to that. Where did you get the idea I'm in support of anything like that? The government is insane in its spending (including military), and you are insane for thinking that somebody who might have some different opinion than you carries all the opinions that you despise. This shortsightedness, and blindly projecting your hate onto situations you disagree with, is one very serious root cause of all of this mess.
Pfui! My country's post system does a better job. (Score:5, Insightful)
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I wonder if anyone means this for real. I don't know much about other countries' postal services, but I find the USPS to be pretty damn impressive. Less than $0.50 to send a physical object more than two thousand miles in two days. And I know it happens, but I've personally never had anything get lost or mangled in the process.
That price compares extremely well for the service in Europe. Sending a normal letter from the UK to, say, Austria would get there in the same "2-3 days" as USPS claims, but cost almost $1.40. (That's less than 2000 miles, but comparing strictly on distance doesn't quite work, as the population and economic distribution of the continents is very different. Many European countries offer a next-day service within the country for around $1, for example.)
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Also, having read some other comments, I think the continental postal service is less useful in Europe. We've used electronic money transfers for a long time, and far less companies send letters to personal customers in different countries.
Most people's bank, credit card company, utility company, job etc -- and acquaintances -- are based in the same country. I think the only organisation that sends me paper letters from abroad is the FSF Europe (once a year).
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Canada, $0.55 to send a physical object 3000+ miles in a couple of days. Costs are on average 30% more in Canada so 55 cents is comparable. Probably roughly the same number of lost and mangled packages as in the US though no Saturday deliveries in a long time. And yes, Canada Post is self funding.
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As a Canadian that lives in the US, I have to say that one of the few things that impressed me when I moved down here was how much better USPS works than Canada Post. Here is it very common to chuck something in the mail and have it delivered the next morning. That does not happen in Canada from my experience.
A perfect example is Netflix. I thought that it was a crazy idea until I tried it and found how well it works with one day turnaround. As far as I know, it has not taken off north of the border and the
Missing option: end the USPS (Score:2)
Monopolies are bad, government or otherwise.
End it.
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Are you a religious man? Because that's a religious statement.
What is wrong with the USPS and how would the free market make it better?
Why did Jefferson push to specifically command congress to create the USPS? (It's in the constitution.) What do you know that the framers didn't?
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Quite. The Postal Service is one of the few things that the US government is directed to do. Any "literalist" should be all about keeping the USPS around as a communications method of last resort. The people most likely to be such "literalists" seem to be those that are most eager to privatize the postal service or destroy it entirely.
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What is wrong with the USPS and how would the free market make it better?
How about the fact that it is $15 Billion [cnn.com] in debt?
FedEx, for instance, is several billion dollars in the black. The free market has a way of weeding out unsuccessful enterprises. If you can't manage your money, then you go out of business and someone else steps in the fill the void.
And how is "monopolies are bad" a religious statement? Are you saying you think monopolies are good?
Re:Missing option: end the USPS (Score:5, Insightful)
1) The USPS is NOT a monopoly. You are free to send your mail/packages via FedEx, UPS, DHS, local parcel and gasp e-mail.
2) FedEx and UPS both rely heavily on the USPS to remain profitable by farming unprofitable packages to the USPS.
3) The USPS is the only one that has to fund it health care 75 years in advance, this includes all government agencies and FedEx/UPS/DHS...
4) UPS is unionized and pays as well as, if not better then, the USPS so don't blame unions.
5) The vast majority of the debt is because of the pre-fund mandate and all of it can be attributed to Congress. If the USPS was allowed to act as an independent agency they would be fine. Redundant post offices not allowed to close, Saturday delivery being required, and the prefund are all problems cause by Congress not the USPS.
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Re:Missing option: end the USPS (Score:5, Insightful)
I was somewhat snarky there, and I do apologize for not seriously engaging with you.
Mail delivery and access to mailboxes is a red herring. The definition of "mail" in that context is "items sent via the USPS" - the restrictions on other services handling mail essentially boil down to "don't pretend to be the national post office if you aren't," not "no one else can ship physical correspondence." They have unique access to the mailboxes because a mailbox is actually defined by its use as a receptacle for items intended to be shipped by the USPS - if you put a box outside your house and mark it as "not a mailbox," then anyone can take and receive packages from it as you contract with them. Have you never seen a newspaper-box mounted under a mailbox? Or, for that matter, a UPS or FedEx drop off box?
Likewise, the "manipulation of prices" - they set the price for their own service. They don't set the price for other package services. And you can damn sure send a letter by FedEx, UPS, etc.
The service that the USPS engages in is essentially delivery services. They compete in the market on packages. That's just fact - there are any number of other providers, and no forced incentive or market control that prevents anyone from using them.
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Read the part in Atlas Shrugged about how all the creators go off to Gault Gulch and invent matter transmission.
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"Monopolies are bad" is a religious statement because it isn't based on supporting evidence.
All you do is say, "Last time I went to the post office the line was too long," or "they lost my letter once."
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1) My tax dollars subsidize it.
2) I get very nearly zero use out of it.
3) The only ones who do use it, use it to send me entire books of junkmail for far less than I can send a postcard to Grandma.
4) For actual packages, private shippers do it better and cheaper.
Admittedly, for postcards and #10 envelopes, you can't beat the price of the USPS - But then again, apparently they can't afford to send those for what they charge, either, sooo...
Why did Jefferson push to speci
Re:Missing option: end the USPS (Score:5, Informative)
What is wrong with the USPS
1) My tax dollars subsidize it.
Not in the last 30 years they haven't. Unless you were a taxpayer in the 70s, your tax dollars _never_ subsidized USPS.
Perhaps they should be subsidized with tax dollars, but they certainly are not at the moment.
They are being forced into keeping the prices down and handling the non-profitable routes though. All the responsibility and none of the benefits, really.
The USPS has not directly received taxpayer-dollars since the early 1980s with the minor exception of subsidies for costs associated with the disabled and overseas voters.
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So what do you call 3.4 billion a year for the next ten years, as approved in 2012 when the postmaster general asked to close branches and congress instead laughed at him and whipped out the checkbook?
They are being forced into keeping the prices down and handling the non-profitable routes though. All the responsibility and none of the benefits, really.
Now, in that regard, I consider you the single most insightful response to me so far. Cut the congressional r
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> So what do you call 3.4 billion a year for the next ten years, as approved in 2012 when the postmaster general asked to close branches and congress instead laughed at him and whipped out the checkbook?
I call that fair. If congress is going to insist on the USPS providing unprofitable services they should finance it. If people don't like the results they should stop whining when the USPS closes a post office in their area.
The USPS gets a lot of interference from Congress. If Congress were to leave them
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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GPG. Use it.
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It's not a monopoly.......you can pay FedEx or UPS or whoever else to deliver your items. Feel free to use them instead.
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UPS, FedEx or any other shipper is free right now to compete with USPS. The problem is they can't - the differences in scale are enormous.
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But UPS and Fedex have to put their packages by the door, rather than in the mailbox! It's completely different!!!
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If the package does not fit in the mailbox, USPS puts it by the door. Exactly the same as FedEx and UPS.
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Then you'll be down to 2 monopolies -- UPS and Fedex.
Raise the bulk mail price (Score:3, Insightful)
Instead of stopping Saturday mail....
Instead of increasing the cost of a stamp (1st class mail)....
How about they increase the cost of bulk mail? Bulk mail makes up 90% of my snail-mail inbox. If nothing else, that means that I'd have less snail-mail spam. i.e. 2 birds, 1 stone.
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I assume the USPS is setting the price point for junk mail optimally for maximum profit already. If they raise it, they'll end up delivering less mail, but reduce their profit even further. This would cause more problems for them than it solves.
Stalking Horse-- (Score:3)
Sounds like a stalking horse to me, to make their plight more visible, hamstrung between unions on one side and politicians on the other, and not allowed to make business decisions on their own.
Meds by mail (Score:2)
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Service quality of the USPS is going downhill fast (Score:2)
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have you complained to your local postmaster? often the misdelivered items are because the person doing your route sucks or they just don't have a regular postman assigned. I went through a period like this where we lost a really good one, got the round robin thing for about a year and now we have a regular guy again who does a very good job.
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Congress hates us (Score:5, Informative)
Why not cut even more? (Score:2)
I think it's a really smart move, and I don't see any issue with cutting normal deliveries to 3 days a week, say Monday/Wednesday/Friday. They could still deliver higher priority mail and packages on the other days, but honestly, does it really matter if you get a bill 1 day later? If it's time critical, I think most people are going to use e-mail anyway, and if it's something that actually needs physical delivery in a hurry, why not charge a bit more for priority delivery.
Another casualty of technological advances (Score:2)
The USPS is already almost irrelevant right now. All my bills are electronic, with the exception of medical stuff... and even they are starting to finally come around. My family is all on email, even my 75 year old mom. So really, all I get in the mail is postal spam (a LOT of it) and Christmas cards. I haven't gotten an honest-to-goodness letter in a decade.
I feel bad for the people who are going to be put out of work; but I don't think maintaining a postal service makes a whole lot of sense anymore. Let i
Re:Another casualty of technological advances (Score:5, Insightful)
So this is how it stands right now: first class volume, way down; standard mail, about the same; package volume, way up. So, the relevancy of the post office is heading towards more of package delivery versus letter delivery. I think if the post office didn't have to deal with congress setting the unbelievably stupid pre-funding all pensions for the foreseeable future rule, we'd actually be in halfway decent shape. And really, if they didn't have to deal with congress at all, I think more advanced things could be done. Like maybe branching out into something like what Fedex-Kinkos has done. It would bring more services to each post office then just shipping.
I'm against it, strongly. . . (Score:5, Interesting)
So, the only area they save money is by extensively cutting hours to employees like me. I'm a RCA (rural carrier associate), which means I fill in for the regular rural carrier. I run Saturdays and any days the regular takes off. So, under the new system, they wouldn't need the usual one RCA per route like it is now. With just package runs on Saturdays, one person could handle multiple routes worth of packages, or instead of working a full day, each RCA now works just maybe a half day on Saturday. No one knows just yet how the upper management is going to implement this. Interestingly enough, local management and carriers heard the news after it hit the national news. The guys in Washington are not giving us any heads up on this causing a lot of outrage among the employees.
Junk mail (Score:3, Insightful)
That's like a band-aid (Score:3)
Seriously, what can they do? Dedicated buses/shuttles and push-carts for carriers on walking routes, rather than individual vehicles? Some of those tiny electric vehicles that are barely road-worthy for non-rural routes? More contracting with DHL, UPS and other companies, for USPS to provide last mile service or outsource long distance shipments? Something drastic, like neighborhood mail box banks, like you see in apartment complexes?
netflix (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, I'm sure that Netflix won't mind: longer mail transit times means that high usage customers may now be pushed into profitability, or get ticked off and leave altogether also saving them money.
Let the USPS run itself as a business (Score:3)
Whenever the USPS has money, the Congress puts more rules on it. The most recent was the rule about having to pay forward its health care expenses:
http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20121001/DEPARTMENTS02/310010002/USPS-again-defaults-health-care-payment [federaltimes.com]
The pensions, union rules and other government regulations are strangling this once-great postal service, and it can't keep up. Removing these rules would allow it to be competitive again.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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The only thing private companies are more efficient at is charging fuckloads more for less coverage. Fedex and UPS routinely punt unprofitable routes to USPS.
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Um, okay - Did you read what I said? If FedEx charges Bill's Discount Term Life more to send me crap I don't want - I can live with that.
I have no use for the US mail.
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The USPS is very good when it's good and decidedly slow when it's slow. I found the lost delivery rate to be very close to that of Australia Post, about 2 or 3%, of course that may have been entirely at Aus
Re:Missing option (Score:5, Interesting)
The time to get parcels between the US and Australia varies so much, it's weird.
Just in the last couple of months I've had:
- Something posted in mid-November arrive around New Year's.
- Something posted on a Monday arrive on Thursday the same week
Both were standard rate USPS parcels. The slow one was a bit physically larger than the fast one, and was posted from the Midwest rather than California (which is a little closer obviously), but still, it's incredibly inconsistent.
Re:Missing option (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Missing option (Score:5, Interesting)
The time to get parcels between the US and Australia varies so much, it's weird.
Just in the last couple of months I've had:
- Something posted in mid-November arrive around New Year's.
- Something posted on a Monday arrive on Thursday the same week
I used to get magazine subscriptions from the US and it wasn't unusual for different months' issues to arrive in reverse order. I would see part 2 of an article and think "WTF, I don't remember reading part 1?". Part 1 would arrive 3 days later.
I'm guessing they were creating a LIFO stack with shipping containers. The earliest post gets shoved down the back of the shipping container and gets unloaded last.
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One less trip to the mailbox
Our mailbox has a yellow retro-reflector flag that automatically goes up whenever the mailbox is opened, such as when mail is delivered. We just look out the front window and look for the flag. It also helps to check if someone (else) has picked up the mail and mislaid it.
BTW, real people need daily delivery, even without much junk mail. Only someone just starting out can afford to not care about an overflowing mailbox, especially when the financial records are delivered for tax season.
Re:Good Ridance! (Score:5, Insightful)
I, jjsimp, have declared that the average household doesn't need daily deliveries.
I know everyone's situation.
I know everyone's needs.
I don't write letters, nor appreciate the care and respect that goes into physically writing to my loved ones, old or overseas.
My postman isn't a friend, a neighbor; he is an invader! a random stranger I have never seen nor talked to, and I wish he would get off my lawn.
(excuse the artistic license...but having written while deployed and to those deployed, I can tell you...the reception of a hand written letter is a wonderous thing, particularly when far out of the way and the nearest net acess might as well be on the moon)