Unrelated to this specific article: The USPS is a crucial part of the US infrastructure. The thought that we could loose it over mail in ballot voting is a sick joke.
There was a bipartisan plan to include 30 billion in funding for the Post Office in the 2 trillion dollar stimulus bill.
But the administration said they wouldn't sign anything that included emergency funding for the USPS. That doesn't prove what the administration's motives are, but they certainly seem hostile towards the USPS.
I don't get why it has to lose money at all in the first place. Sounds to me like they're offering a unique, highly in-demand service, in a market that is currently booming. Perhaps they should consider reworking their pricing structure? Just a thought.
I don't get why public infrastructure and services are supposed to make a profit. They are already funded by taxes, why are we supposed to pay them again?
In an ideal world, healthy profits are just taxpayer money saved that can be re-invested or returned to the budget. In reality this never happens because there's an incentive to spend, spend and overspend.
It is an "establishment of the executive branch of the Government of the United States" specifically authorized by the United States constitution, and (if you ignore its transition from the USPOD) predates America.
The reason is because in 2006, a law was passed that required the USPS to fully fund 75 years worth of expected retirement compensation. That's not reasonable, and was designed to destroy the service so it could be privatized.
Well that is the line we are always fed but it hasn't been true[0] since day one. In effect they are under similar rules to most private pensions in funding out to 25 years with requirements to project what their 75 year liability would be. Another view [1]
Simply put, the use of the Postal Service has dropped a lot but the number of employees retired or eligible to retire has not. In other words, they have so many eligible for full benefit retirements that they were not even trying to service the debt and instead likely to end up defaulting it to the PBGC which would have gutted payments and left retirees in a lurch.
Perhaps ease the limits then? What's the endgame here? Let it die? Keep spending tens of billions on it each year in perpetuity while it delivers packages for Amazon and Chinese overseas sellers for next to nothing? Neither is a good outcome for anyone, left or right.
>Keep spending tens of billions on it each year in perpetuity while it delivers packages for Amazon for next to nothing?
According to the Post Office they aren't delivering packages for next to nothing. They are delivering them for competitive rates and if they increased them they would lose business, revenue, and profit.
Now this could be temporarily different due to COVID-19, but if that's the case then emergency funding would be appropriate.
There's no such thing as "competitive rates" to a lot of the rural USA because nobody else is required to go there, so nobody does. Instead, they let the taxpayer fund those package deliveries while Bezos is swimming in money like Scrooge McDuck. You don't have to carry water for him just because he owns WaPo.
And to add insult to an injury, the mandatory service such as first class mail is priced below competitive and cemented that way by law. It's as though certain people in US Congress want the USPS to be insolvent, and ultimately nationalized / tax funded.
Responding to the sibling comment: they don't need to make a profit, but they should at least break even. Call it a price, a tax, or whatever, but it's capable of being completely self-contained where those using the service can pay the full cost of operating it.
But what does "break even" even mean in the context of public infrastructure? If you're okay with calling that income a "tax" why doesn't public subsidy through... taxes count as breaking even? Nobody complains that highways don't "break even" but it's not like toll roads pay 100% of road upkeep...
Means that instead of paying for USPS with taxes or debts (and wasting half the money on unrelated bullshit in the process), it could just charge a sustainable price for its services.
The USPS does not have domain over the pricing structure of its most popular commodity: first class mail. That is regulated to the Postal Regulatory Commission. As for other services offered they do maintain control, which is why priority delivery starts at $7.15. They're also mandated to provide door-to-door delivery with first class mail, so effectively every piece of rural mail costs them money, but they can't do anything about it.
It's simple to establish that rural delivery has a higher cost to the USPS than city delivery does. As you've pointed out, cutting delivery days to rural citizens also bears a high cost in the view of those with diminished service.
It seems the exceedingly sensible thing to do would simply be for the government to subsidize delivery to the costliest areas. Unfortunately that would mean taxpayer dollars supporting the USPS and that's an idea that's seemingly untenable to rural communities.
Hopefully a solution can be found in all of this. I certainly can't see one, but I'm hopeful that it'll find a way.
Why is mail important? Are people sending letter? Or is that they're getting packages delivered? If it's packages they can have it delivered and actually pay the cost instead of asking other people to subsidize their lifestyle.
Iirc, there was a lot of arbitrary funding allocated in that bill. For once in its existence, Congress seemingly (as I understand it, I could be wrong) passed a bill which largely affected only what it was supposed to, with a minimal amount of dead weight.
The USPS needs to be preserved, it's essential. The stimulus wasn't the place to do it.
Not a US resident, but as an outsider, it does seem like the government is not doing all it can to save the postal service, especially given the corporate bailouts they're looking to hand out.
It's a specific long-term strategy called "Starving the beast", implemented by the conservative wing of the republican party. Control of the US Senate makes it easy to persist policies for a long time. It's a somewhat unusual philosophy where you collect less revenue and borrow to cover the difference to encourage fiscal prudence.
The USPS is a target for a variety of reasons. Think of it as a leveraged buyout target... they have a ton of assets, from information assets to real estate. Carving up the real estate alone would make for a ton of patronage. There are also some extreme positions (which have prominence these days in some circles) that the post office and civil service is a manifestation of big, Federal government exerting too much influence over local affairs.
Nobody in power has suggested this as a possibility.
Why would anyone go on record to say they're going to let a key infrastructure service fail? No one would do that. We can only speculate on what their intentions are, but it's reasonable to say a lack of evidence is not necessarily evidence they won't let it fail.
Part of the plan includes a transition to a model "that delivers mail fewer days per week and to more central locations (not door delivery) [which] would operate
at substantially lower costs."
The plan notes "USPS already has over $100 billion in unfunded liabilities, a substantial
capital investment backlog, has posted losses for over a decade, and has no clear path to profitability
without reform."
Except the primary reason the USPS has posted losses for over a decade is that, in 2006, Congress passed a law requiring the USPS to pre-fund retiree health benefits (supported by both sides of the aisle I should add) unlike any other Government agency or private industry competitor.
It really isn't hard to understand, the USPS is not playing by a fair set of rules and is losing as a result.
> The USPS is a crucial part of the US infrastructure.
Mail delivery and shipping are crucial, not the USPS. There are plenty of other private companies that can and do show the ability to do what the USPS does - only more efficiently (and without consistently losing money). At this point in history, there's no need for us to continue supporting the tax-subsidized[1] money pit that is the USPS.
Yet another piece of evidence that private industry is more effective than government-funded programs.
[1] Make no mistake - the USPS might be able to claim they don't receive tax money for operations (technically), but the laws and other perks protecting their monopoly status have a real-world cost, and the net effect is no different from that of a tax.
edit: Ok, it looks like many people disagree. If that's the case, explain yourself instead of simply hitting the downvote button.
“The Postal Service receives NO tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.”
https://facts.usps.com/top-facts/
> Laws that bar any other shipping service from delivering mail and packages directly to residential and business mailboxes. Shapiro estimates that this gives the Post Office a $14 billion annual boost, more than three times what the Postal Regulatory Commission estimates it to be.
> Tax breaks. The Post Office is exempt from state and local property and real estate taxes, along with other burdens like tolls, vehicle registration fees, and parking tickets. These exemptions save the USPS $2.18 billion per year.
> Cheap borrowing. [...] It currently borrows the legal limit of $15.2 billion at a rate of 1.2%. Without this access, it would be paying somewhere between $415 million and $490 million per year more in interest.
> Finally, Shapiro points out that the USPS pays its workers salaries and benefits far above the rates paid to similar workers in the private sector.
From the article; it's not a /literal/ taxpayer-funded subsidy.
It's a random individual's approximation of the value added by their status as a government agency; and no, we patently /don't/ pay for it through taxes (unless you count subsidized borrowing, but that wasn't the original claim and it's more than a little nitpick-y).
> Laws that bar any other shipping service from delivering mail and packages directly to residential and business mailboxes. Shapiro estimates that this gives the Post Office a $14 billion annual boost...
I believe you may wish to re-read your own link. What he said is correct. What you stated is patently incorrect.
The above quote is from your own article and states that is a 3rd party estimation and not-at-all a tax donation that the American populace pays for, which is what you also stated.
Okay, the article’s point is that their position as a semi government agency gives them an unfair advantage vs their private competitors. Of course it does.
What private companies are delivering mail to rural areas in the middle of Montana? And how much do you think they charge to deliver a single letter to someone an hour away? (Answers: No one - they contract the work to the USPS, and at least $10 per letter)
Because a reliable communications network is a public good, and cutting off millions of poor Americans from critical services is a despicable way of remediating whatever vague injustices the USPS is perceived to be committing against taxpayers.
If you want to give welfare to poor Americans give them welfare and let them pay the true price of their goods. I bet most of them would choose to keep the money and have postal service once a week, or every 2 weeks if they could keep the cash savings.
There's no reason we have to choose between those things. Network utility scales with connectivity. It doesn't make sense to optimize for profit when doing so triggers a race to the bottom for service all over the fringes of the network.
USPS lost $9 billion in 2019[1], so roughly $30 per American. Anyone who pays even one bill per month via mail would pay at least 4x that much at current private rates. I'm not inclined to believe privatization would bring those rates down much for rural areas.
Sure, if we assume we've implemented UBI and eradicated poverty or something then those prices aren't a big deal. But even then, what have we gained by privatizing? Private industries that provides critical services are either massively subsidized (agriculture, transportation - indirectly via roads) or massively unpopular and frequently monopolistic (telecommunications, health insurance). Even if a talented CEO could squeeze a few percentage points of efficiency out of this industry, it would come at the cost of misaligning incentives in perpetuity, and the government would still be responsible for keeping the industry afloat whenever the economy goes bad.
Or we could let them charge a few extra cents for postage, let them operate 5 days/week instead of 6, charge the wealthiest Americans a couple extra tax dollars each, and keep consistent service available at dirt-cheap prices for everyone everywhere.
As ezrast says below, the real goal is a "reliable communications network", which I agree with wholeheartedly. In the 18th century, that was spelled "Post Offices and Post Roads". They couldn't have anticipated email. Must we interpret the Constitution's requirement so literally?
Maybe "post offices and post roads" could mean "internet service". We're seeing public school taught over the internet today, due to COVID-19, so I think it's fair to call the internet an essential service. That's how I receive 99% of my communications. Does even rural Montana really find it more valuable to send pieces of paper than internet packets?
Let's stop printing 100 million advertisements every day just to drive them across the country and throw them away somewhere else. Instead, let's use the office to provide internet access to everyone. I think that would be exactly in line with the spirit of the Constitution.
2. The USPS is the only organization in US History that was mandated by Congress to fully fund its pension for 75 years into the future (i.e. potentially for employees that are _yet to be BORN_).
Details like that are what make the USPS a ripe target.
#2 is not true about funding for employees not yet born. The law unfairly requires the USPS to save money for its accrued future promised benefits, especially healthcare benefits.
However, the problem isn’t that the USPS is required to recognize the cost of these benefits, the problem is no other governments are required to. There’s a reason only taxpayer funded entities offer retiree healthcare benefits, and that’s because it’s a ludicrously costly benefit to give if you don’t have the power to tax.
The same applies to defined benefit pensions. If anything, all other entities promising defined benefit and retiree healthcare benefits should be subject to the same laws. Maybe then, politicians and current taxpayers wouldn’t be able to steal from future taxpayers for today’s labor costs.
You asked what laws stopped them delivering mail to rural locations. You can't deliver mail anywhere, rural or otherwise, if you can't use the mailbox when you get there. That's the law you were asking about.
> Also the reference is what looks to be on some persons blog post.
The same laws I described, along with pricing. While the laws don't directly prohibit private delivery to those areas, they greatly reduce the economic incentive to do so by (1) prohibiting delivery to regular mailboxes and, (2) allowing USPS to charge such low rates so as to lose money on every delivery (no one can compete with that).
It’s a critical service. No one should be allowed to profit off of critical services.
Is there an argument to be made that a privatized version could run better? Not unless it gets to leverage people’s need of their mail next to its own greedy need for profit.
This libertarian argument falls apart when you look at other such purported examples of the imaginary "Free hand". Do you want your mail run like your ISP or telcos?
I live in rural America. If we relied on for-profit, I imagine I would have to drive to the closest pick-up location (40 minutes), as I have to do right now for my UPS/FedEx packages.
I guess the same can be said for roads, water, electricity, and any other utility. And it also points out that the one thing that is for-profit is completely unavailable in any modern form out here - internet and phone. Our options for internet are dial-up (35/mo, no download/upload cap as if that matters) or satellite (75/mo, 15gb up/down cap monthly). Phone has copper home phone options at 60/mo. Cell doesn't work.
Not everyone can live in cities, is my only argument for you. My work, and the work of those I serve, relies on my existing in a rural area. Food comes from somewhere. I know it sounds hand wavy and dismissive, but that's the truth for me, and my area.
Without some amount of cooperation and working together, who would want to live out here where there is nothing? Then who grows the food?
That's great, so bear the actual cost of your lifestyle and let the price ripple through the system. Maybe food needs to cost a tiny bit more.
Would you be for a grocery store tax that kept groceries the same price everywhere? Irregardless of shipping and land costs?
It costs a lot to run internet connectivity all over the place, if the town wanted to pay to run the cables it could, or a non-profit could, there's a wide variety of solutions. My guess is that it's just not worth the cost/maintenance for the few people that need it vs the other options. Internet may need to cost 1k per month if only a few people are using it and the cables need to be run a long distance.
Proper prices are the only way we can proper figure out how to allocate resources. If we stopped subsidizing remote farmland, maybe farmland near cities would be more viable.
>That's great, so bear the actual cost of your lifestyle and let the price ripple through the system.
I don't set the prices of the commodities I sell. Those are set at a national/international level and make their way to the local grain elevator. For that to happen, it would, essentially, be a tax on your food to subsidize me living here to make the food.
> Mail delivery and shipping are crucial, not the USPS. There are plenty of other private companies that can and do show the ability to do what the USPS does - only more efficiently
This is a completely false statement. Private shipping companies do not do what USPS does, and in fact private shipping companies often partly use USPS. See for example FedEx SmartPost [1].
Private shipping companies have the exact same problem that all private companies have: they only have the incentive for profit. That means that people that are not profitable will receive no service from them. For private shipping companies, that means people in rural areas will either be completely unable to get mail, or will need to pay ridiculous prices for mail (think >$20 for a letter).
The only reason Amazon and other online retailers offer free shipping in the entire US is because USPS is mandated by law to subsidize shipping to expensive rural areas. No other private shipping company can or will do this because it goes entirely against the motive of profit.
If USPS is out of the picture that means people in rural areas will not be able to receive mail anymore or will need to pay ridiculous rates for delivery and mail. The benefit of that is that people in cities might pay a few cents less on postage. Emphasis on might. The more likely reality is that shipping costs will go up for everyone and the profits made by only servicing people in cities will be privatized. A great win for the CEO of FedEx, but a loss for all other citizens of the US.
This doesn't seem to be a common opinion, but I generally don't understand why USPS is critical infrastructure. Vote by mail is just about the only essential service they provide that I can think of, and that could potentially still be supported in other ways without USPS the other 364 days of the year.
Many of the justifications I've come across of why mail is essential seem to center around transmission of information being essential, and I 100% agree with that. But these days important information does not need to be transmitted by mail. The fact that many important services are still tied to hard-copies of paper - like mailing checks, mailing bills, mailing a warning when a bill has been missed, etc. causes some completely unnecessary problems. It's easier to keep a phone number or email address active for many years, but an address for a large percentage of the population is temporary. I've seen the argument made that not everybody has internet access, and that this is an equality issue that physical mail is still necessary for less privileged people. But many poor people are more likely to have a cell phone than have stable housing with a stable mailing address. And public libraries provide internet access for those who don't have it otherwise.
Also, and this part is arguably a first world problem but it's still a big annoyance, the junk mail that props up USPS is completely out of control. How is an essential government service entirely ad-supported like USPS is? That seems crazy. Imagine if the fire department made you watch some ads after they put out your fire.
I'm not arguing for getting rid of the USPS now, we do seem to need vote by mail at least for a while longer until we have a better, sufficiently secure alternative. I just think all these arguments about how essential it is to the fabric of modern society are bit outdated.
Edit: anyone who is downvoting me care to comment on what I'm wrong about?
>It's easier to keep a phone number or email address active for many years, but an address for a large percentage of the population is temporary.
Working with low-income folks daily, this is not true in total. We have to check phone numbers and e-mail addresses every time we interact with our clients, because they cycle through them almost monthly. Physical addresses tend to change annually.
>And public libraries provide internet access for those who don't have it otherwise.
There is no public library with internet access within 100 miles of my current address.
>How is an essential government service entirely ad-supported like USPS is?
They're not entirely ad supported?
>I just think all these arguments about how essential it is to the fabric of modern society are bit outdated.
And this is my take - your view is of a young, middle- to upper-middle-class person with no problems accessing the modern world today. For poor people, for rural people, the mail is essential. I receive all of my bills via mail, because the internet is so bad here. My bank does not offer bill-payment, and I don't want to link my bank account to a third party site, outside of using my bank to auto bill pay, if that's even an option.
> I don't want to link my bank account to a third party site anyway.
And this is just my take, but this last sentence really weakens the rest of your argument. Your view seems to be that of someone who's uncomfortable with modern technology. At some point, we'll need to accept that being uncomfortable with the status quo of antiquated, painfully slow, inefficient non-tech solutions is just as valid of a viewpoint as being uncomfortable with technology.
Sorry, I wasn't as clear as I should've been. I updated the comment to clarify. It's not that I don't want to pay bills electronically. It's that my bank won't let me. So I assume the only other option is some kind of third party, similar to paypal, if that even exists for this kind of thing.
You shouldn't be downvoted... you're expressing valid questions that should be understood. With issues like mail, voter-id, etc you really need to remember that there are 300+ million people in the United States, and most of the others that you know are like you. You gotta walk a mile in others' shoes.
I come from a place in rural upstate NY where broadband is only available to about 75% of the population, the legacy POTS system is being allowed to fail, and cellular service is available to about 50%. Should my former neighbors be cut off from functioning in modern society because they can't get mail?
Today, I own a home and have to pay property taxes and garbage bills. Should my ability to keep my home be contingent on my phone service? What if my phone carrier screw up and ports my number without my permission? What if I screw up, don't update my credit card and have service suspended?
The other alternative, public libraries, are also being starved of funding in many areas.
USPS may deserve to decline or evolve. But killing it in the middle of a crisis for stupid political reasons is not a strategy.
Genuine question - how available is home phone service and DSL internet in that area? Email, and ability to load some official websites is the critical service, which doesn't need to be that fast.
> Should my ability to keep my home be contingent on my phone service?
No, ideally not just on phone service. But on something digital that is free and doesn't require any effort to keep it live over an extended period of time (perhaps email). This kind of thing is exactly my point though, should your ability to participate in society be contingent on living in one place for a prolonged period of time? When I was younger I knew a lot of people that would bum around for a while, travel, crash on friends couches, etc. I remember multiple friends who had a relatively small bill get sent to collections and ruin their credit for the next 7 years because the service had an old address on file. It seems crazy to me that this can happen, that you'd just be sent a few pieces of paper of which it can never be verified that you've actually received them, and no one ever needs to make an effort to call or email you, and then that ruins your credit. And these people were relatively well off and overall pretty responsible in the scheme of things, I can only imagine this type of thing must also screw over chronically poor people all the time.
> killing it in the middle of a crisis for stupid political reasons is not a strategy
100% agree with that, I've just wondered a for a long time why so many official things still done primarily through mail. In my opinion it's worth at least having a public discussion about why things are even still done this way, and therefore whether we still actually need the USPS. But it seems that even on this tech website most people don't agree.
I do appreciate your comment, ultimately it seems like these arguments fall along a very stark a rural/urban divide. I'm so used to living in cities that it's just ingrained in my mind that housing and something like a physical address is a premium and scarce resource and anything digital can be much more freely available and unconstrained. It's hard to even fathom that in some people's reality it is the opposite (and even after reading your arguments, I'm still skeptical to what extent that is the case).
> I've just wondered a for a long time why so many official things still done primarily through mail.
Easy. Two reasons: universal service and no standard ID.
If you aren't homeless, you always have a physical address that can be delivered to. A physical address is a piece of the earth than can be proven to exist or not exist, and even audited by various means. "Virtual" services like phones and internet are not universal for many types of people. For a professional, access to the internet or mobile phone is very reliable. For many others, you are one missed payment or reload away from losing that number forever.
No standard ID is the other thing. There's no root of trust for humans, and no good way to link you to who you are. Biometrics are only available for limited use cases (mostly criminal), and almost all forms of "trust" (in the identity sense) are tied to physical locations or events. Your driver's license or passport (if you have them) is linked to the record of your birth, marriage (if your name changes), your place of residence, and one or more bills or other business records.
The system as it is has many flaws, but you can't fix it without a strategy. Getting rid of a service like the mail or monetizing it in a way that spikes the costs undermines many expected parts of life for almost no benefit.
>I generally don't understand why USPS is critical infrastructure
Private citizens and businesses need to get physical things from point A to point B regardless of where point A and B are in the country. It should be self evident that the infrastructure needed to do that is critical. As for whether or not the USPS is the best way to do that, there's been some constitutional arguments and debate that's taken place over the last 250 years.
> How is an essential government service entirely ad-supported like USPS is?
Because Republicans hate taxes and unions, and the USPS is one of the largest public sector unions that they can't get rid of (due to aforementioned Constitutional requirements) so they force the USPS to over-fund themselves without taxes.
>Imagine if the fire department made you watch some ads after they put out your fire.
Imagine if Congress told fire departments across the country that they weren't allowed to take tax dollars to fund themselves.
It's weird to me to hear comments like this. To me the postal service just seems like a slow email service with no spam filtering. (Sure they can delivery packages, but they're not unique in that regard).
I get the utility of certified mail and associated services, but I don't really understand why we need first-class/marketing mail service in the 21st century.
I agree it was important infrastructure 250 years ago.
It's harder to afford stable housing with a stable mailing address than it is to afford internet access.
And those without internet access can go to public libraries or even get free public wifi in many cities. Even some homeless shelters provide wifi now, which is much easier for them than providing mail service. Technically, I think those without a permanent address can register to still receive mail at a post office, but that seems more difficult to manage and more limiting than finding internet access.
If we get rid of the post office for last-mile delivery of anything to anywhere, we can be virtually assured of having to bail out the major package delivery services every few years.
Imagine a world where state or federal government wants to do mail-in voting, or conduct a census, or mail emergency checks to all Americans, or send out tax refunds, or passports, or birth certificates, and private companies refuse to do it, or charge exorbitant rates. Would you prefer:
a) The government can compel private companies to do any of these things at any time whether they want to or not.
b) The government can do these things by itself.
c) None of these things are possible.
Or, imagine a state election that includes a ballot question about raising taxes on large corporations, and the only company that can deliver and collect ballots is Amazon. Can you think of any problems this could cause?
As I said, I understand the utility of services like certified mail. That seems like the appropriate level of care for most of the mailings you mention. You wouldn't want absentee ballots or passports to be lost, right? Or if my county wants to summon me for jury duty, they probably should pay the $3 to make sure I get the summons.
At heart, though, my beef with USPS stems from my hatred of spam. They're a service I interact with multiple times weekly... when I move their garbage from my mailbox to my trashcan. When 95% of my interactions with them are negative, it's hard for me to understand how some people can like them.
HN has this conversation about web services all the time. "I'm tired of seeing ads" -> "Somebody has to pay server costs, would you prefer all content be paywalled?" -> "Someone should implement a micropayment system so we can all support these things collectively."
Only here we already have the centralized payment system in the form of taxes, but it turns out when you use that to subsidize USPS operations everyone still complains.
Nobody likes marketing mail. If you think you know how to convince Congress to let the postal service operate like a normal government service and stop trying to make a profit, let me know how I can help.
It always puzzles me why this is the oft suggested answer. Surely the sane default should be to already not receive unnecessary spam? In the digital world, the general consensus seems to agree with this sentiment, I wonder why the same doesn't apply for the real world. If anyone wants your ads, they can sign up for it, delivering it to anyone else should be punishable by law.
The financial structure is very different. Email service providers deal with the costs imposed by spam. They wish to be rid of it. The USPS derives much of their revenue from direct mail advertising. They depend on it.
This argument is not convincing, if the postal service can't be sustainable on its own without sending spam, surely the right answer would be to address the problem at the root. Think of the time and effort wasted nationwide in producing, delivering and then subsequently throwing away this amount of advertising. Surely it would collectively be cheaper to simply not produce most of it to begin with?
"If anyone wants your ads, they can sign up for it, delivering it to anyone else should be punishable by law."
Let's say I am a Gray Actor, Company X, who sells great products but I want to make money on digital signups. I add this unchecked box to my order form: "By checking this box, you agree to be contacted by our partners with promotions."
- can checking this box apply promotions to the mail address you entered on my shipping form?
- can I sell the rights to send you mail promotions after you check this box?
- how long can I send you promotions?
- how hard can I make it for you to "unsubscribe" (phone, written by mail, difficult to navigate website)?
- you demand proof from a partner that you did indeed check this box after I send you a promotion. What do I need to supply?
- the original subscriber has moved (without my knowledge) and I send generic ads in their name to the new tenant at the old address. Am I still in compliance?
Even if you presuppose "sign up for ads" is the only way to get spam, there are a lot of protections that are still missing.
There's no reasonable way to tell if something is solicited or not, mail is not duplex, and it's not on demand. Most mail I get that matters was not explicitly requested to begin with.
As well, most ads I get in the mail look like normal mail anyway, and I don't really want the government opening my mail to check if it's spam or not.
I'd much prefer a way to opt out of receiving advertisements wholesale on a per-address basis (not per-person, mind you). While you can "opt out" of receiving ads, it's borderline impossible without giving PID to advertisers!
It's the other way around: bulk mail is incredibly cheap to sort, route, and transport, and it's that which subsidizes your hand-addressed letters.
The USPS literally has a service "deliver this flyer to every residential mailbox in this ZIP". It's cheaper per-item than a letter, yes, but the margins on "stuff a bunch of identical objects into N boxes" are much higher than "figure out which of N boxes this 1 unique mailpiece goes to".
That seems less of a problem with USPS itself, and more of a problem with the funding structure of USPS. They are now in the position where they are forced to deliver junk mail to subsidise the loss-making deliveries they are mandated by law to perform.
If the government mandates USPS to perform deliveries for a price that is below cost, these deliveries should be partly funded by the taxpayer. They should not be forced to subsidise these deliveries by delivering spam mail.
I had a USPS package delivered signature required. They just left it in the mailbox. Unfortunately, it wasn't my mailbox, but one of my neighbors. It took me another 3 days to track it down...
So true. 95% of the mail I get goes straight into the trash. I live in a condo complex with a bunch of centrally located mailboxes. They could save me some time by putting a trash bin right next to the mailboxes.
What? USPS is the single largest parcel carrier in the US (dwarfing UPS and FedEx by package volume). That ain't even including the numerous packages that UPS and FedEx delegate to USPS for last-mile delivery (via SurePost and SmartPost, respectively). Hell, a lot of rural communities are entirely dependent on USPS for parcel delivery because they're outside of the service areas of other carriers.
I don't know where this notion of "USPS only delivers letters and magazines" comes from, but it's patently and demonstrably false.
Sounds like you've never had a flyer stuck under your windshield wiper, then :)
My point, though, is that the "unsolicited advertisement" functionality of USPS is minor compared to its significance as America's top parcel carrier, and to write off USPS as "just a source of junk mail" is throwing not only the baby, but also the tub and half the house, out with the bathwater.
I just got an ad via FedEx from some "growth hacking" company. The main category of mail I get from USPS are bills and monthly statements, not ads, anyway. They also deliver most of my packages from online stores.
Throw-away accounts with no identifying information, purposely flaming comments that add nothing to the discussion (nevermind with no citation, sources, or data) are a very non-hn thing. Is there a rule against this kind of low quality participation?
Your negative karma indicates that most people disagree. Please come back with a real account and let us have a healthy debate. This is an interesting topic and is worth discussion.
What will happen is that they'll continue to vote overwhelmingly Republican, as a bloc.
Edit: This isn't political snark, FWIW. The deleted parent comment pointed out that soldiers on deployment rely on the APO/FPO system under USPS to receive packages from home, and wondered what the soldiers would do if the USPS is allowed to fail by the Trump administration.
It's objectively demonstrable that those who end up worse off because of Republican policies are among the most faithful Republican voters, and that almost certainly holds true in the armed forces as well. Warfighters and their families will likely pay more, get less, and continue voting the same way.
An uninhibited free market would absolutely produce a price for that service. If no mail is sent, it's because the market is inhibited or both of the parties (government and families) are unwilling to pay the price.
Anyone in the country can send information to anyone else in the country for almost nothing. Is there any other infrastructure that provides this service today?
This kind of unfettered, nearly free (should be entirely free, but I digress) communication is the cornerstone of a healthy society.
Judging by the comments no one is actually reading TFA. Article is about the 2001 anthrax attacks. Two USPS employees died. Article is basically complaining that the USPS didn't upend their entire way of doing business in response to an isolated terrorist attack.
Yes it has been privatised but there is basically only one postal service (PostNL). The other one (Sandd) only exists because when PostNL was privatised they weren't allowed to monopolize.
Because mail has been so drastically reduced in the last years due to digitalisation of banking and Government, PostNL has trouble staying profitable so recently this monopoly limit has been removed again to allow of a fusion of Sandd and PostNL.
I was nearly at the end before it occurred to me to wonder about references for all this. It's really light on actual facts while being generous with the rhetoric.
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 220 ms ] threadBut the administration said they wouldn't sign anything that included emergency funding for the USPS. That doesn't prove what the administration's motives are, but they certainly seem hostile towards the USPS.
Simply put, the use of the Postal Service has dropped a lot but the number of employees retired or eligible to retire has not. In other words, they have so many eligible for full benefit retirements that they were not even trying to service the debt and instead likely to end up defaulting it to the PBGC which would have gutted payments and left retirees in a lurch.
So what would you have?
[0]https://www.cnbc.com/id/45018432
[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2019/05/13/why-aoc-is-mo...
According to the Post Office they aren't delivering packages for next to nothing. They are delivering them for competitive rates and if they increased them they would lose business, revenue, and profit.
Now this could be temporarily different due to COVID-19, but if that's the case then emergency funding would be appropriate.
And to add insult to an injury, the mandatory service such as first class mail is priced below competitive and cemented that way by law. It's as though certain people in US Congress want the USPS to be insolvent, and ultimately nationalized / tax funded.
In the more rural parts, mail is very important. Cutting it down to 1/week is terrible.
It seems the exceedingly sensible thing to do would simply be for the government to subsidize delivery to the costliest areas. Unfortunately that would mean taxpayer dollars supporting the USPS and that's an idea that's seemingly untenable to rural communities.
Hopefully a solution can be found in all of this. I certainly can't see one, but I'm hopeful that it'll find a way.
The USPS needs to be preserved, it's essential. The stimulus wasn't the place to do it.
The USPS is a target for a variety of reasons. Think of it as a leveraged buyout target... they have a ton of assets, from information assets to real estate. Carving up the real estate alone would make for a ton of patronage. There are also some extreme positions (which have prominence these days in some circles) that the post office and civil service is a manifestation of big, Federal government exerting too much influence over local affairs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
I know that privatisation of Royal Mail here in the UK was terrible for the average user as prices went up significantly.
Why would anyone go on record to say they're going to let a key infrastructure service fail? No one would do that. We can only speculate on what their intentions are, but it's reasonable to say a lack of evidence is not necessarily evidence they won't let it fail.
Part of the plan includes a transition to a model "that delivers mail fewer days per week and to more central locations (not door delivery) [which] would operate at substantially lower costs."
The plan notes "USPS already has over $100 billion in unfunded liabilities, a substantial capital investment backlog, has posted losses for over a decade, and has no clear path to profitability without reform."
Except the primary reason the USPS has posted losses for over a decade is that, in 2006, Congress passed a law requiring the USPS to pre-fund retiree health benefits (supported by both sides of the aisle I should add) unlike any other Government agency or private industry competitor.
It really isn't hard to understand, the USPS is not playing by a fair set of rules and is losing as a result.
Mail delivery and shipping are crucial, not the USPS. There are plenty of other private companies that can and do show the ability to do what the USPS does - only more efficiently (and without consistently losing money). At this point in history, there's no need for us to continue supporting the tax-subsidized[1] money pit that is the USPS.
Yet another piece of evidence that private industry is more effective than government-funded programs.
[1] Make no mistake - the USPS might be able to claim they don't receive tax money for operations (technically), but the laws and other perks protecting their monopoly status have a real-world cost, and the net effect is no different from that of a tax.
edit: Ok, it looks like many people disagree. If that's the case, explain yourself instead of simply hitting the downvote button.
Weasel words. See https://fortune.com/2015/03/27/us-postal-service/
> Tax breaks. The Post Office is exempt from state and local property and real estate taxes, along with other burdens like tolls, vehicle registration fees, and parking tickets. These exemptions save the USPS $2.18 billion per year.
> Cheap borrowing. [...] It currently borrows the legal limit of $15.2 billion at a rate of 1.2%. Without this access, it would be paying somewhere between $415 million and $490 million per year more in interest.
> Finally, Shapiro points out that the USPS pays its workers salaries and benefits far above the rates paid to similar workers in the private sector.
From the article; it's not a /literal/ taxpayer-funded subsidy.
Also, since that link is paywalled: https://web.archive.org/web/20200411145708/https://fortune.c...
I believe you may wish to re-read your own link. What he said is correct. What you stated is patently incorrect.
The above quote is from your own article and states that is a 3rd party estimation and not-at-all a tax donation that the American populace pays for, which is what you also stated.
USPS lost $9 billion in 2019[1], so roughly $30 per American. Anyone who pays even one bill per month via mail would pay at least 4x that much at current private rates. I'm not inclined to believe privatization would bring those rates down much for rural areas.
Sure, if we assume we've implemented UBI and eradicated poverty or something then those prices aren't a big deal. But even then, what have we gained by privatizing? Private industries that provides critical services are either massively subsidized (agriculture, transportation - indirectly via roads) or massively unpopular and frequently monopolistic (telecommunications, health insurance). Even if a talented CEO could squeeze a few percentage points of efficiency out of this industry, it would come at the cost of misaligning incentives in perpetuity, and the government would still be responsible for keeping the industry afloat whenever the economy goes bad.
Or we could let them charge a few extra cents for postage, let them operate 5 days/week instead of 6, charge the wealthiest Americans a couple extra tax dollars each, and keep consistent service available at dirt-cheap prices for everyone everywhere.
[1] https://about.usps.com/what/financials/annual-reports/fy2019...
As ezrast says below, the real goal is a "reliable communications network", which I agree with wholeheartedly. In the 18th century, that was spelled "Post Offices and Post Roads". They couldn't have anticipated email. Must we interpret the Constitution's requirement so literally?
Maybe "post offices and post roads" could mean "internet service". We're seeing public school taught over the internet today, due to COVID-19, so I think it's fair to call the internet an essential service. That's how I receive 99% of my communications. Does even rural Montana really find it more valuable to send pieces of paper than internet packets?
Let's stop printing 100 million advertisements every day just to drive them across the country and throw them away somewhere else. Instead, let's use the office to provide internet access to everyone. I think that would be exactly in line with the spirit of the Constitution.
2. The USPS is the only organization in US History that was mandated by Congress to fully fund its pension for 75 years into the future (i.e. potentially for employees that are _yet to be BORN_).
Details like that are what make the USPS a ripe target.
However, the problem isn’t that the USPS is required to recognize the cost of these benefits, the problem is no other governments are required to. There’s a reason only taxpayer funded entities offer retiree healthcare benefits, and that’s because it’s a ludicrously costly benefit to give if you don’t have the power to tax.
The same applies to defined benefit pensions. If anything, all other entities promising defined benefit and retiree healthcare benefits should be subject to the same laws. Maybe then, politicians and current taxpayers wouldn’t be able to steal from future taxpayers for today’s labor costs.
https://www.truthorfiction.com/is-usps-losing-money-because-...
They certainly could if it weren't for laws preventing them from delivering to people's mailboxes.
Apparently it's literally illegal for anyone but USPS to put something in your mailbox https://blog.oup.com/2017/07/mailboxes-us-mail/.
You asked what laws stopped them delivering mail to rural locations. You can't deliver mail anywhere, rural or otherwise, if you can't use the mailbox when you get there. That's the law you were asking about.
> Also the reference is what looks to be on some persons blog post.
Yes the blog explains the context around the law. Is this one better if you want to appeal to authority https://about.usps.com/news/state-releases/tx/2010/tx_2010_0...?
Is there an argument to be made that a privatized version could run better? Not unless it gets to leverage people’s need of their mail next to its own greedy need for profit.
https://www.cato.org/publications/tax-budget-bulletin/privat...
[1] https://informeddelivery.usps.com/box/pages/intro/start.acti...
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2002/07/08/02-1690...
Not everyone can live in cities, is my only argument for you. My work, and the work of those I serve, relies on my existing in a rural area. Food comes from somewhere. I know it sounds hand wavy and dismissive, but that's the truth for me, and my area.
Without some amount of cooperation and working together, who would want to live out here where there is nothing? Then who grows the food?
Would you be for a grocery store tax that kept groceries the same price everywhere? Irregardless of shipping and land costs?
It costs a lot to run internet connectivity all over the place, if the town wanted to pay to run the cables it could, or a non-profit could, there's a wide variety of solutions. My guess is that it's just not worth the cost/maintenance for the few people that need it vs the other options. Internet may need to cost 1k per month if only a few people are using it and the cables need to be run a long distance.
Proper prices are the only way we can proper figure out how to allocate resources. If we stopped subsidizing remote farmland, maybe farmland near cities would be more viable.
I don't set the prices of the commodities I sell. Those are set at a national/international level and make their way to the local grain elevator. For that to happen, it would, essentially, be a tax on your food to subsidize me living here to make the food.
This is a completely false statement. Private shipping companies do not do what USPS does, and in fact private shipping companies often partly use USPS. See for example FedEx SmartPost [1].
Private shipping companies have the exact same problem that all private companies have: they only have the incentive for profit. That means that people that are not profitable will receive no service from them. For private shipping companies, that means people in rural areas will either be completely unable to get mail, or will need to pay ridiculous prices for mail (think >$20 for a letter).
The only reason Amazon and other online retailers offer free shipping in the entire US is because USPS is mandated by law to subsidize shipping to expensive rural areas. No other private shipping company can or will do this because it goes entirely against the motive of profit.
If USPS is out of the picture that means people in rural areas will not be able to receive mail anymore or will need to pay ridiculous rates for delivery and mail. The benefit of that is that people in cities might pay a few cents less on postage. Emphasis on might. The more likely reality is that shipping costs will go up for everyone and the profits made by only servicing people in cities will be privatized. A great win for the CEO of FedEx, but a loss for all other citizens of the US.
[1] https://www.reveelgroup.com/fedex-smartpost/
Many of the justifications I've come across of why mail is essential seem to center around transmission of information being essential, and I 100% agree with that. But these days important information does not need to be transmitted by mail. The fact that many important services are still tied to hard-copies of paper - like mailing checks, mailing bills, mailing a warning when a bill has been missed, etc. causes some completely unnecessary problems. It's easier to keep a phone number or email address active for many years, but an address for a large percentage of the population is temporary. I've seen the argument made that not everybody has internet access, and that this is an equality issue that physical mail is still necessary for less privileged people. But many poor people are more likely to have a cell phone than have stable housing with a stable mailing address. And public libraries provide internet access for those who don't have it otherwise.
Also, and this part is arguably a first world problem but it's still a big annoyance, the junk mail that props up USPS is completely out of control. How is an essential government service entirely ad-supported like USPS is? That seems crazy. Imagine if the fire department made you watch some ads after they put out your fire.
I'm not arguing for getting rid of the USPS now, we do seem to need vote by mail at least for a while longer until we have a better, sufficiently secure alternative. I just think all these arguments about how essential it is to the fabric of modern society are bit outdated.
Edit: anyone who is downvoting me care to comment on what I'm wrong about?
Working with low-income folks daily, this is not true in total. We have to check phone numbers and e-mail addresses every time we interact with our clients, because they cycle through them almost monthly. Physical addresses tend to change annually.
>And public libraries provide internet access for those who don't have it otherwise.
There is no public library with internet access within 100 miles of my current address.
>How is an essential government service entirely ad-supported like USPS is?
They're not entirely ad supported?
>I just think all these arguments about how essential it is to the fabric of modern society are bit outdated.
And this is my take - your view is of a young, middle- to upper-middle-class person with no problems accessing the modern world today. For poor people, for rural people, the mail is essential. I receive all of my bills via mail, because the internet is so bad here. My bank does not offer bill-payment, and I don't want to link my bank account to a third party site, outside of using my bank to auto bill pay, if that's even an option.
And this is just my take, but this last sentence really weakens the rest of your argument. Your view seems to be that of someone who's uncomfortable with modern technology. At some point, we'll need to accept that being uncomfortable with the status quo of antiquated, painfully slow, inefficient non-tech solutions is just as valid of a viewpoint as being uncomfortable with technology.
I come from a place in rural upstate NY where broadband is only available to about 75% of the population, the legacy POTS system is being allowed to fail, and cellular service is available to about 50%. Should my former neighbors be cut off from functioning in modern society because they can't get mail?
Today, I own a home and have to pay property taxes and garbage bills. Should my ability to keep my home be contingent on my phone service? What if my phone carrier screw up and ports my number without my permission? What if I screw up, don't update my credit card and have service suspended?
The other alternative, public libraries, are also being starved of funding in many areas.
USPS may deserve to decline or evolve. But killing it in the middle of a crisis for stupid political reasons is not a strategy.
> Should my ability to keep my home be contingent on my phone service?
No, ideally not just on phone service. But on something digital that is free and doesn't require any effort to keep it live over an extended period of time (perhaps email). This kind of thing is exactly my point though, should your ability to participate in society be contingent on living in one place for a prolonged period of time? When I was younger I knew a lot of people that would bum around for a while, travel, crash on friends couches, etc. I remember multiple friends who had a relatively small bill get sent to collections and ruin their credit for the next 7 years because the service had an old address on file. It seems crazy to me that this can happen, that you'd just be sent a few pieces of paper of which it can never be verified that you've actually received them, and no one ever needs to make an effort to call or email you, and then that ruins your credit. And these people were relatively well off and overall pretty responsible in the scheme of things, I can only imagine this type of thing must also screw over chronically poor people all the time.
> killing it in the middle of a crisis for stupid political reasons is not a strategy
100% agree with that, I've just wondered a for a long time why so many official things still done primarily through mail. In my opinion it's worth at least having a public discussion about why things are even still done this way, and therefore whether we still actually need the USPS. But it seems that even on this tech website most people don't agree.
I do appreciate your comment, ultimately it seems like these arguments fall along a very stark a rural/urban divide. I'm so used to living in cities that it's just ingrained in my mind that housing and something like a physical address is a premium and scarce resource and anything digital can be much more freely available and unconstrained. It's hard to even fathom that in some people's reality it is the opposite (and even after reading your arguments, I'm still skeptical to what extent that is the case).
Easy. Two reasons: universal service and no standard ID.
If you aren't homeless, you always have a physical address that can be delivered to. A physical address is a piece of the earth than can be proven to exist or not exist, and even audited by various means. "Virtual" services like phones and internet are not universal for many types of people. For a professional, access to the internet or mobile phone is very reliable. For many others, you are one missed payment or reload away from losing that number forever.
No standard ID is the other thing. There's no root of trust for humans, and no good way to link you to who you are. Biometrics are only available for limited use cases (mostly criminal), and almost all forms of "trust" (in the identity sense) are tied to physical locations or events. Your driver's license or passport (if you have them) is linked to the record of your birth, marriage (if your name changes), your place of residence, and one or more bills or other business records.
The system as it is has many flaws, but you can't fix it without a strategy. Getting rid of a service like the mail or monetizing it in a way that spikes the costs undermines many expected parts of life for almost no benefit.
Private citizens and businesses need to get physical things from point A to point B regardless of where point A and B are in the country. It should be self evident that the infrastructure needed to do that is critical. As for whether or not the USPS is the best way to do that, there's been some constitutional arguments and debate that's taken place over the last 250 years.
> How is an essential government service entirely ad-supported like USPS is?
Because Republicans hate taxes and unions, and the USPS is one of the largest public sector unions that they can't get rid of (due to aforementioned Constitutional requirements) so they force the USPS to over-fund themselves without taxes.
>Imagine if the fire department made you watch some ads after they put out your fire.
Imagine if Congress told fire departments across the country that they weren't allowed to take tax dollars to fund themselves.
I get the utility of certified mail and associated services, but I don't really understand why we need first-class/marketing mail service in the 21st century.
I agree it was important infrastructure 250 years ago.
And those without internet access can go to public libraries or even get free public wifi in many cities. Even some homeless shelters provide wifi now, which is much easier for them than providing mail service. Technically, I think those without a permanent address can register to still receive mail at a post office, but that seems more difficult to manage and more limiting than finding internet access.
Gotta disagree. You aren't required to have stable housing to have a stable mailing address. The USPS provides services to all.
https://faq.usps.com/s/article/Is-there-mail-service-for-the...
a) The government can compel private companies to do any of these things at any time whether they want to or not.
b) The government can do these things by itself.
c) None of these things are possible.
Or, imagine a state election that includes a ballot question about raising taxes on large corporations, and the only company that can deliver and collect ballots is Amazon. Can you think of any problems this could cause?
At heart, though, my beef with USPS stems from my hatred of spam. They're a service I interact with multiple times weekly... when I move their garbage from my mailbox to my trashcan. When 95% of my interactions with them are negative, it's hard for me to understand how some people can like them.
Only here we already have the centralized payment system in the form of taxes, but it turns out when you use that to subsidize USPS operations everyone still complains.
We want delivery to every address, but certainly there is a problem when ~50% of what's being delivered is junk mail[1]
1. https://facts.usps.com/table-facts/
This seems like a valid idea to look further into.
Let's say I am a Gray Actor, Company X, who sells great products but I want to make money on digital signups. I add this unchecked box to my order form: "By checking this box, you agree to be contacted by our partners with promotions." - can checking this box apply promotions to the mail address you entered on my shipping form? - can I sell the rights to send you mail promotions after you check this box? - how long can I send you promotions? - how hard can I make it for you to "unsubscribe" (phone, written by mail, difficult to navigate website)? - you demand proof from a partner that you did indeed check this box after I send you a promotion. What do I need to supply? - the original subscriber has moved (without my knowledge) and I send generic ads in their name to the new tenant at the old address. Am I still in compliance?
Even if you presuppose "sign up for ads" is the only way to get spam, there are a lot of protections that are still missing.
As well, most ads I get in the mail look like normal mail anyway, and I don't really want the government opening my mail to check if it's spam or not.
I'd much prefer a way to opt out of receiving advertisements wholesale on a per-address basis (not per-person, mind you). While you can "opt out" of receiving ads, it's borderline impossible without giving PID to advertisers!
I would prefer that nobody subsidies the delivery of landfill to my mailbox.
The USPS literally has a service "deliver this flyer to every residential mailbox in this ZIP". It's cheaper per-item than a letter, yes, but the margins on "stuff a bunch of identical objects into N boxes" are much higher than "figure out which of N boxes this 1 unique mailpiece goes to".
This is how it currently works, the USPS gets money for delivering bulk mail.
If the government mandates USPS to perform deliveries for a price that is below cost, these deliveries should be partly funded by the taxpayer. They should not be forced to subsidise these deliveries by delivering spam mail.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&query=jakeogh%20mail&t...
Extrapolate.
elaborate?
Do you know what the merchant says, because they deal with this _all the time_?
What did the signature show up as? Was there no signature? Did the postman sign himself?
I don't know where this notion of "USPS only delivers letters and magazines" comes from, but it's patently and demonstrably false.
They're the only unsolicited advertisement carrier in the US.
My point, though, is that the "unsolicited advertisement" functionality of USPS is minor compared to its significance as America's top parcel carrier, and to write off USPS as "just a source of junk mail" is throwing not only the baby, but also the tub and half the house, out with the bathwater.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: This isn't political snark, FWIW. The deleted parent comment pointed out that soldiers on deployment rely on the APO/FPO system under USPS to receive packages from home, and wondered what the soldiers would do if the USPS is allowed to fail by the Trump administration.
It's objectively demonstrable that those who end up worse off because of Republican policies are among the most faithful Republican voters, and that almost certainly holds true in the armed forces as well. Warfighters and their families will likely pay more, get less, and continue voting the same way.
Seems like the primary beneficiary in this era is the direct mail marketing & advertising industries.
This kind of unfettered, nearly free (should be entirely free, but I digress) communication is the cornerstone of a healthy society.
Because mail has been so drastically reduced in the last years due to digitalisation of banking and Government, PostNL has trouble staying profitable so recently this monopoly limit has been removed again to allow of a fusion of Sandd and PostNL.