Alternative headline: Businesses plead with US taxpayer to continue subsidizing their operating costs and invoke sentimentality and patriotism to do so
Yeah, and it's still a fundamentally --insane-- service, delivering packages to the middle of nowhere, for absolutely no reason.
Getting your bizarre ecommerce purchases delivered to the middle of nowhere is not a reasonable business. Treating it as a necessary public service is even more unreasonable.
I wonder if the people that complain about the post office are also the 2nd amendment people. They're both things the founding fathers saw fit to include in the US Constitution, but only one of them is worshiped by people on the right. I wonder which one it is, and I wonder if one of these two things has major corporate interests.
The establishment of the post office is not in the Bill of Rights, it's not an inalienable God-given right that the government exists to protect. Personally I don't have a problem with it even though people like Jefferson expressed concern that it would be a waste of money and should not be the federal government's responsibility.
It's not in the Bill of Rights, it just happens to be in Article I of the Constitution and got its first postmaster general of Benjamin Franklin in 1775.
And yes, Jefferson expressed concern about it. And I don't disagree with him in principle; it can certainly seem like a waste of money. However, it has morphed into something beyond what was probably intended (as a lot of things in the Constitution have). Delivering medication, ballots, voter registration, government documents, delivering secret and confidential mail for the government, etc. These are things that I feel should be backed by the federal government, and paid for with taxpayer money because it benefits all of us to have a mail system that is not based only on profits.
I know you aren't disagreeing with me, and you are merely adding context, by the way. I am not trying to argue/debate with you.
Yeah, those evil government programs that support the needs of the economy. They should cancel all of those programs! Get rid of public water and trash services! Sell all the roads! End the military too! When was the last time they turned a profit?
It's pretty simple, the government should only pay for stuff the market won't provide by itself. When the government tries to compete with market alternatives it provides a worse product, and it sucks up tax money that could be put to better uses, so why bother?
The market is not providing a military or water or garbage utilities, so if we want those things, we have no choice but to put up with the government's version of them. They will never be profitable so the government is the only logical provider.
On the other hand, the market is already providing a number of competent, successful mail delivery companies that are able to survive without taxpayer money. Why should we pay to prop up a bad business model (i.e. the USPS) when so many better models already exist, and anyone can use them?
The author does not remotely address why, if USPS is so 'important' - that they cannot turn a profit, or break even.
How about we establish regulations, and then privatise USPS and encourage other vendors?
If states made minimal requirements for coverage (i.e. if you deliver in Chicago, you have to deliver everywhere in Illinois) and other types of regs, there no real reason that Verizon can be private but USPS cannot be.
In Florida we have a turnpike run by a state owned corporation. It's very profitable.
As for the military, it would be profitable if we could charge for services, ethically. However, I would argue that it pays dividends in a different ways and you know it.
Edit reply: the post office is less useful in 2020 than it ever has been in its existence. It used to be an absolutely critical piece of infrastructure as people relied on mail for bills, communication, magazine subscriptions, etc. Now over 90% of mail is junk advertisements. People consume digital media, pay bills electronically, communicate electronically, sign documents electronically, etc. There is less and less demand for the parcel business.
I'm not arguing that we should shut it down, but the prices should go up and the USPS should be able to set prices without an act of Congress and it should be able to vary postage based on distance traveled.
My argument about the Florida corp running the turnpike is that it's entirely possible to run a state owned enterprise in a profitable way. The Florida turnpike is one of the best maintained with the best amenities of any road I've ever traveled on, including excellent beautiful rest areas and Tesla superchargers at every stop. Congestion is quickly delt with rapid construction of new lanes. The surfaces are kept smooth and free of potholes.
Because both roads and the military are unsuitable for privatisation.
Roads represent a key problem with access, and of course, he military requires a level of commitment and responsibility far beyond what would be appropriate in the private market.
Mail delivery does not have such structural limitations as you can see literally from the existence of UPS and Fedex.
The question remains:
1) Why is USPS consistently bankrupt?
2) If we didn't have the USPS today, would the government create one?
> Mail delivery does not have such structural limitations as you can see literally from the existence of UPS and Fedex.
Incorrect. UPS and FedEx do not deliver everywhere. If it is not profitable for them to do so (e.g. in rural areas), they do not deliver and instead give the package to USPS. This is the public service part.
Republican many years ago passed a law that forced the USPS to allocate budget for many many decades of pension payments in advance, something no one else is forced to do. It was a deliberate act of sabotage by Republicans in the Bush years.
When Jeff Bezos starts out competing the interstate with his private roads, then you can make that argument. The fact is that roads serve their market well, and if the USPS did the same they would not be being out competed by 10 different private entities at once.
I don't care if it's not their fault or that their hands are tied by regulations. The mere fact that they are in trouble is evidence that they aren't serving their purpose in their current form.
The postal service is a basic service provided to citizens by the government. It does not need to make a profit, and thinking about it in that sense is absurd. Does it make sense to talk about Medicare turning a profit? Does NASA, the military (heh), welfare, garbage disposal... etc... need to turn a profit too in your mind?
"Everything needs to make a profit" is straight out of right wing talking points. The purpose, of course, is to psyop all of us into privatizing everything, so a few cronies can extract wealth from everyday things Americans need.
Treating getting grocery store spam delivered to you as the same level of service as medical care is not reasonable, and you know you're being hyperbolic.
It's about guaranteed delivery to an address. If you want to discuss the USPS rates, and how those rates are largely controlled by Congress, along with Congress saddening the post office with expenses no other organization has, we can have that discussion.
PAEA gave the post office much more autonomy over their rates. Months ago a bailout was offered on the stipulation of raised rates. The Post Office is culpable for their insane pricing.
And assuming you mean accounting for actuarial costs, other businesses certainly do need to account for those.
The article linked specifically mentions that one of the main advocates for the Post Office from a medical standpoint are pharmacies. The point is certainly valid.
The high risk loans and bailouts given to the post service are absolutely more expensive than mailing medicine to veterans.
Again, irrelevant. Yes, of course it's part of the cost of mailing the medicine to veterans, but it's the part that we're talking about.
The cost of mailing medicine to veterans is _part_ of the cost of keeping the post office afloat. Other parts of that cost are the problem, and private alternatives which charge higher rates for infrequently recurring mail are actually less expensive to the government.
Sure, the USPS does more than deliver grocery store spam -- but not much more. A plurality of mail sent via USPS is spam, and the majority of that mail remains unopened (if it's not a leaflet).
The main parcel shipped by the USPS is physical waste.
Or maybe you're forgetting that the postal service delivers more than just spam and circulars? (Also, you're picking local grocery circulars as your example of spam? I would wager that grocery circulars are among the few pieces of unsolicited bulk mail that most people don't consider unwanted.)
The postal service also delivers tax documents, ballots, bills, and (actual and important, not the junk made to look as such) notifications from utilities. It's disingenuous to argue that the postal service doesn't do anything important.
Many of these are monthly, quarterly, or yearly subscriptions that do not account for a fraction of what the USPS delivers. The USPS delivered over 500 pieces of mail per living person in the US, including children, in 2014.
Were the US to pay for private delivery the 30-40 pieces of critical mail people receive each year and use bulk pricing discounts, they would likely come out ahead.
"It does not need to have a profit and thinking about it in that sense is absurd."
No - your ideologically loaded responses is maybe the 'absurd' thing here.
You've made arbitrary comparisons to 'Healthcare' or 'NASA' without providing any basis for why 'some things are public and some are private'.
You do also realize that almost all Healthcare services are provided by private entities? Even in fully socialised markets like Canada 'the Government' does not actually 'provide' service, they regulate, and do the 'insurance' layer.
Parcel delivery does not have any of the systematic characteristics of something that might make it a public good.
While there's nothing inherently wrong with having a public delivery service - there is definitely something wrong if is not self sustaining, and effectively subsidises some businesses and not others.
It would be better if there were 3 regular, national carriers, with reasonable regulations.
""Everything needs to make a profit" is straight out of right wing talking points. The purpose, of course, is to psyop all of us into privatizing everything,"
Conspiracy theories are not arguments.
Also - this idea that the USPS is 'forced to pay retirement 50 years ahead' is essentially a canard - a purposefully misrepresented falsehood.
The USPS for the most part - was required to fund its pensions in almost the same manner any private entity would. [1]
The notion that the USPS was burdened by some deal to have to pay '50 years in advance' is basically a lie.
You can read the legislation yourself right here [2] and here [3]. You'll note there is no mention of '50 years'.
There is no real reason for the US Government to provide mail delivery, when it could achieve the same results through legislation and via private services.
There is a commenter below who uses as 'evidence' the fact that UPS and Fedex do not 'deliver everywhere' as proof that they cannot deliver everywhere.
This again - is a myth. That UPS and FedEx do not deliver everywhere mostly implies they don't see the margins there today. Were the USPS not to exist, and, were they required to deliver by law, then they probably could.
I agree there is room for private businesses to operate under the umbrella of regulation.
However, the USPS is designed to operate in circumstances where huge losses are inevitable (like shipping to remote towns always at a loss). We already have for profit shipping companies so I see no problem with the USPS, and actually applaud my tax dollars going towards giving every American access to mail.
I mean, I'm not an expert, so I might be misreading here, but section 803 of your second link seems to say essentially that the USPS must pay into the retirement fund pre-emptively.
"Requires the Postal Service, beginning in 2007, to compute the net present value of the future payments required...Directs the Postal Service, for each year, to pay into the above Fund such net present value and the annual installment due under the amortization schedule"
The "50 years" part that you bring up is probably an exaggeration to some extent of the amount of time between when a person starts working for the USPS and when they retire, but the general concept behind the argument remains the same I would think.
I finally started watching Star Trek because I kept seeing “Ferengi” mentioned in this context. I’m only a few episodes into Next Generation but so far the analogy definitely holds up.
Interestingly, in one of the episodes the Ferengi leader prioritizes his own personal gain (in the form
of revenge) over profit and his fellow Ferengi are so disgusted by the behavior that he’s overthrown.
The USPS has lost money over the last decade even if you discount the mandated pension fund payments. Pension costs haven't helped, but the USPS would be in the red anyways due to declining mail volume.
So, you're saying you don't think it's possible that the substantial sums of money that had been forcibly funneled away from them couldn't have been spent over the past 10 years to improve their operations and change the prognosis of your simple arithmetic?
What money? Like I said, the USPS has been losing money even before it makes the pension payments. To cover it's pension costs the USPS has been taking on debt from the treasury.
Debt has both monetary and opportunity costs. My point is that because of those costs and that I don't think that it's fair to say things would have turned out exactly the same minus the pension money, it's unfair to say they would still be red or by how much.
If they can’t fund the annual net increase in pension obligations they are incurring, then they either need to raise their rates or lower their pension benefits. Not actually funding the net annual increase in the Net Present Value of their Accrued Pension Benefits should not be an option.
> If they can’t fund the annual net increase in pension obligations they are incurring, then they either need to raise their rates or lower their pension benefits.
I believe this requires Congress. Hence why USPS is kneecapped. They’re legally obligated to fund them and also prohibited from taking the steps necessary to fully fund them.
they are restricted from lowing their rates per the same 2006 bill cited above. in addition, they have to pre-fund their pension benefits well into the future in ways that other privatized companies would never do. the obligation is overwhelmingly crippling. i don't remember the exact figures, but in 2006 USPS profited somewhere around ~$10M, and in 2009—three years after the law was enacted—they lost close to ~4B. i believe it was estimated that ~3/4 of those losses were directly associated with that law.
Why should the USPS be private or profitable? At best it should be operated as a break-even venture.
Reliable mail service to every address in the country is one of the foundational building blocks of a developed nation. Those that argue against it to me seem irrational.
No private business, especially when you compare it to a company like Verizon, will ever provide the level of universal service the USPS has historically. Rural areas have absolutely been "left behind" for Internet access just as soon as the regulators stopped regulating minimum access requirements.
No thanks. I don't want the (imo, completely and irreversibly broken) US telco landscape extended to the physical mail delivery. Not to mention the constitutional rights you get shipping with the USPS vs. any private business.
"Reliable mail service to every address in the country is one of the foundational building blocks of a developed nation. Those that argue against it to me seem irrational."
Those who would argue, blindly, that this service must be provided by the government ... seem irrational.
Moreover, we are in a digital era, trying to reduce our paper usage.
I have not received a paper letter of material usefulness literally in years.
95% of my mail is junk mail - wasted.
The remaining 5% is the occasional letter from the government, of the bank, reminding me of what I have already received online.
By any reasonable stretch, the USPS is largely just a 'junk mail service'.
Society may benefit frankly from the end of this waste and the end of paper mail for most procedures. What remains for the most part is just packages and a few letters there's no reason decent regulation couldn't have it managed by private entities.
I've gotten better service and respect for my privacy from USPS than any telecom monopoly like Verizon. If anything this feels like an argument in favor of municipal broadband. If the telecom industry is any indication, eliminating the USPS would just result in private mail carriers divvying up the country into a few regions run by monopolies, with lower quality service, and profiting at the expense of users. The point of a public good isn't to profit, but to serve a need that can't adequately be served by the private sector.
Please excuse my potential ignorance here, as I fear that I may not have a complete picture of the issue at hand.
Was it not confirmed yesterday that the USPS is being purposefully sabotaged by the current administration? Or was it facing problems previously, and the current administration decided to use the existing problems to its benefit? Is it not well within the federal government's power to simply increase funding, or does the USPS function like any other business?
I am not trying to spark a political debate here, I am genuinely curious.
Yes. Republicans have long ago turned the USPS into a political football in the culture wars. And they want to sabotage mail-in votes this time, that's a new twist.
That's quite the conspiracy theory. Republicans are generally against mail-in ballots because they are subject to all sorts of interference. Some elections come down to a few hundred votes. As for USPS being a political football...it's a government service.
Have they? Did one of their contributors have that opinion? Is that a crime? I'm guessing youve never met a libertarian.
That's a huge stretch from using the USPS to rig an election. Both sides are accusing the other of trying to take advantage of the sudden surge in interest in mail-in voting.
edit reply: you can't on the one hand argue that mail is a reliable way to run an election and on the other argue that a politician is trying to use it for their advantage. Not giving up, he didn't say he was using it. He said the Democrats would use it. Either way, these arguments underscore just how hackable and exploitable mail in voting is.
He wants to make it harder to vote by mail to prevent fraud, not to create it. You know, elections sometimes come down to a few hundred votes. You think the USPS should control the outcome of an election based on how many parcels they misplace? Or how many dead people vote? Or how many non-citizens vote? Or whether a box of ballots in a republican heavy or Democrat heavy area is left behind? It would be trivial to fuck with this system. The last election it was difficult to convince people that Russian bots were not a factor in the election. People were convinced that $100K in social media ad spend were enough to shift an election. Now all of a sudden mail in paper ballots are a bulletproof way to run a democracy.
“They need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo. “If they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting because they’re not equipped to have it.”
“If we don’t make a deal that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting. They just can’t have it. Sort of a crazy thing,”
He is explicitly trying to remove the USPS's ability to handle voting by mail.
No I read the postmasters comments. Parcel volume is way down for the post office while packages are up. They are reallocating resources for handling more packages. The USPS parcel business has largely been reduced to junk mail that no one wants.
We're not talking about what the postmaster said. We're not talking about parcel volume. We're not talking about package volume. We're not talking about resource reallocation.
We're talking about what trump said.
Trump said the post office needs two bills that fund it to be passed for it to be able to adequately handle universal vote by mails, and if he doesn't make a deal with the people trying to pass those bills, then the post office doesn't get the money it needs to be able to do that:
>>> “If we don’t make a deal that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting. They just can’t have it. Sort of a crazy thing,” Trump said on Thursday.
> He wants to make it harder to vote by mail to prevent fraud, not to create it.
This is technically correct, the best kind of correct. If 100 people actually vote for Smith and 101 people actually vote for Jones, and you count 99 of the votes for Smith and 98 of the votes for Jones, you have not counted any fraudulent votes.
The test of a democracy is whether it is representative, not whether it counts only non-fraudulent votes. Avoiding fraud is a very important means to the end, but it is not the end itself.
Here is an analogy for the HN crowd: If my site is broken, and I need to do a deploy to fix it, and we have a rule that says that every commit must pass tests and tests take 4 hours to run, then great, the rule is making sure that no code that's failing tests hit prod - but the rule is certainly not helpful in bringing prod back online. The rule is a means to the goal of making sure that prod works. It's a good rule, of course. Nobody is questioning the merit of testing your code or saying that untested code is a good thing. But you cannot justify missing your SLAs by saying "All of our code needs to be tested in order for us to know that our site works."
> against mail-in ballots because they are subject to all sorts of interference.
Quite the opposite, mail in ballots create an irrefutable and unfalsifiable paper trail for each vote.
Republicans (and Trump) are against them because they know the more people vote (ie. the more democratic America is) the less chance they have at winning.
The thread doesn't need to be turned into a political flamefest. Every American voter should be on the same side here.
This isn't about what Republicans do, or what Democrats do. It's about what enemies of the state do. Many Republicans are speaking up alongside their usual opponents, because they know very well that when Trump is done with the Democrats, he'll come for them.
The Lincoln Project is fighting for sanity, but at this point the entire party will inevitably share blame for the disasters that have occurred under Trump. At any time senate republicans could announce that they would be agreeable to another impeachment, yet the party establishment continues to sit by and condone the country being torn apart. As a constituent, the only things to do are accept that the Republican Party has gravely failed, work on replacing the congresscritters that contributed to this mess, and plan for a shot in 2028.
Badly. There's this thing called the "third party doctrine" which basically says the 4th amendment doesn't apply to information you give willingly to a 3rd party, so the government can just ask the 3rd party for it with no need to get a warrant first.
There's some laws from after this doctrine was established that attempt to rein this in by explicitly extending the 4th amendment, so like that's why the government needs to get a warrant for a wiretap, but without a specific law passed by congress, the third party doctrine applies.
I tried to google if there's a 3rd party doctrine for mail services, but I haven't been able to find anything yet.
Very good. Thanks. Now can you explain why a legit and insightful comment / question got down voted on HN? What happened to this place? Is Reddit down?
Which Republicans are speaking up? As far as I've seen the only active Republican that's called out the current administration in a meaningful way is Mitt Romney. You can't claim that Trump is an enemy of the state but everyone else in the Republican party is not when they're actively enabling it.
The Republican party is blatantly criminal, and anyone that supports them is either incredibly ignorant, or treasonous. I'm sick of this "both sides" bullshit when what used to be called the center of the free world is in the process of being destroyed from the inside.
> Many Republicans are speaking up alongside their usual opponents, because they know very well that when Trump is done with the Democrats, he'll come for them.
Uh... who? I think I read that Susan Collins wrote a letter... Republicans, as they have been throughout the administration, are almost universally silent on Trumps corruption.
> Many Republicans are speaking up alongside their usual opponents, because they know very well that when Trump is done with the Democrats, he'll come for them.
All it takes is two Senate republicans to take Majority control away from McConnell and to this day, not a single one has faltered in their support of the Senior Senator from Kentucky.
Where are all the Republicans speaking up alongside their opponents where it matters most? Cause it sure ain't in the Senate.
Every American voter should be on the same side here, but they aren't.
Look, I agree with where you're coming from - there are certain things that are simply matters of right and wrong and are not a matter of whether you're on Team Red or Team Blue. But the whole reason we have political parties is that it turns out we disagree, strongly, about what right and wrong are. It is a disservice to the cause you agree with and an insult to the seriousness of those you disagree with to say that such-and-such decision about how we run our country should be non-partisan instead of acknowledging the reality that it is.
It happens to be the case that for many things, like "Should we have elections or simply have hereditary rule" or "Should people be allowed to leave their religion" or "Should we invade our neighboring countries because we are the rightful owners of this continent" or "Should people be allowed to marry outside their race" or whatever, the two major parties, organizationally, do not disagree with each other. But those are and have been political debates in other times and in other places. Sometimes questions that you wouldn't expect to be political, like "Should people stay away from each other during a plague," become political.
If you believe in a particular answer to one of these questions, and one team agrees with you and the other doesn't, do not delude yourself into thinking that both teams agree with you merely because you think they should agree with you.
> This isn't about what Republicans do, or what Democrats do.
It's absolutely about what the current Republican Party in government does.
> It's about what enemies of the state do.
That may be true, but that doesn’t negate the preceding point.
> Many Republicans are speaking up alongside their usual opponents
Many former and out-of-office Republicans are, and over the past few years also some in-office-but-already-announced-retirement Republicans have.
A handful of ongoing Republicans-in-office have, over the last several years, expressed mild and momentary concern before returning to the ranks to toe the line on substance, but none of them are speaking up—or, more importantly, acting in ant substantial way.
One party wants people to show up to vote with their face and ID. The other wants them to vote by mail as much as possible (which is more prone to fraud). Tell me again: who is sabotaging who?
Look up the realignment of the Republican party and the Southern strategy, the Voting Rights Act, and the various hurdles that some states began to re-implement after the gutting of that act in 2013.
Because race is a key factor in American politics, especially when it comes to discussions about civil rights like voting. Because there are heavy racial divides in partisan alignment in the US. It is impossible to have a meaningful discussion of voting rights in the US without the subject of race coming up, any more than it would be possible to have a discussion of environmental issues without discussing carbon emissions, or of reproductive medicine without discussing gender.
Considering the democrats cheated in the last election. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be suspicious of mail in votes. I think just about everyone has a valid ID.
We can’t know right now, our current society is poorly equipped to assess anything happening in the present. It’s become a politicized topic, similar to Trump’s Covid medication suggestions. We’ve got about two months until the election and the average American will throw this accusation around based on political leanings. Few are going to do the proper investigation on this.
”Motherboard identified 19 mail sorting machines from five processing facilities across the U.S. that either have already been removed or are scheduled to be in the near future. But the Postal Service operates hundreds of distribution facilities around the country, so it is not clear precisely how many machines are getting removed and for what purpose.”
The headline is what will be politically thrown around, but the true assessment of the facts won’t occur. How many sorting machines do they have, and why are they shutting some down? Is this routine? Have we clearly identified that it’s a budget issue?
We spent almost a year tracking Russiagate, so this kind of bullshit is par for the course.
The ability of the USPS to balance its budget was deliberately kneecapped by limiting how much it can increase prices, subsidizing foreign-based packages, and requiring it to pre-pay its pensions for 75 years.
The recent shakeup, slowdowns, and scrapping of needed equipment is a separate act of sabotage to interfere with mail-in voting.
The USPS has had nearly a decade straight annual operating losses in billions. My guess is, as per politics-as-usual, the current administration, and opposition thereof, are using the issue as a political wedge in this election cycle, but the issues are real.
I'm no expert but I recall the USPS acting like a bank, making money from savings accounts and other financial services. Would be interested in some of the various arguments for or against privatization/funding.
A pretty crappy service, at that. Not unlike almost every other government service I’ve ever experienced.
I live in rural America and let me tell you the USPS is a complete joke here. Everyone knows it, and we choose to use UPS/FedEx instead. I don’t have a mailbox anymore nor do I have a P.O. Box. Many neighbors are going this way, too. We don’t want or need their services anymore. They’ve become too unreliable.
And the military is a pretty crappy service too! I've been paying huge amounts of taxes for it and it's never once kept me safe from enemy soldiers. Frankly, as someone who works in an office tower in lower Manhattan, the US military has probably put me more at risk of dying, all things considered. We don't want or need its services anymore.
No, I do believe you. There's a lot I don't like about his approach, but if he's decided the "bring the troops home" is a populist plank, I'm certainly not going to complain about saving both their lives and the lives of civilians in the Middle East.
And honestly I could probably be convinced that there is no responsible way to get ourselves out of the mess we put ourselves in over the last several decades and the only solution is a commander-in-chief willing to be irresponsible.
Some Googling will bring up articles saying the post office has been losing money for awhile (which some think is just fine, since they are a government service and we don't expect all government services to turn a profit on their own).
Trump recently appointed a new Postmaster General which is reportedly making a lot of changes. This is now a political issue because many believe the changes are politically motivated due to the upcoming election during a pandemic when, not surprisingly, a lot of people will vote by mail.
It's especially concerning because we are clearly on a course which will lead to exceptionally low confidence in the results of the election, no matter what happens. So even if the USPS isn't profitable, it seems worth while to at least prop it up for a few more months so we can have a fair election and (equally important) have the results be trusted by the people.
> Ballot-printing firms couldn’t keep up with demand, and the already rickety U.S. Postal Service didn’t move the ballots to and from voters quickly enough.
People will debate whether mail in voting is good or bad, fraudulent or not, etc. That's fine, let them debate, legislate, appeal to courts, etc.
But besides all that: There is simply no scenario where allowing the USPS to half-fail improves the situation.
Even if the USPS was running perfectly, this election would still have unusually low trust, because of the pandemic and because of our especially toxic political climate. Adding a hobbled USPS to the mix makes things much worse.
Lots of people are saying Trump is trying to "muddy the waters" of the election. I suppose Trumps motivation may be debated, but I think the result is clear: A half functioning USPS will "muddy the waters" of the election result. Does anyone disagree that this will be the result? Even if (being charitable) that was not the intention.
Yes, this is an active (as in: in progress crime) sabotage of the most crucial distribution system we have for the purpose of manipulating the election.
> During an interview with Fox Business Network, the president said that he will block funding for the US Postal Service requested by Democratic lawmakers, citing his intention to prevent universal mail-in voting. Trump acknowledged in the interview that the USPS will be unable to process a large number of ballots from mail-in voting without the funding.
This is not some new development. I think politics has clouded many people’s memories and judgements.
The USPS has been struggling for decades - at least since the 1980s. It had a near monopoly of written communication until then with a few high priced competitors for fast short messages (Western Union, Telex, etc). It was financially self sufficient with limited indirect subsides and support.
Then the fax machine arrived, then the overnight delivery services, then email and the internet. These developments ate into USPS’s business model which required huge volumes to support a vast and expensive infrastructure. For a time the rise of junk mail provided some relief but even that waned in recent decades.
Managment of the USPS was unable to deal with these changes for a number of reasons including government mandates and an inflexible unionized workforce. One persistent problem was huge pension liabilities arising from labor contracts. But the key issue was the high costs and diminished demand.
It has been bailed out several times most recently in 2012. In the next few years another bailout will be needed or perhaps bankruptcy. A long-term solution would require a politically sensitive restructuring possibly including privatization. Many other countries have either completely or partially privatized their postal systems with generally good results.
Unless they offer a better service than private industry, they will be a money sink. Throwing more money at them doesn't fix that (surprising, I know). Waxing poetic about "The ground we stand on" and bringing up race for some confusing reason (???) will do nothing to change that.
But they do provide a better service than private industry. They deliver to everyone. In rural areas even UPS and FedEx hand off deliveries to USPS.
Turns out operating in high density areas that turn a good profit and low density areas that don’t is difficult. It’s why UPS and FedEx don’t do it. But it’s what USPS was set up to do.
Why don't they just charge more to deliver to those areas?
If I live on a mountain top why should I expect people to haul shit to me for free? Why would you expect them to be charged the same as someone who lives on the corner of Main and State?
> Why don't they just charge more to deliver to those areas?
Because they aren’t allowed to, because it is considered a public service that should be equally available to all.
> If i live on a mountain top why should I expect people to haul shit to me for free?
Not for free. You pay taxes. And you should expect it because it’s what USPS does.
Now sure, there can be a whole debate about whether or not it should be the way it is, but that’s not what you asked. As per your original post:
> Unless they offer a better service than private industry, they will be a money sink.
It is a better service and it’s a money sink by design: it’s a public service that is funded by taxes. If they didn’t have insane pension obligations they’d be in a much better state financially, but they’ve been kept in a stranglehold over that for many years now:
>Now sure, there can be a whole debate about whether or not it should be the way it is, but that’s not what you asked.
I literally used the word "should" in the portion of my post that you quoted, but I see you were a little eager for electronic head pats.
There is no reason, in principle, why USPS can't eat up enough of the UPS/FedEx/Amazon market-share to at least stay afloat as a business without having to resort to the business tactics that people are most concerned about. (poor working conditions, anti-competitive behavior, etc.) But they aren't. They are chronically under-performing, and to me that is evidence in of itself that they are not serving their stated purpose right now.
What’s the rush? With so many people concerned about the election, if all of this is actually about the business viability of the service, surely it can’t hurt to make sure they’re fully resourced for the next few months so that no one will be in a position to say that USPS being shredded was a component of electoral fraud.
The post is a call to action to "save the USPS." I'm saying it's not at all worth it to throw good money after bad money while the entire rest of the world is imploding.
It seems like it would be a lot easier to convince people to take that point seriously by funding the post office until after the election and having the discussion then.
Funding USPS for the rest of the calendar year is, in relative terms, not that expensive -- so, I would find your argument a lot more credible if you were willing to have the discussion about privatizing it in the new year.
The USPS is not allowed to decide what postal rates are. And the commission that is allowed to decide is prohibited by Congress from charging different rates for different destinations.
Yes, this is why I come to Hacker News. That bastion of independent and unique thought. To have wikipedia copy-pasted at me.
It is obvious that I am making a prescriptive argument. I am under no illusions that they are able to enact these policies tomorrow. Their hands are tied by regulations.
You know what might make those regulations go away? Making them hurt a little bit. If it becomes clear that USPS cannot exist as an institution in its current form without being a perpetual sinkhole in which to dump taxpayer dollars directly, then they will have no choice but to adapt or die.
...Or I guess we could just keep throwing money at them and hope they get better because they super duper double pinky swear promised this time.
My stepdad works at one of the largest USPS sorting facilities.
When he came in to work today 2 multi million dollar sorting machines were padlocked.
He was told by the facility manager that they are selling them for scrap.
1 of the machines is very new and in the past when they replaced machines they sold them to postal services in other countries. They’ve never scrapped them.
He is certain removing these machines (they are enormous machines) will drastically reduce their capacity.
I’m not sure about that. Does a letter being delivered within the same zip code even touch these machines?
I would guess that the vast majority of mailed ballots would be for local delivery and sorted by the mail carrier at the point they are picked up, and never hit one of these regional distribution centers.
> Does a letter being delivered within the same zip code even touch these machines?
Completed ballots are only occasionally mailed in the same zip code, and often not the same city, as they tend to be mailed in to county election offices, not the precinct balloting locations (which often aren't permanent government facilities and when they are still are not permanently associated with the elections office.)
So, yes, machines that sort non-local (not same zip) mail would handle most mail in ballots.
And the postal service has been notifying state officials that (despite it never being a problem before) it's “delivery standards” do not support delivery ballots on the timelines in each notified states law for mail ballotsm
And the President has openly stated that he is opposing Postal Service funding to block use of mail-in ballots.
It's not even something that is trying to be hidden.
"Motherboard identified 19 mail sorting machines from five processing facilities across the U.S. that either have already been removed or are scheduled to be in the near future."
I think it's reasonable to question how many ballots being sent to local county offices would cross paths with one of these five regional processing facilities.
Even the Motherboard article acknowledges this;
"Paul McKenna, president of Milwaukee Area Local 3 of the American Postal Workers Union, said that some of the DBCSs staying will have about 50 more stackers added to them, meaning the machines can sort mail to a larger number of destinations. This will help alleviate the pressure during high mail volume periods like the Christmas rush—when there is simply more mail in general to all places—as well as provide advantages during lower-volume periods like the dead of summer. But it won’t necessarily help the unique challenge of election mail. In that case, the mail surge stays local."
> I think it's reasonable to question how many ballots being sent to local county offices would cross paths with one of these five regional processing facilities.
It really depends on the details. Are those processing facilities serving urban areas of some swing states? Even if it's just 1% of the ballots, those ballots could be the ones that decide the election.
> Even the Motherboard article acknowledges this;
>> ...some of the DBCSs staying will have about 50 more stackers added to them, meaning the machines can sort mail to a larger number of destinations....
It's not that clear, that same article also says this:
> The postal workers Motherboard spoke to said having machines removed, replaced, or modified is nothing new, but this time it seems to be more widespread, include a larger number of machines at their respective facility, and potentially impacts the facility’s ability to process large numbers of mail, including ballots, in a short time span.
Given other statements made by this administration, people are right to be extremely skeptical of the motivations here. At a minimum the optics of making this change now are extremely bad. Even if there's a rational, honest reason for this change; the project should be postponed until December for that reason alone.
Why do it now though? Why not wait after the election in case you need the machines to handle the ballot load? Why is it suddenly the utmost importance to remove these machines and sell them for essentially pennies on the dollar. Why are they rushing to remove mailboxes around communities?
Anyone that thinks letter volume isn't in just a temp slump is lying to themselves to justify what's going on.
Not at his facility. Those machines run constantly. The regulars have to skip preventative maintenance, so they can keep running them to keep up with volume.
This article makes little sense and so do most of these personal “my dad used to work for USPS” anecdotes in the thread.
The problems at USPS have little to do with anything mentioned and everything to do with well established facts:
- USPS is mandated to prefund employee healthcare and pensions for 75 years in advance
- USPS cannot add a fuel surcharge to pricing (as FedEx and UPS can) to maintain profit levels
- USPS is required to provide service to people and businesses in remote areas even when it may be highly unprofitable
- USPS is governed by Congress and the Postal Rate Commission (PRC), which restricts potential avenues for expansion into other products and limits competition with other companies (such as UPS and FedEx). Congress has been influenced by competitors to get the USPS to abandon new products such as online payment systems, phone cards, money transfers, postal meter cartridges, etc
- USPS is required to invest exclusively in government bonds while private companies can invest in a wide variety of securities to improve profitability
- USPS is forbidden by law to lower prices to get more business
The quality of commenting has really fallen at HN. It’s starting to feel like a raging boomers Facebook wall filled with conjecture, gossip and conspiracy theories. Let’s stick to the facts please.
> Congress has been influenced by competitors to get the USPS to abandon new products such as online payment systems,
What does that have to do with the USPS’s mandate to deliver mail?
All of your points are presented as facts. Can you explain how they have anything to do with the current discussion about keeping the USPS’s capability to deliver mail and ballots ?
These points, where true, have no bearing on the issue being raised in the thread: immediate-term measures to cripple the USPS as a critical piece of election infrastructure.
Your points speak instead to a longer-term question of whether the constitution should be amended to privatize the USPS, or to change its mandate.
These are distinct questions, the latter we've struggled with for decades and does not explain recent measures.
"The amount of fuel used to transport the catalogs and credit card offers US citizens don't ask for is gargantuan—in 2010, postal service vehicles used 146 million gasoline gallon equivalents, at a cost of $1 billion.
And the amount of mail sent overall is down from about 212 billion pieces per year in 2005 to just over 155 billion in 2014. This number is even including parcels, which have gone up in proportion to paper mail. While the rise of online shopping has seen the number of delivered packages shoot up, those are capable of being delivered by UPS or FedEx in significantly populated parts of the country."
Jon Oliver is a very partisan comedian and therefore cannot be trusted. And when I say ‘him’ I refer to the very politicized team of writers and their network.
At least he provides the references to the info that he presents. I assume that you did your research and the vast majority of the information he presented was verifiably false. Can you please share your findings with us ?
Watch literally any episode of Jon Oliver on something you've glanced at the Wikipedia article for, and his partisan bias is grossly apparent.
Guy you're replying to didn't really make an argument, no, but it's worth ridiculing someone for posting Jon Oliver, because it is a thing to be ridiculed. That's about as bad a linking to a Bill O'Reilly op-ed as far as I'm concerned.
Dismissing facts based on the accompanying commentary is fundamentally flawed. You may not agree on the commentary part of a journalistic piece but you cannot dismiss their stories a priori. Same applies for Fox News.
The article admirably covers 10% of why the USPS needs to be saved and studiously omits the most important 90%. You cannot reasonably talk about the USPS right now without talking about the implications for the sanctity of the upcoming election. (Which means we pretty much can't talk about it on HN, because we'd need to broach the subject of acting in bad faith.)
Amazon builds out its own private delivery network to service their densest customer areas, while leveraging the USPS — which is legally mandated to deliver to every US address — to service their rural customers.
This strategy starves USPS of package revenue for profitable routes while inundating them with packages to unprofitable addresses.
If USPS needs to raise money, they can start by charging Amazon a surcharge to defend against this type of arbitrage.
> Meanwhile, Shipping and Packages revenue increased by $2.9 billion, or 53.6 percent, on a volume increase of 708 million pieces, or 49.9 percent, compared to the same quarter last year.
So apparently they're charging a good amount. There's also the Postal Regulatory Commission which has reported that USPS does make money on the contract with Amazon.
It continues to be that the biggest drain on the USPS is the declines in first-class mail and billing mail. Junk mail is also declining.
congress should allow USPS to raise rates if need be, but how would amazon force USPS to make special, money-losing trips just for them?
most (all?) rural packages should go out with the regular (usually daily) mail carrier, so the marginal cost of also delivering amazon packages to rural addresses should basically be zero for USPS.
for the really remote areas, i don't think you can choose any time-bound delivery you want, like next-day or two-day. they would only quote you what they'd be able to manage with the normal, likely less frequent, delivery schedule for the area (like weekly).
so i can see how USPS misses out on lucrative urban deliveries, but not how they lose money on rural deliveries. amazon absolutely does gain by not delivering to rural though.
It's part of the USPS pricing structure that the dense urban environments subsidize the sparse rural ones.
It's not a question of "just one more package" being basically zero cost. In the aggregate there is incremental cost to delivering more packages, and that cost is higher for rural packages than urban packages.
Apparently, the rate structure just assumes a certain urban/rural mix without accounting for a trillion dollar company with enough capital to arbitrage the lower urban delivery cost.
Solution is either to discriminate against individual shippers (can't imagine how that might be abused!), or to charge based on destination / cost of route.
Hi all, for what it's worth, I tried to steer clear of politics of this topic to focus solely on its importance to eCommerce (though they are inextricably linked).
We will need a robust eCommerce infrastructure in the coming years and that will require servicing areas in the U.S. that will never be profitable to do so for a private company.
The topic is politicized quite a bit and I thought that it was important to explain why it has been over the centuries. That shouldn't deter us from its importance to our retail infrastructure. The suggestion is that we tolerate USPS losses so that we can continue to build strong and sustainable commerce businesses. Amazon doesn't exist without the services that USPS provided the company in its formative years.
Yes, I am saying that the costs for delivery would become unsustainable for many companies if we had to rely on UPS and FedEx alone.
Also, yes, USPS is uniquely capable to democratize shipments and last mile delivery to these underserved areas. eCom is still early (~15% of all retail). As it reaches 30 and 40, this will become more relevant. That's all I'm saying.
> Yes, I am saying that the costs for delivery would become unsustainable for many companies if we had to rely on UPS and FedEx alone.
I mean you could levy this argument in favor of anything you wanted. Early computers were prohibitively expensive except for very wealthy households. Now you can get 1000x the computing power for a fraction of the cost. You would have been out there making the same argument for having the government build Apple IIs for everyone at cost.
You're basically arguing that innovation or having a better run system is fundamentally impossible in the area of logistics and delivery in general and so we need the government to step in.
The government funds a lot of services that are not yet profitable. ARPANET back when AT&T was convinced that packet switching would not work and would not be profitable. Space programs. Clean energy research. GPS. Weather. Subsidies for electric vehicles. DARPA funding Boston Dynamics. Medical research through NIH funding.
All of those were military projects except for the clean energy research and electric vehicle subsidies which I don't think were necessary (and both of which started under the Obama administration).
And we can go with your opinion that EV subsidies weren't necessary and take that as fact.
Agricultural subsidies. Coal receives subsidies, too. Battery research funded by the DoD (military). Kodak and its ~760 Million dollar loan through the Defense Production Act.
At this point, I'm moving away from the original point. I'm now swerving into subsidies and loans. Although they still stand to benefit private companies for endeavors that might not otherwise be profitable, I think there are far better examples.
I'm not saying there isn't a role for government in providing funding for or even management of large ambitious projects but for something like the post office I don't see the value. Even back when it was created, courier services were not some fantastical pie-in-the-sky endeavor like building a massive particle accelerator and research lab.
The author of the article has basically said he just wants the tax payer to subsidize ecommerce businesses.
And yes, it's basically subsidizing e-commerce. As I have shown through my examples, these types of subsidies are not new. Nor is it merely a subsidy for e-commerce. The USPS handles government mail, ballots and voter registration, delivering medication, etc. These functions should never rely on a for-profit private business. Mail delivery is a major part of the US infrastructure and USPS is crucial in standardizing costs for that.
Why can’t we vote in person and for the infirm, they can use the existing absentee process? If a person can take to the streets in protest or shop at a grocery store, certainly a polling place could be de-risked?
In general? Because in-person voting is desirable only if your goal is voter suppression and people voting party lines only with minimal investigation of the individuals on the ballot.
We already have a robust e-commerce infrastructure because of the roads, the airlines, and the multiple private delivery companies like UPS and FedEx and DHL. We also have large e-commerce companies building their own delivery networks. The USPS is not essential to e-commerce.
The suggestion that Amazon wouldn't exist without the USPS is ridiculous.
Thank you. Perhaps this will lead me down the trail that explains why the Postmaster General is apparently the second-highest paid U.S. govt official after the President.
Those links are useful, but a bit one sided. IPS and the Guardian? Is there not another side to the story? Shouldn’t one desiring to be educated about the issue be informed on all sides of the issues? Seems biased to use only left wing sources.
I'm all for the USPS. It's my favorite parcel carrier.
Yes, Save The USPS! But how? Voting? Electorialism is too slow to meet urgent demands. There's nothing I or any of my friends can do to save the USPS.
The article mentions "The USPS’ financial woes have three main causes, one acute and two chronic." The acute woe is COVID-19.. fine, that was unexpected. But the other two financial woes are chronic. After decades of both Republican and Democratic administrations and legislatures, the chronic issues still exist. So, it seems like we need other solutions to "Save The USPS."
Have the opposing candidates even promised to do anything about it?
These are chronic issues that not even an Obama administration along with a majority in Congress did anything to cure these issues. What makes you think either party will do anything to prevent its demise?
The article appeals to the USPS's historic role connecting rural communities and employing African Americans at a time when many business would not. Fine. But we don't live in the past, we live in the present. I don't want to keep the USPS around because of the social impact it had a century ago.
The article also talks about the USPS's role supporting e-commerce businesses. I don't buy it. E-commerce businesses use a number of other delivery services, and I don't buy the idea that they would fold if the USPS went away. The USPS is just one of many options for them. The majority of the stuff I buy online is delivered by UPS and FedEx, and Amazon drivers.
There is substantial demand for delivery services, so much so that multiple for-profit companies including UPS and FedEx are able to survive without government help. If the USPS is having trouble thriving in that environment, it must be doing something wrong.
I'd like to see an argument for saving the USPS that does not depend on nostalgia.
Paper mail and mail-in ballots could easily be handled by any of the other deliver companies that operate in the United States. We are talking about moving paper documents from one place to another. Why is it that UPS and FedEx make a profit doing that, while the USPS cannot?
I have done it several times. It was no problem at all. I prefer using them for important documents. Why would you think it would be any worse than the USPS?
> I'd like to see an argument for saving the USPS that does not depend on nostalgia.
It's relied upon by millions of people to deliver ballots in an election being held in a pandemic less than three months in the future. How about we disassemble it in a non-partisan way a little later?
We need ballots delivered, but I don't see why the USPS is the only option for delivering them. Why does it have to be the USPS? There are plenty of other companies that are very good at delivering mail.
Obviously if state governments made a deal with UPS or FedEx to deliver ballots they would include some stipulations about delivering them.
Besides, the law is no guarantee. The USPS loses plenty of packages. You have no real recourse. What are you going to do, take them to small claims court? Make the government count your ballot anyway (assuming they believe you)? Good luck with that. Such guarantees mean nothing the real world.
Be that as it may, it makes no sense to replace a public service with a rent seeking operation. Improve the public service, don’t give up and part it out.
> Why is it that multiple delivery companies are able to survive on their own in the free market, yet the USPS cannot?
USPS operates with many government mandates that don't apply to private companies.
Some of the financial woes are actually inflicted by the government. For example, the government mandated that the USPS pre-fund retiree health benefits well into the future, in a way that no rational private company would ever consider. This alone has contributed significantly to their cash flow problems:
> USPS operates with many government mandates that don't apply to private companies.
Then let's remove those mandates before asking the taxpayers to pump more money into a failing system. The system won't magically fix itself. If we allow it to continue to demand more and more money, there won't be any incentive to fix the underlying problems.
We could have a very similar conversation about the pension obligations of Ford or General Motors, but I doubt people would be as enthusiastic about bailing them out as they are about the USPS.
I think the argument is that mail is an essential service (e.g. for voting) that the government has a mandate to provide to communities that the private sector would not bother to service because it would not be profitable for them to do so.
What do you suppose would cost more: bailing out the failing business model of the USPS for decades to come, or just having state governments contract with another delivery company to deliver ballots during election years?
for one thing, USPS serves last-mile rural customers that UPS and FedEx do not find profitable. If you send a package to one of those places, FedEx/UPS will ship your package to the nearest town and then just _put it in the mail_
The USPS serves the more remote addresses that those private alternatives will not choose to lose money on. They contract out to USPS for those deliveries.
I highly doubt a private mail corp would get the job done. Consider healthcare.
Amazon needs to pause all USPS usage in the weeks leading up to the election, and we need to organize to eliminate all but essential load on them ourselves.
I've been hearing a lot about the difficulties that seem to be attacking the USPS recently and it definitely worries me. I was kinda hoping this article would have some concrete steps to take on how to actually help the USPS as an individual. Would the actions potentially be the same as usual with political things? Call your congressperson and try to make it apparent it's important?
Not a particular advocate for either side of this, however, I did want to point out the cool I story of US Mail pilots. A good portion of modern air navigation comes from that legacy. Elrey Jeppesen was an airmail pilot for Boeing in the 1930s, and during his routes, he began taking detailed notes and that later become the business of Jeppesen —- one of the most important aviation charting companies on the planet. And, coming full-circle, Boeing bought Jeppesen in the year 2000 and a year or so ago, Jeppesen bought ForeFlight.
The legacy of the postal service is extraordinary, especially in aviation. Town names on water towers for example, that was for the mail pilots. Light beacons (that later became radio beacons,) were also a result of the mail pilots. Jeppesen (along with Jimmy Doolittle) was a pioneer of Instrument Flight Rules.
That being said, UPSP filling my mailbox with “to current resident” junk or pounds of unsolicited newsprint each week isn’t something I am sympathetic towards. I am ok paying $5 to mail a letter — I do it so infrequently as to make such an expense trivial. For poor people that still have to do things by post, it would be easy to provide a postal allowance tied to receipt of other government benefits (if you get food stamps, you also get actual stamps for example.) And the package side of USPS — they are profitable. But it doesn’t make a lot of sense to have 6 day per week letter service. If the argument is that USPS is subsidizing Amazon, I might argue they are subsidizing all of the junk mail senders as well. They shouldn’t be subsidizing anyone. The world isn’t going to stop turning with 5 day a week mail service and three day a week service to very rural areas. If a letter just has to get there quickly, normal mail isn’t the optimal way to do it anyway. It wasn’t until 1863 that mail was delivered daily so there is some historical precedence for less than daily service.
Reducing service days, charging correct rates that reflect cost, and improving efficiencies in both labor and processes would make the USPS both solvent while still being relevant.
You could just not read them. Look at the comments, if you find them useless, just move on instead of talking about whether or not this should be "allowed" because you don't like what some people are saying.
I like that approach to “not sweat the small stuff”, but if the community doesn’t speak up about the quality of the discussions, they will inevitably degrade. I really enjoy the intelligent conversations that this site has but recently I’ve noticed a lot more confrontation rather than civilized debate.
Anyway, I think this thread was eventually removed from the main feed.
Can we please calm some of these wild theories about election sabatoge please? It seems unbelievably unlikely to me that there is not a more obvious reason why mail sorting machines are being removed.
Just some thoughts that seem much more realistic than crippling the post office to steal an election:
1) Bulk pre sort mail is down due to reduced marketing budgets during covid.
2) Paper bill volume is down due to adoption of online payments.
And also: why save the USPS? It’s current form seems completely and totally broken to me. The VAST majority of what I get is bulk pre sort literal garbage. We’ve got thousands of trucks driving around every day delivering trash into peoples homes. Why?
We need a postal system (obviously) but that doesn’t mean that this specific iteration of the postal system is the right one. We are a bunch of hackers. How would you improve the postal system if you had the power to do it?
The USPS relies on sending junk mail because it's treated like a business and not a service. We spend billions on investment in infrastructure like roads / bridges / power, yet those are never treated like a failing business.
The solution is simple, fully fund the USPS then stop relying on marketing mail income and focus on delivering packages and letters like it's the 21st century. Have the most cutting edge routing equipment / IT staff for package tracking ever.
As someone who was on the GS for the better part of a decade, it leaves a lot to be desired. IFAIK the USPS uses banded GS which allows some wiggle room. Fully funding would allow the USPS to attract more logistics talent as well.
As far as junk mail, just stop providing marketing mail contracts. Any sufficiently large mailing campaign needs approval and it’s fairly easy to create guidelines prohibiting marketing material.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 277 ms ] thread> Packages are just 5% of its shipping volume but eCommerce accounts for nearly 30% of the agency’s revenue.
To describe this as “taxpayers subsidising business costs” is ridiculous.
Getting your bizarre ecommerce purchases delivered to the middle of nowhere is not a reasonable business. Treating it as a necessary public service is even more unreasonable.
What are the costs associated with delivering those packages?
And yes, Jefferson expressed concern about it. And I don't disagree with him in principle; it can certainly seem like a waste of money. However, it has morphed into something beyond what was probably intended (as a lot of things in the Constitution have). Delivering medication, ballots, voter registration, government documents, delivering secret and confidential mail for the government, etc. These are things that I feel should be backed by the federal government, and paid for with taxpayer money because it benefits all of us to have a mail system that is not based only on profits.
I know you aren't disagreeing with me, and you are merely adding context, by the way. I am not trying to argue/debate with you.
The market is not providing a military or water or garbage utilities, so if we want those things, we have no choice but to put up with the government's version of them. They will never be profitable so the government is the only logical provider.
On the other hand, the market is already providing a number of competent, successful mail delivery companies that are able to survive without taxpayer money. Why should we pay to prop up a bad business model (i.e. the USPS) when so many better models already exist, and anyone can use them?
How about we establish regulations, and then privatise USPS and encourage other vendors?
If states made minimal requirements for coverage (i.e. if you deliver in Chicago, you have to deliver everywhere in Illinois) and other types of regs, there no real reason that Verizon can be private but USPS cannot be.
What about the military?
As for the military, it would be profitable if we could charge for services, ethically. However, I would argue that it pays dividends in a different ways and you know it.
Edit reply: the post office is less useful in 2020 than it ever has been in its existence. It used to be an absolutely critical piece of infrastructure as people relied on mail for bills, communication, magazine subscriptions, etc. Now over 90% of mail is junk advertisements. People consume digital media, pay bills electronically, communicate electronically, sign documents electronically, etc. There is less and less demand for the parcel business.
I'm not arguing that we should shut it down, but the prices should go up and the USPS should be able to set prices without an act of Congress and it should be able to vary postage based on distance traveled.
My argument about the Florida corp running the turnpike is that it's entirely possible to run a state owned enterprise in a profitable way. The Florida turnpike is one of the best maintained with the best amenities of any road I've ever traveled on, including excellent beautiful rest areas and Tesla superchargers at every stop. Congestion is quickly delt with rapid construction of new lanes. The surfaces are kept smooth and free of potholes.
Kinda like roads and the post office huh?
Roads represent a key problem with access, and of course, he military requires a level of commitment and responsibility far beyond what would be appropriate in the private market.
Mail delivery does not have such structural limitations as you can see literally from the existence of UPS and Fedex.
The question remains:
1) Why is USPS consistently bankrupt? 2) If we didn't have the USPS today, would the government create one?
Incorrect. UPS and FedEx do not deliver everywhere. If it is not profitable for them to do so (e.g. in rural areas), they do not deliver and instead give the package to USPS. This is the public service part.
> Why is USPS consistently bankrupt?
Google “USPS pension obligations”.
Republican many years ago passed a law that forced the USPS to allocate budget for many many decades of pension payments in advance, something no one else is forced to do. It was a deliberate act of sabotage by Republicans in the Bush years.
I don't care if it's not their fault or that their hands are tied by regulations. The mere fact that they are in trouble is evidence that they aren't serving their purpose in their current form.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_highways_in_the_United...
This shows that the roads are serving their purpose adequately.
"Everything needs to make a profit" is straight out of right wing talking points. The purpose, of course, is to psyop all of us into privatizing everything, so a few cronies can extract wealth from everyday things Americans need.
https://www.pharmacytimes.com/news/us-postal-service-role-in...
It is a lot more than just “grocery store spam.”
This is NOT compelling at all. There are private delivery options that do not mask the legitimate cost of delivery.
And assuming you mean accounting for actuarial costs, other businesses certainly do need to account for those.
The high risk loans and bailouts given to the post service are absolutely more expensive than mailing medicine to veterans.
The cost of mailing medicine to veterans is _part_ of the cost of keeping the post office afloat. Other parts of that cost are the problem, and private alternatives which charge higher rates for infrequently recurring mail are actually less expensive to the government.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.
If you can't accept the reality that USPS does more than deliver "grocery store spam" I'd recommend you abstain from adding to the conversation.
The main parcel shipped by the USPS is physical waste.
The postal service also delivers tax documents, ballots, bills, and (actual and important, not the junk made to look as such) notifications from utilities. It's disingenuous to argue that the postal service doesn't do anything important.
Were the US to pay for private delivery the 30-40 pieces of critical mail people receive each year and use bulk pricing discounts, they would likely come out ahead.
No - your ideologically loaded responses is maybe the 'absurd' thing here.
You've made arbitrary comparisons to 'Healthcare' or 'NASA' without providing any basis for why 'some things are public and some are private'.
You do also realize that almost all Healthcare services are provided by private entities? Even in fully socialised markets like Canada 'the Government' does not actually 'provide' service, they regulate, and do the 'insurance' layer.
Parcel delivery does not have any of the systematic characteristics of something that might make it a public good.
While there's nothing inherently wrong with having a public delivery service - there is definitely something wrong if is not self sustaining, and effectively subsidises some businesses and not others.
It would be better if there were 3 regular, national carriers, with reasonable regulations.
""Everything needs to make a profit" is straight out of right wing talking points. The purpose, of course, is to psyop all of us into privatizing everything,"
Conspiracy theories are not arguments.
Also - this idea that the USPS is 'forced to pay retirement 50 years ahead' is essentially a canard - a purposefully misrepresented falsehood.
The USPS for the most part - was required to fund its pensions in almost the same manner any private entity would. [1]
The notion that the USPS was burdened by some deal to have to pay '50 years in advance' is basically a lie.
You can read the legislation yourself right here [2] and here [3]. You'll note there is no mention of '50 years'.
There is no real reason for the US Government to provide mail delivery, when it could achieve the same results through legislation and via private services.
There is a commenter below who uses as 'evidence' the fact that UPS and Fedex do not 'deliver everywhere' as proof that they cannot deliver everywhere.
This again - is a myth. That UPS and FedEx do not deliver everywhere mostly implies they don't see the margins there today. Were the USPS not to exist, and, were they required to deliver by law, then they probably could.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2020/04/14/post-office-p...
[2] https://www.congress.gov/bill/109th-congress/house-bill/6407
[3] https://www.congress.gov/bill/109th-congress/house-bill/6407...
However, the USPS is designed to operate in circumstances where huge losses are inevitable (like shipping to remote towns always at a loss). We already have for profit shipping companies so I see no problem with the USPS, and actually applaud my tax dollars going towards giving every American access to mail.
"Requires the Postal Service, beginning in 2007, to compute the net present value of the future payments required...Directs the Postal Service, for each year, to pay into the above Fund such net present value and the annual installment due under the amortization schedule"
The "50 years" part that you bring up is probably an exaggeration to some extent of the amount of time between when a person starts working for the USPS and when they retire, but the general concept behind the argument remains the same I would think.
I finally started watching Star Trek because I kept seeing “Ferengi” mentioned in this context. I’m only a few episodes into Next Generation but so far the analogy definitely holds up.
Interestingly, in one of the episodes the Ferengi leader prioritizes his own personal gain (in the form of revenge) over profit and his fellow Ferengi are so disgusted by the behavior that he’s overthrown.
I believe this requires Congress. Hence why USPS is kneecapped. They’re legally obligated to fund them and also prohibited from taking the steps necessary to fully fund them.
Reliable mail service to every address in the country is one of the foundational building blocks of a developed nation. Those that argue against it to me seem irrational.
No private business, especially when you compare it to a company like Verizon, will ever provide the level of universal service the USPS has historically. Rural areas have absolutely been "left behind" for Internet access just as soon as the regulators stopped regulating minimum access requirements.
No thanks. I don't want the (imo, completely and irreversibly broken) US telco landscape extended to the physical mail delivery. Not to mention the constitutional rights you get shipping with the USPS vs. any private business.
Those who would argue, blindly, that this service must be provided by the government ... seem irrational.
Moreover, we are in a digital era, trying to reduce our paper usage.
I have not received a paper letter of material usefulness literally in years.
95% of my mail is junk mail - wasted.
The remaining 5% is the occasional letter from the government, of the bank, reminding me of what I have already received online.
By any reasonable stretch, the USPS is largely just a 'junk mail service'.
Society may benefit frankly from the end of this waste and the end of paper mail for most procedures. What remains for the most part is just packages and a few letters there's no reason decent regulation couldn't have it managed by private entities.
Many services are difficult to quantify and/or cannot exist merely by charging only those who directly benefit from them.
Was it not confirmed yesterday that the USPS is being purposefully sabotaged by the current administration? Or was it facing problems previously, and the current administration decided to use the existing problems to its benefit? Is it not well within the federal government's power to simply increase funding, or does the USPS function like any other business?
I am not trying to spark a political debate here, I am genuinely curious.
It's not "political" any more, and it's not a matter of opinion. America's electoral system is officially under attack.
That's a huge stretch from using the USPS to rig an election. Both sides are accusing the other of trying to take advantage of the sudden surge in interest in mail-in voting.
edit reply: you can't on the one hand argue that mail is a reliable way to run an election and on the other argue that a politician is trying to use it for their advantage. Not giving up, he didn't say he was using it. He said the Democrats would use it. Either way, these arguments underscore just how hackable and exploitable mail in voting is.
He admitted it on TV. Give it up.
“If we don’t make a deal that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting. They just can’t have it. Sort of a crazy thing,”
He is explicitly trying to remove the USPS's ability to handle voting by mail.
We're talking about what trump said.
Trump said the post office needs two bills that fund it to be passed for it to be able to adequately handle universal vote by mails, and if he doesn't make a deal with the people trying to pass those bills, then the post office doesn't get the money it needs to be able to do that:
>>> “If we don’t make a deal that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting. They just can’t have it. Sort of a crazy thing,” Trump said on Thursday.
This is technically correct, the best kind of correct. If 100 people actually vote for Smith and 101 people actually vote for Jones, and you count 99 of the votes for Smith and 98 of the votes for Jones, you have not counted any fraudulent votes.
The test of a democracy is whether it is representative, not whether it counts only non-fraudulent votes. Avoiding fraud is a very important means to the end, but it is not the end itself.
Here is an analogy for the HN crowd: If my site is broken, and I need to do a deploy to fix it, and we have a rule that says that every commit must pass tests and tests take 4 hours to run, then great, the rule is making sure that no code that's failing tests hit prod - but the rule is certainly not helpful in bringing prod back online. The rule is a means to the goal of making sure that prod works. It's a good rule, of course. Nobody is questioning the merit of testing your code or saying that untested code is a good thing. But you cannot justify missing your SLAs by saying "All of our code needs to be tested in order for us to know that our site works."
Quite the opposite, mail in ballots create an irrefutable and unfalsifiable paper trail for each vote.
Republicans (and Trump) are against them because they know the more people vote (ie. the more democratic America is) the less chance they have at winning.
This isn't about what Republicans do, or what Democrats do. It's about what enemies of the state do. Many Republicans are speaking up alongside their usual opponents, because they know very well that when Trump is done with the Democrats, he'll come for them.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/13/politics/donald-trump-mail-in...
This is not a "both sides" issue.
If the gov can purhase (internet collected) personal data, will privatized mail create a legal loophole?
There's some laws from after this doctrine was established that attempt to rein this in by explicitly extending the 4th amendment, so like that's why the government needs to get a warrant for a wiretap, but without a specific law passed by congress, the third party doctrine applies.
I tried to google if there's a 3rd party doctrine for mail services, but I haven't been able to find anything yet.
The Republican party is blatantly criminal, and anyone that supports them is either incredibly ignorant, or treasonous. I'm sick of this "both sides" bullshit when what used to be called the center of the free world is in the process of being destroyed from the inside.
Uh... who? I think I read that Susan Collins wrote a letter... Republicans, as they have been throughout the administration, are almost universally silent on Trumps corruption.
All it takes is two Senate republicans to take Majority control away from McConnell and to this day, not a single one has faltered in their support of the Senior Senator from Kentucky.
Where are all the Republicans speaking up alongside their opponents where it matters most? Cause it sure ain't in the Senate.
Look, I agree with where you're coming from - there are certain things that are simply matters of right and wrong and are not a matter of whether you're on Team Red or Team Blue. But the whole reason we have political parties is that it turns out we disagree, strongly, about what right and wrong are. It is a disservice to the cause you agree with and an insult to the seriousness of those you disagree with to say that such-and-such decision about how we run our country should be non-partisan instead of acknowledging the reality that it is.
It happens to be the case that for many things, like "Should we have elections or simply have hereditary rule" or "Should people be allowed to leave their religion" or "Should we invade our neighboring countries because we are the rightful owners of this continent" or "Should people be allowed to marry outside their race" or whatever, the two major parties, organizationally, do not disagree with each other. But those are and have been political debates in other times and in other places. Sometimes questions that you wouldn't expect to be political, like "Should people stay away from each other during a plague," become political.
If you believe in a particular answer to one of these questions, and one team agrees with you and the other doesn't, do not delude yourself into thinking that both teams agree with you merely because you think they should agree with you.
It's absolutely about what the current Republican Party in government does.
> It's about what enemies of the state do.
That may be true, but that doesn’t negate the preceding point.
> Many Republicans are speaking up alongside their usual opponents
Many former and out-of-office Republicans are, and over the past few years also some in-office-but-already-announced-retirement Republicans have.
A handful of ongoing Republicans-in-office have, over the last several years, expressed mild and momentary concern before returning to the ranks to toe the line on substance, but none of them are speaking up—or, more importantly, acting in ant substantial way.
Voting by mail in a pandemic is very wise. Advising against it is a murderous suggestion.
It's kind of a thing.
Here’s an example:
https://www.vice.com/amp/en_ca/article/n7wk9z/the-post-offic...
”Motherboard identified 19 mail sorting machines from five processing facilities across the U.S. that either have already been removed or are scheduled to be in the near future. But the Postal Service operates hundreds of distribution facilities around the country, so it is not clear precisely how many machines are getting removed and for what purpose.”
The headline is what will be politically thrown around, but the true assessment of the facts won’t occur. How many sorting machines do they have, and why are they shutting some down? Is this routine? Have we clearly identified that it’s a budget issue?
We spent almost a year tracking Russiagate, so this kind of bullshit is par for the course.
The recent shakeup, slowdowns, and scrapping of needed equipment is a separate act of sabotage to interfere with mail-in voting.
I'm no expert but I recall the USPS acting like a bank, making money from savings accounts and other financial services. Would be interested in some of the various arguments for or against privatization/funding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Accountability_and_Enha...
The USPS is not a business. It does not lose money.
The USPS is a service. It costs money to run, like other services in the country (Medicad, the military, the EPA).
If you're upset about the USPS losing billions here and there, wait till you hear about the military losing 750 Billion each and every year!
I live in rural America and let me tell you the USPS is a complete joke here. Everyone knows it, and we choose to use UPS/FedEx instead. I don’t have a mailbox anymore nor do I have a P.O. Box. Many neighbors are going this way, too. We don’t want or need their services anymore. They’ve become too unreliable.
Right? Or is the Post Office a special case?
And honestly I could probably be convinced that there is no responsible way to get ourselves out of the mess we put ourselves in over the last several decades and the only solution is a commander-in-chief willing to be irresponsible.
Trump recently appointed a new Postmaster General which is reportedly making a lot of changes. This is now a political issue because many believe the changes are politically motivated due to the upcoming election during a pandemic when, not surprisingly, a lot of people will vote by mail.
It's especially concerning because we are clearly on a course which will lead to exceptionally low confidence in the results of the election, no matter what happens. So even if the USPS isn't profitable, it seems worth while to at least prop it up for a few more months so we can have a fair election and (equally important) have the results be trusted by the people.
https://wtop.com/virginia/2020/08/unsolicited-absentee-appli...
> “We are aware that some of the mailers may have directed the return envelopes to the wrong election offices.”
Nothing is fraud if you're naive/charitable enough in how you interpret things.
> Ballot-printing firms couldn’t keep up with demand, and the already rickety U.S. Postal Service didn’t move the ballots to and from voters quickly enough.
>> Patel said his campaign is looking at thousands of other votes that seem to be missing postmarks entirely—a post-office error
Read your own link.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-13/trump-app...
It will be interesting to see what they submit.
But besides all that: There is simply no scenario where allowing the USPS to half-fail improves the situation.
Even if the USPS was running perfectly, this election would still have unusually low trust, because of the pandemic and because of our especially toxic political climate. Adding a hobbled USPS to the mix makes things much worse.
Lots of people are saying Trump is trying to "muddy the waters" of the election. I suppose Trumps motivation may be debated, but I think the result is clear: A half functioning USPS will "muddy the waters" of the election result. Does anyone disagree that this will be the result? Even if (being charitable) that was not the intention.
> During an interview with Fox Business Network, the president said that he will block funding for the US Postal Service requested by Democratic lawmakers, citing his intention to prevent universal mail-in voting. Trump acknowledged in the interview that the USPS will be unable to process a large number of ballots from mail-in voting without the funding.
The USPS has been struggling for decades - at least since the 1980s. It had a near monopoly of written communication until then with a few high priced competitors for fast short messages (Western Union, Telex, etc). It was financially self sufficient with limited indirect subsides and support.
Then the fax machine arrived, then the overnight delivery services, then email and the internet. These developments ate into USPS’s business model which required huge volumes to support a vast and expensive infrastructure. For a time the rise of junk mail provided some relief but even that waned in recent decades.
Managment of the USPS was unable to deal with these changes for a number of reasons including government mandates and an inflexible unionized workforce. One persistent problem was huge pension liabilities arising from labor contracts. But the key issue was the high costs and diminished demand.
It has been bailed out several times most recently in 2012. In the next few years another bailout will be needed or perhaps bankruptcy. A long-term solution would require a politically sensitive restructuring possibly including privatization. Many other countries have either completely or partially privatized their postal systems with generally good results.
Turns out operating in high density areas that turn a good profit and low density areas that don’t is difficult. It’s why UPS and FedEx don’t do it. But it’s what USPS was set up to do.
If I live on a mountain top why should I expect people to haul shit to me for free? Why would you expect them to be charged the same as someone who lives on the corner of Main and State?
Because they aren’t allowed to, because it is considered a public service that should be equally available to all.
> If i live on a mountain top why should I expect people to haul shit to me for free?
Not for free. You pay taxes. And you should expect it because it’s what USPS does.
Now sure, there can be a whole debate about whether or not it should be the way it is, but that’s not what you asked. As per your original post:
> Unless they offer a better service than private industry, they will be a money sink.
It is a better service and it’s a money sink by design: it’s a public service that is funded by taxes. If they didn’t have insane pension obligations they’d be in a much better state financially, but they’ve been kept in a stranglehold over that for many years now:
https://www.uspsoig.gov/blog/be-careful-what-you-assume
I literally used the word "should" in the portion of my post that you quoted, but I see you were a little eager for electronic head pats.
There is no reason, in principle, why USPS can't eat up enough of the UPS/FedEx/Amazon market-share to at least stay afloat as a business without having to resort to the business tactics that people are most concerned about. (poor working conditions, anti-competitive behavior, etc.) But they aren't. They are chronically under-performing, and to me that is evidence in of itself that they are not serving their stated purpose right now.
Funding USPS for the rest of the calendar year is, in relative terms, not that expensive -- so, I would find your argument a lot more credible if you were willing to have the discussion about privatizing it in the new year.
It is obvious that I am making a prescriptive argument. I am under no illusions that they are able to enact these policies tomorrow. Their hands are tied by regulations.
You know what might make those regulations go away? Making them hurt a little bit. If it becomes clear that USPS cannot exist as an institution in its current form without being a perpetual sinkhole in which to dump taxpayer dollars directly, then they will have no choice but to adapt or die.
...Or I guess we could just keep throwing money at them and hope they get better because they super duper double pinky swear promised this time.
When he came in to work today 2 multi million dollar sorting machines were padlocked.
He was told by the facility manager that they are selling them for scrap.
1 of the machines is very new and in the past when they replaced machines they sold them to postal services in other countries. They’ve never scrapped them.
He is certain removing these machines (they are enormous machines) will drastically reduce their capacity.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7wk9z/the-post-office-is...
> When he came in to work today 2 multi million dollar sorting machines were padlocked.
He should take a photo and pass it on to the media.
> He was told by the facility manager that they are selling them for scrap.
If anyone manages to buy them, the smart thing would be to hold onto them to sell them back to the Biden administration.
I would guess that the vast majority of mailed ballots would be for local delivery and sorted by the mail carrier at the point they are picked up, and never hit one of these regional distribution centers.
And ballots on the way out would be pre-sorted.
Completed ballots are only occasionally mailed in the same zip code, and often not the same city, as they tend to be mailed in to county election offices, not the precinct balloting locations (which often aren't permanent government facilities and when they are still are not permanently associated with the elections office.)
So, yes, machines that sort non-local (not same zip) mail would handle most mail in ballots.
And the postal service has been notifying state officials that (despite it never being a problem before) it's “delivery standards” do not support delivery ballots on the timelines in each notified states law for mail ballotsm
And the President has openly stated that he is opposing Postal Service funding to block use of mail-in ballots.
It's not even something that is trying to be hidden.
I think it's reasonable to question how many ballots being sent to local county offices would cross paths with one of these five regional processing facilities.
Even the Motherboard article acknowledges this;
"Paul McKenna, president of Milwaukee Area Local 3 of the American Postal Workers Union, said that some of the DBCSs staying will have about 50 more stackers added to them, meaning the machines can sort mail to a larger number of destinations. This will help alleviate the pressure during high mail volume periods like the Christmas rush—when there is simply more mail in general to all places—as well as provide advantages during lower-volume periods like the dead of summer. But it won’t necessarily help the unique challenge of election mail. In that case, the mail surge stays local."
It really depends on the details. Are those processing facilities serving urban areas of some swing states? Even if it's just 1% of the ballots, those ballots could be the ones that decide the election.
> Even the Motherboard article acknowledges this;
>> ...some of the DBCSs staying will have about 50 more stackers added to them, meaning the machines can sort mail to a larger number of destinations....
It's not that clear, that same article also says this:
> The postal workers Motherboard spoke to said having machines removed, replaced, or modified is nothing new, but this time it seems to be more widespread, include a larger number of machines at their respective facility, and potentially impacts the facility’s ability to process large numbers of mail, including ballots, in a short time span.
Given other statements made by this administration, people are right to be extremely skeptical of the motivations here. At a minimum the optics of making this change now are extremely bad. Even if there's a rational, honest reason for this change; the project should be postponed until December for that reason alone.
Anyone that thinks letter volume isn't in just a temp slump is lying to themselves to justify what's going on.
The problems at USPS have little to do with anything mentioned and everything to do with well established facts:
- USPS is mandated to prefund employee healthcare and pensions for 75 years in advance
- USPS cannot add a fuel surcharge to pricing (as FedEx and UPS can) to maintain profit levels
- USPS is required to provide service to people and businesses in remote areas even when it may be highly unprofitable
- USPS is governed by Congress and the Postal Rate Commission (PRC), which restricts potential avenues for expansion into other products and limits competition with other companies (such as UPS and FedEx). Congress has been influenced by competitors to get the USPS to abandon new products such as online payment systems, phone cards, money transfers, postal meter cartridges, etc
- USPS is required to invest exclusively in government bonds while private companies can invest in a wide variety of securities to improve profitability
- USPS is forbidden by law to lower prices to get more business
The quality of commenting has really fallen at HN. It’s starting to feel like a raging boomers Facebook wall filled with conjecture, gossip and conspiracy theories. Let’s stick to the facts please.
SOURCES: https://cms-colorado.com/its-time-to-allow-the-usps-to-compe...
https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/03/04/how-the-po...
Amen.
> It’s starting to feel like a raging boomers Facebook wall
I wish. It's the eternal September problem now, except with pedants and spectrum patients.
Boomers actually built things, and the current generation hasn't even read about it.
The US is at war with China, and HN wants to debate judicial procedure with a totalitarian government.
What does that have to do with the USPS’s mandate to deliver mail?
All of your points are presented as facts. Can you explain how they have anything to do with the current discussion about keeping the USPS’s capability to deliver mail and ballots ?
> What does that have to do with the USPS’s mandate to deliver mail?
Postal money orders are already a thing: https://www.usps.com/shop/money-orders.htm.
Your points speak instead to a longer-term question of whether the constitution should be amended to privatize the USPS, or to change its mandate.
These are distinct questions, the latter we've struggled with for decades and does not explain recent measures.
And the amount of mail sent overall is down from about 212 billion pieces per year in 2005 to just over 155 billion in 2014. This number is even including parcels, which have gone up in proportion to paper mail. While the rise of online shopping has seen the number of delivered packages shoot up, those are capable of being delivered by UPS or FedEx in significantly populated parts of the country."
Guy you're replying to didn't really make an argument, no, but it's worth ridiculing someone for posting Jon Oliver, because it is a thing to be ridiculed. That's about as bad a linking to a Bill O'Reilly op-ed as far as I'm concerned.
This strategy starves USPS of package revenue for profitable routes while inundating them with packages to unprofitable addresses.
If USPS needs to raise money, they can start by charging Amazon a surcharge to defend against this type of arbitrage.
Also packages continue to grow as revenue for USPS: https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2020/0807-...
> Meanwhile, Shipping and Packages revenue increased by $2.9 billion, or 53.6 percent, on a volume increase of 708 million pieces, or 49.9 percent, compared to the same quarter last year.
So apparently they're charging a good amount. There's also the Postal Regulatory Commission which has reported that USPS does make money on the contract with Amazon.
It continues to be that the biggest drain on the USPS is the declines in first-class mail and billing mail. Junk mail is also declining.
most (all?) rural packages should go out with the regular (usually daily) mail carrier, so the marginal cost of also delivering amazon packages to rural addresses should basically be zero for USPS.
for the really remote areas, i don't think you can choose any time-bound delivery you want, like next-day or two-day. they would only quote you what they'd be able to manage with the normal, likely less frequent, delivery schedule for the area (like weekly).
so i can see how USPS misses out on lucrative urban deliveries, but not how they lose money on rural deliveries. amazon absolutely does gain by not delivering to rural though.
It's part of the USPS pricing structure that the dense urban environments subsidize the sparse rural ones.
It's not a question of "just one more package" being basically zero cost. In the aggregate there is incremental cost to delivering more packages, and that cost is higher for rural packages than urban packages.
Apparently, the rate structure just assumes a certain urban/rural mix without accounting for a trillion dollar company with enough capital to arbitrage the lower urban delivery cost.
The answer is just so elusive!
We will need a robust eCommerce infrastructure in the coming years and that will require servicing areas in the U.S. that will never be profitable to do so for a private company.
The topic is politicized quite a bit and I thought that it was important to explain why it has been over the centuries. That shouldn't deter us from its importance to our retail infrastructure. The suggestion is that we tolerate USPS losses so that we can continue to build strong and sustainable commerce businesses. Amazon doesn't exist without the services that USPS provided the company in its formative years.
What percentage of the population lives in these areas?
It seems like you're conflating two distinct issues.
1) Providing access to ecommerce to people living in remote/sparsely populated/rural areas.
2) Generally subsidizing delivery costs for ecommerce businesses.
Also, yes, USPS is uniquely capable to democratize shipments and last mile delivery to these underserved areas. eCom is still early (~15% of all retail). As it reaches 30 and 40, this will become more relevant. That's all I'm saying.
Thanks for listening.
I mean you could levy this argument in favor of anything you wanted. Early computers were prohibitively expensive except for very wealthy households. Now you can get 1000x the computing power for a fraction of the cost. You would have been out there making the same argument for having the government build Apple IIs for everyone at cost.
You're basically arguing that innovation or having a better run system is fundamentally impossible in the area of logistics and delivery in general and so we need the government to step in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra#Government_support
And we can go with your opinion that EV subsidies weren't necessary and take that as fact.
Agricultural subsidies. Coal receives subsidies, too. Battery research funded by the DoD (military). Kodak and its ~760 Million dollar loan through the Defense Production Act.
At this point, I'm moving away from the original point. I'm now swerving into subsidies and loans. Although they still stand to benefit private companies for endeavors that might not otherwise be profitable, I think there are far better examples.
Let's talk about CERN. ️
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institutes_of_Health#...
I'm not saying there isn't a role for government in providing funding for or even management of large ambitious projects but for something like the post office I don't see the value. Even back when it was created, courier services were not some fantastical pie-in-the-sky endeavor like building a massive particle accelerator and research lab.
The author of the article has basically said he just wants the tax payer to subsidize ecommerce businesses.
And yes, it's basically subsidizing e-commerce. As I have shown through my examples, these types of subsidies are not new. Nor is it merely a subsidy for e-commerce. The USPS handles government mail, ballots and voter registration, delivering medication, etc. These functions should never rely on a for-profit private business. Mail delivery is a major part of the US infrastructure and USPS is crucial in standardizing costs for that.
It is not acceptable to dispense with essential voting infrastructure. Full stop.
Right now? Pandemic.
In general? Because in-person voting is desirable only if your goal is voter suppression and people voting party lines only with minimal investigation of the individuals on the ballot.
But seriously, the main reason for in person voting is to avoid fraud. It also protects voter privacy.
The suggestion that Amazon wouldn't exist without the USPS is ridiculous.
Its problems: https://ips-dc.org/how-congress-manufactured-a-postal-crisis... (when the Republican Party held the White House, Senate, and House simultaneously)
Who's involved with causing them: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/13/donald-trump...
Yes, Save The USPS! But how? Voting? Electorialism is too slow to meet urgent demands. There's nothing I or any of my friends can do to save the USPS.
The article mentions "The USPS’ financial woes have three main causes, one acute and two chronic." The acute woe is COVID-19.. fine, that was unexpected. But the other two financial woes are chronic. After decades of both Republican and Democratic administrations and legislatures, the chronic issues still exist. So, it seems like we need other solutions to "Save The USPS."
These are chronic issues that not even an Obama administration along with a majority in Congress did anything to cure these issues. What makes you think either party will do anything to prevent its demise?
The article also talks about the USPS's role supporting e-commerce businesses. I don't buy it. E-commerce businesses use a number of other delivery services, and I don't buy the idea that they would fold if the USPS went away. The USPS is just one of many options for them. The majority of the stuff I buy online is delivered by UPS and FedEx, and Amazon drivers.
There is substantial demand for delivery services, so much so that multiple for-profit companies including UPS and FedEx are able to survive without government help. If the USPS is having trouble thriving in that environment, it must be doing something wrong.
I'd like to see an argument for saving the USPS that does not depend on nostalgia.
Regardless, having voting go through private companies isn't good enough. They aren't bound by the Constitution the same way USPS is.
These are not comparable entities.
It's relied upon by millions of people to deliver ballots in an election being held in a pandemic less than three months in the future. How about we disassemble it in a non-partisan way a little later?
Besides, the law is no guarantee. The USPS loses plenty of packages. You have no real recourse. What are you going to do, take them to small claims court? Make the government count your ballot anyway (assuming they believe you)? Good luck with that. Such guarantees mean nothing the real world.
USPS operates with many government mandates that don't apply to private companies.
Some of the financial woes are actually inflicted by the government. For example, the government mandated that the USPS pre-fund retiree health benefits well into the future, in a way that no rational private company would ever consider. This alone has contributed significantly to their cash flow problems:
They even provide a convenient chart of how their profit/loss looks without the pre-funding requirement, at least up through 2010: https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/financials/annual-reports/...
Then let's remove those mandates before asking the taxpayers to pump more money into a failing system. The system won't magically fix itself. If we allow it to continue to demand more and more money, there won't be any incentive to fix the underlying problems.
We could have a very similar conversation about the pension obligations of Ford or General Motors, but I doubt people would be as enthusiastic about bailing them out as they are about the USPS.
I highly doubt a private mail corp would get the job done. Consider healthcare.
No more mail carriers, no more paper letters.
Packages handled by the private sector.
And digitized mailboxes for every person.
Something like: john.smith.uniqueid@uspsmailbox.com?
Why aren’t we doing this already? Are any countries doing this?
Now infrastructure has been politicized.
What is next, closing interstates?
The legacy of the postal service is extraordinary, especially in aviation. Town names on water towers for example, that was for the mail pilots. Light beacons (that later became radio beacons,) were also a result of the mail pilots. Jeppesen (along with Jimmy Doolittle) was a pioneer of Instrument Flight Rules.
That being said, UPSP filling my mailbox with “to current resident” junk or pounds of unsolicited newsprint each week isn’t something I am sympathetic towards. I am ok paying $5 to mail a letter — I do it so infrequently as to make such an expense trivial. For poor people that still have to do things by post, it would be easy to provide a postal allowance tied to receipt of other government benefits (if you get food stamps, you also get actual stamps for example.) And the package side of USPS — they are profitable. But it doesn’t make a lot of sense to have 6 day per week letter service. If the argument is that USPS is subsidizing Amazon, I might argue they are subsidizing all of the junk mail senders as well. They shouldn’t be subsidizing anyone. The world isn’t going to stop turning with 5 day a week mail service and three day a week service to very rural areas. If a letter just has to get there quickly, normal mail isn’t the optimal way to do it anyway. It wasn’t until 1863 that mail was delivered daily so there is some historical precedence for less than daily service.
Reducing service days, charging correct rates that reflect cost, and improving efficiencies in both labor and processes would make the USPS both solvent while still being relevant.
Anyway, I think this thread was eventually removed from the main feed.
Just some thoughts that seem much more realistic than crippling the post office to steal an election:
1) Bulk pre sort mail is down due to reduced marketing budgets during covid.
2) Paper bill volume is down due to adoption of online payments.
And also: why save the USPS? It’s current form seems completely and totally broken to me. The VAST majority of what I get is bulk pre sort literal garbage. We’ve got thousands of trucks driving around every day delivering trash into peoples homes. Why?
We need a postal system (obviously) but that doesn’t mean that this specific iteration of the postal system is the right one. We are a bunch of hackers. How would you improve the postal system if you had the power to do it?
The solution is simple, fully fund the USPS then stop relying on marketing mail income and focus on delivering packages and letters like it's the 21st century. Have the most cutting edge routing equipment / IT staff for package tracking ever.
And who determines if it’s junk mail or not?
As far as junk mail, just stop providing marketing mail contracts. Any sufficiently large mailing campaign needs approval and it’s fairly easy to create guidelines prohibiting marketing material.