USPS Losing Battle Against the E-mail Age 734
An anonymous reader writes "An article in the NY Times explains how the United States Postal Service is in dire financial straits, and will need emergency action from Congress to forestall a shutdown later this year. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said simply, 'If Congress doesn't act, we will default.' Labor agreements prohibiting layoffs are preventing one avenue for reducing costs, and laws forbidding postage rates from surpassing inflation rates keep income down. On top of that, the proliferation of e-mail and online bill-paying services have contributed to a 22% reduction in snail-mail volume since 2006. They're currently hoping for legislation that would relax their economic requirements and considering an end to Saturday delivery."
Do your part! Snail-mail your comments! (Score:5, Funny)
All /. posters should commit to mail their comments for one week to make up the difference.
Soulskill will provide the mailing address shortly. To verify your identity, you will have to mail your username/password, and our army of volunteers will use a special login form to verify your identity.
This system is so brilliant, I may even patent it.
Re:Do your part! Snail-mail your comments! (Score:5, Interesting)
I joined Postcrossing [postcrossing.com] last month. I liked the idea of sending random people postcards, and in return receiving cards from other random people.
I send cards to a child in Finland, a girl in Germany, a student in Taiwan, a recent-graduate lawyer in the Netherlands and a woman in Siberia. So far, only the first two have received my cards, and I've not received one in return yet -- but it's only been two or three days. (I live in the UK, so it's no surprise that the cards to Finland and Germany arrived quickly.)
I like travelling and meeting people from other countries, so hopefully I'll like reading the cards I receive too.
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Neat idea. Should have called it Post Roulette.
Re:Do your part! Snail-mail your comments! (Score:5, Interesting)
But let's get real, such an effort even if successful may fund one postal worker. The USPS is one of the biggest employers out there.
I think they should do several measures:
-Alternating day service. Route 1 gets Mo-We-Fr delivery, and Route 2 gets Tu-Th-Sa delivery. Mail carriers cut in 1/2. Express Mail already is handled by a different special carrier (I'm told) so that's unaffected.
-Cut down all underperforming post offices that are within a certain radius of other, more successful, USPS locations. I'm close to such a one, that is in a shack of a location, and within 7 minutes drive of it's main branch. It has one guy working there, less than 75 PO Boxes, half of them unrented (the next most rural place I know has at least 300 boxes, 90% rented). USPS has been trying to close it down for years but the union is resisting, even if the worker is taken to the main branch. Hard to understand.
-Open up automated kiosks to serve as advanced versions of blue mailboxes in malls/supermarkets/what_have_you. Emulate redbox, except for packages. Try a trial run. (All the USPS advertising is for flat rate boxes, they WANT the package business. Might as well try something novel.)
-Back in WW2, Post Office has Vmail. It's mail on special sized letters, shrunk to microfiche, and reprinted. Save many cargo ships for other purposes - they used to be pioneers. They should have an email to mail service - afterall laywers and a ton of businesses need to send out certified mail all the time. But why should they have to print it, run someplace to mail it, and keep track of slips of "certified" this and that? Send it to the USPS server, let a central place print it out, and mail automatically, for postage plus a small fee. The software keeps track of what was sent.
Just a few ideas. The USPS has to change and fast. It has to reduce their workforce. It has to do a lot of things. But ceasing to exist should not be an options, lot of online and offline commerce depends on them and will do so until perfect replicas of objects can simply be generated, like in Star Trek, just like computers can copy data files. Then they can call it quits.
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Oh, and right now I will tell you where USPS absolutely lags behind where it could get an easy jump. For ebay, it absolutely sucks right now making international shipments for things under $300. You see, UPS and FedEx for a small guy will cost around $100 overseas (not something a buyer is likely to pay) to send a package. With USPS it costs 4-5 for really small items to, say $30 for something under 4lbs. The problem is that USPS lacks tracking - buyer says he never got it, Paypal will side with the buy
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I'm not in favor of unions, but I'll say they may not be bad in all cases.
I don't, however, think they should be allowed in in PUBLIC jobs...as that the rules, pay, etc...are voted by and should be dictated by the public for those jobs.
And not to mention...govt. is inefficient enough as it is inherently....due to difficulty of getting civil servants out when they aren't effective...laws
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No, probably more likely that not all unions are necessarily good. It's sort of like police misconduct: "Well, yes there's police misconduct, just not here."
It's alright for others to lay off employees, or close locations, just not here.
Governments, corporations, and unions all cause problems. They just cause different problems. Pointing out the problems one causes does not imply that the problems another causes do not exist.
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I send cards to [...] Finland, [...] Germany, [...] Taiwan, [...] Netherlands and [...] Siberia. [...] I live in the UK
That is going to help the USPS how?
In the whole scale of everything, it probably won't. Although 14% of Postcrossing members are from the USA (36k users) between them sending over a million postcards.
My next two cards, which I will write this evening, are to be sent to Washington, USA and Austria. Me sending the card to Washington is a result of the person in Washington sending one to someone else, so that has helped the USPS in a tiny way.
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STOP! You're bankrupting the USPS. They *lose* money on these items.
Do you have a source for that claim and in particular does that source distinguish between overall profit/loss (apportioning some part of the fixed costs to each delivery) and marginal profit/loss?
They'll have to charge the true cost of delivery if they want to actually solve the problem.
As I understand it the real problem with a "postal service"* is that their costs are more related to the size of the service area and the frequency of service than the volume of post. Sending a postman down a street costs about the same regardless of how much mail he puts in each box.
So as mail volumes naturally g
Re:Do your part! Snail-mail your comments! (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is (and why I am starting to use epay rather than check+snail mail)... The USPS loses too much stuff
In the four years since I've moved into my current residence, they've lost one mortgage check (eff that, from now on I drop the damn thing off in person), and one electric bill.
That may not seem like a lot, but it is enough for me.
Translation: they aren't losing my service because of competition, rather their own inability to reliably provide their offered service.
Re:Do your part! Snail-mail your comments! (Score:5, Insightful)
... and you think dropping a check off in person will help?
My (previous) mortgage company deposited my mortgage check... and I have no idea whose account got credited for it, but it wasn't mine.
The check cleared, I marked it as such in my bank book, and the only clue something was wrong was when I went from 0 bill collector calls (since I pay all my bills on time) to 4 in one day all about my mortgage. Even after I opened a case, and they started investigating, AND finally credited me back, they STILL had the hounds calling me.
I had to tell them the next call was going to my attorney before they stopped.
So, even dropping that check off in person won't necessarily help. Mistakes can (and do) happen.
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So, even dropping that check off in person won't necessarily help. Mistakes can (and do) happen.
True. However, you can reduce the probability of an issue arising by reducing the complexity of the system. By trusting USPS with your cheque, you give USPS the chance to lose it. If you don't send it by mail, they can't lose it.
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the probability that you get mugged (small as it is) is probably greater than the odds of the USPS losing an envelope.
At least you will know that you were mugged in a timely fashion. You dont know that the USPS lost your mail for a long time that often has financial consequences.
Re:Do your part! Snail-mail your comments! (Score:5, Informative)
In cases like that you send a registered letter to the agency requesting proof that you owe the debt. That will stop them dead in their tracks, especially given that lately even legitimate mortgage debt often can't be proven to be owed to the party wanting to collect.
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Re:Do your part! Snail-mail your comments! (Score:4, Insightful)
"What will replace the USPS?"
Electronic payments instead of sending checks, .... ....
Fax, Email, IRC, FB
DHL, UPS, USA couriers, Bongo, MyUS, FEDEX, Parcel2Go,
Over half a million errand boys and >218000 vehicles don't come cheap these days.
Re:Do your part! Snail-mail your comments! (Score:5, Insightful)
They never did.
But they were always cheaper overall than anything else you listed for physical delivery to the entire country as a whole.
It costs the same to mail a letter anywhere in the US. All the other carriers you listed do not flat rate, and will refuse to deliver to places that aren't profitable.
Everyone in the US can get a letter from the US postal service regardless of where they are. If they've got an address (so any private property and most public parcels) they can get postal drops. But they may not be able to get anything else, including an Internet connection.
The USPS is a socialist service designed to ensure that EVERYONE has SOME form of communication, and reliable communication at that. Nothing else offers that, even if you don't realize it because it doesn't effect you.
Re:Do your part! Snail-mail your comments! (Score:4, Insightful)
The dirty little secret of those private carriers you named is that, when delivering a package to a rural location, they hand it over to the USPS for delivery. That's why the Postal Service can't compete with Fedex, UPS, et al on cost... they need to maintain a huge workforce and vehicle fleet to cover the 100% of the population, whereas the private carriers only cover the cheapest 90%.
If the Postal Service fails, a lot of people out in the country will suddenly find that ordering a $5 replacement wiper blade from Amazon is gonna cost them $100 in shipping, or won't be available to their location at all.
Another Bush Presidency casuality (Score:5, Informative)
The real reason for USPS problems is not e-mail or online bill pay. The real reason is the Postal Act of 2006 which requires USPS to pre-fund 80% of future retiree health-care obligations by 2016. This costs USPS 5.5 billion $ per year. If not for this, USPS would have shown a 600 Million $ profit over the last 4 years.
None of the USPS competitors (or for that matter any other company) has this burden. It's very likely this was lobbied for by USPS competitors - No lobbyist left behind.
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IMHO I think it is time for private industry to start bidding on mail regions.
Capital idea. Then I'll just have to travel 50 miles to get my mail like I do whenever stupid companies ship via Fedex.
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Why do you assume that the government "cares" about quality? A profit motive gives a reason to care about quality. A guaranteed monopoly does not.
Re:Do your part! Snail-mail your comments! (Score:5, Insightful)
For mission critical documents like that, yes, I would probably go with FedEx. (Should be noted, however, that FedEx loses stuff too, despite your faith in them.) However, that's not the market I'm talking about. I'm talking about typical bills, letters, small packages, and so forth, that right now are cheap to send via USPS. Right now you can send letters for 44 cents. If FedEx, UPS, and the like were to take over that segment of the market, you can bet your last dollar it won't stay that cheap (at least not for long.) Before you know it, you'll be paying $2 for a first class - level delivery, because the company MUST continually show increasing profits lest they be sued by their stockholders.
Your assumption that "government bureaucracy" can't get anything done is a poor one. They get things done every day, and usually with a high level of quality, just like private industry. In fact, in some segments of the economy, the government is beating the stuffing out of private industry in terms of efficiency. (See Medicare.) Do those programs have problems (fraud, for example)? Sure. Do private industry programs in the same markets have the same issues (like recission, denial of care, poor/slow reimbursement rates, etc.)? You betcha. The difference is that less money goes into overhead with the government program, because it doesn't have to show a profit.
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Why would I go to the DMV to renew my license plate or drivers license? That's what they have the Internet for.
Because the private sector has done such a bang up job.....
Battle? (Score:5, Insightful)
For at least 15 years I've been hearing that various postal services all over the world are "losing battle against e-mail age" while in fact that scary "e-mail age" (or Internet age, as I would call it) should be the best thing they should hope could possible happen. Never before in human history we were buying so many goods from remote locations all over the world to be delivered by ... postal services! And now they want an end to Saturday delivery? They should start Sunday delivery. They missed the opportunity to start the biggest online payment system in the world so they should at least focus on being the best at delivering good bought on the Internet, not being worse still.
The "proliferation of e-mail and online bill-paying services" should have been started by USPS because they already had the infrastructure to do that and the client base. If back in the nineties everyone paying bills at USPS were told that they could do the same faster, cheaper and more conveniently at USPSpal.com then people would do that. The problem is not that the world is not friendly to postal services but that they don't want to change. They missed the train and now they want our help to survive. This has never worked in the long term before.
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FedEx and UPS seem to have pretty much fully automated the processing and routing of parcels pretty much end-to-end.
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The problem is, letters are easy and cheap to deliver.
You must have grown up in a family of postal carriers.
Transporting tangible, physical objects hundreds or thousands of miles away is not cheap. Well, maybe compared to 50- or 100-years ago it's less expensive.
This problem is a GOOD THING.
It's true (Score:3, Insightful)
One point that I would make is that a first class envelope usually carries a lot more weight than an e
Re:It's true (Score:5, Insightful)
The big problem for the USPS has is that they are required to do whatever Congress says, and prohibited from doing anything else. And, in particular, Congress has its own agenda, so even when the USPS knows what to do, it takes them years to decades to be allowed to make changes. For example, they were recently authorized to change smaller post offices from being dedicated buildings to being a service provided within an existing business - that took YEARS to pass, because congressmen didn't want to lose a "real post office" for their constituents, so the USPS was required by Congress to lose money on hundreds of tiny post offices. And if they need to raise the rates, or streamline operations, they are routinely blocked by Congress, because the voters don't care if the USPS is losing money, but they do care if the rates go up, or if people are laid off. Ideally the Congress should give the USPS more autonomy, to be able to manage itself without Congress imposing political concerns.
Re:It's true (Score:5, Informative)
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No, actually it's a great example of how well government-owned corporations can work. Despite all the problems Congress gives them, they still manage to have very reliable mail service to every address in the country for a very cheap price. If they didn't have our stupid Congress blocking every improvement they try to make, there's no telling how great they could be.
The problem is that our Federal government is so utterly corrupt that they're hamstringed in their operations. They could save a ton of mone
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Part of the reason is that they're legally barred from entering into other lines of business. It came hand-in-hand with the substantial legal protections they get.
Re:It's true (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice Fox News banter. If you did any research yourself instead of listening to Palin and her Tea Party rantings, you would know there are trade offs for paying less for health care and pensions. Salaries are less to compensate for better benefits. The Unions negotiate all of this through free market Capitalism. The government agreed to it. This is what happens in a free market. The unions were once private and negotiated to become public. They didn't force anyone to do that. It was the free market acting as it should. Now that people don't like it, they want to throw Capitalism out the window and remove "Evil Unions". Stuff it.
Re:Battle? (Score:5, Insightful)
Never before in human history we were buying so many goods from remote locations all over the world to be delivered by ... postal services!
Except that the nationalized postal services face a lot of competition from private courier firms who aren't hamstrung with government requirements to provide a universal service and can cherry-pick the best routes.
That's certainly the situation in the UK: the postal service is obliged to charge a ridiculously low price for the basic first-class letter, and to deliver & collect them from right out in the sticks, but has long since lost ts monopoly on postal deliveries, so faces lots of competition for lucrative business deliveries around major cities. They mainly survive by delivering vast quantities of junk mail.
If you want a universal postal service you have two choices: give 'em a monopoly to make up for the universal service requirement, or just accept that they won't be profitable and that you are going to have to put money in and get a service out. Then tackle the remaining problems with inertia and unions head on, instead of messing about with ideology-based pseudo-free-market kludges in the vain hope that the invisible hand will make it all better.
Re:Battle? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a good point. It also explains why health care, tax gathering and education---especially, but not solely, in the United States---are similarly expensive clusterfucks.
Either fund and administrate them adequately, or don't bother at all. Half-assing it for ideological and/or penny-pinching reasons results in the worst of both worlds.
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Not going to address the free market bashing because that would end unproductively, but you should be aware that, at least in the USA, due to Lysander Spooner kicking the USPS' ass, they technically have a monopoly on delivering mail, and UPS, fedex etc only get by by paying USPS a rather large fee, and classify their services are specialty delivery services.
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I'd mod you up if I hadn't already posted. The budge problems could easily be fixed if the USPS would do what USPS and Fed Ex do in terms of charging something that reflects the amount of service provided. As it stands I could go on vacation in Hawaii and mail a first class envelope to Maine for the same cost as what I pay right now to mail that same envelope across town.
And it gets even worse in cases where the USPS has to deliver the mail by helicopter or by horse because somebody chose to live in a place
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you can mail to any address on FedEx (or UPS) that you can with USPS
You can, but in a large amount (square mile-wise, not necessarily percentage of parcel wise) of the country, FedEx or UPS will hand the parcel over to the local USPS for final delivery.
Honestly, love or hate the USPS, anyone who's spent a year working for FedEx or UPS can tell you that neither is even remotely close to being realistically set up to replace it, much less profitably.
Re:Battle? (Score:4, Informative)
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Ups and downs of being a regulated business, if you are then generally you don't get to do everything else because of illegal cross-subsidies. You'd have to get a change of mandate and long before that was over they'd be too late to the party. As for packages, there's competition on those as far as I know (FedEx, UPC being a few) so the most profitable areas are served by the lowest bidder, they can't just roll out everywhere without considering cost..
Personally, yes I do buy quite a few things online and I
Re:Battle? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is the US Paradox, which has always plagued the US. High Population Low Population Density. This makes any infrastructure policy in the United States very expensive and difficult to implement.
Other countries have higher density that makes serving a large percentage easy and that gains outweighs those few outlying people.
Countries with Low Density and Low population is still easier just because there isn't so many end points that you need to go to. And a lower population is easier to come to an agreement if they want it or not, and if they are willing to pay extra taxes or not.
The US in terms of geography is the 3rd/4th largest country (Roughly the same size a China), Covering almost every geographical condition. Rain Forests, Desserts, Mountains....
USPS is probably crossing or have crossed the sustainable line of demand needed to keep USPS going.
Re:Battle? (Score:4, Interesting)
This would be the case were Canada's postal service not working reasonably well, despite Canada being as problematic in terms of population distribution.
The difference is that the Canadian postal service is allowed to run more or less autonomously, whereas the USPS is subject to constant congressional meddling. It's the American paradox: decry government involvement and authority in general, but allow four or five hundred cooks in the kitchen at all times.
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Small-government in the US these days means privatizing the profit, but socializing the cost and risk.
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Funny, big government in the US these days means the same thing.
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Then those people should be pushing for a downsizing of Congress and the Senate, not the administrative parts of government that actually get work done.
As it stands right now, you're electing people on the idea that they won't meddle or pander to local interests, except that, when push comes to shove, people want their representatives to meddle when it's something they feel is valuable. This gets you the worst of all worlds: representatives who are too quick to gut programs that are holistically good, but
Re:Battle? (Score:4, Interesting)
But the USPS is constitutionally mandated. It'll be interesting to see how they deal with that. My expectation is that they'll ignore it, and let the system collapse, but I'd only give that about a 60% probability, perhaps slightly lower.
Re:Battle? (Score:5, Informative)
The only real problem is that this can lead to a little more junk mail as businesses pay Australia Post to deliver their junk instead of private contractors.
weekly (Score:3)
Weekly delivery of bills, junk mail, offers etc is enough. Lay off 60% of the delivery workforce, the other 20% will be needed for daily "express" deliveries.
Alternatively, deliver 3 days a week. Does anyone really need mail delivery daily?
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Here here!
Re:weekly (Score:5, Insightful)
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Alternatively, deliver 3 days a week. Does anyone really need mail delivery daily?
Assume that the USPS has enough mail carriers to cope with 100% of todays deliveries (ie each carrier works a full day, and that the USPS doesn't carry excess workers). Now reduce the delivery days by 50%, but the public does not change its habits. Now each mail carrier is only working 3 days a week, but has double the amount of mail to deliver. So in the interim you have to hire another set of workers to carry the additional load, or get the current workers to work twice as hard.
Cost per visit vs. cost per piece (Score:3)
What, no Saturdays? (Score:2)
So while the PO loses its one attractive monopol
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Bad news - the other guys deliver on Saturday, too.
The only USPS monopoly services are media mail and cheap, lightweight stuff, neither of which are profitable.
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I'd like to live in your world where $1,700,000,000 isn't a "reasonable amount of money"..
It may not be enough by itself, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be considered among other solutions. A paltry billion here and there - pretty soon you start to see savings!
Eliminating jobs would be a good thing by the sounds of it, unless you'd rather another "bailout" situation.
Here in the UK I don't think we even have Saturday delivery from the Royal Mail..
I find it astonishing (Score:2)
not sure it's the email age specifically (Score:5, Insightful)
The USPS is losing a long, drown-out battle against the impossibility that it's supposed to be both an unsubsidized "private-sector" corporation that's "run like a business", but also is micromanaged by Congress and not permitted to make sane business decisions. They are required to deliver six days a week; have exact stamp prices down to the penny for many services mandated by Congress; are required to provide certain extra-subsidized services, e.g. cheap shipping at "media mail" rates; are not permitted to levy surcharges for delivery to expensive locations (e.g. remote areas); and they even have their pension plan micromanaged by Congress, which is one of the current cash-flow pressures (Congress changed how the pension accounting has to work).
Basically Congress needs to decide if the USPS is going to be a government-mandated service that delivers flat-rate mail to every corner of the country six days a week, and subsidize it accordingly, or if it's going to be a private-sector business that will neither be subsidized nor micromanaged.
Re:not sure it's the email age specifically (Score:4, Insightful)
Just wait 'till Obamacare kicks in. I'm sure everything will work out great.
Currently, the US is spending almost twice the amount on health than Japan and Norway [wikipedia.org] with good, universal health care systems - as part of the GDP. That's despite a good part of the population in the US not being covered. The current way of running health services in the US is not working.
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Because the healthcare bill didn't have a robust public option, the positive feedback spiral of insurance, healthcare chains, big pharmy can rocket up.
You can't really blame Obama for the lack of a robust public option... he tried for it, but Republicans blocked it. Perhaps he compromised too readily, but at least Obamacare mandates coverage. That's a step in the right direction... the real problem is that they didn't put in provisions to strictly control costs...
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Where the fuck is the "comprehensive jobs plan" Obama's been talking about
You mean the 2009 stimulus, which the Republicans threatened to fillibuster unless most of the jobs stuff was removed? (Although there's still enough jobs stuff in there that's it's still creating jobs.)
Or the 'jobs through infrastructure' plan in 2010, which the Republicans rejected?
But, um, if you're talking about his current jobs plan....try watching TV two days from now?
I agree with you about Obama's idiotic health care stu
Re:not sure it's the email age specifically (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, it is working quite well. Tens of thousands of children with various types of cancer who were previously denied any coverage have been fully covered and begun treatments. You cannot put a price on that figure. Ever. Monetary concerns must never be brought up in the same sentence as health care. Health care comes first, finding out where the money comes from is secondary. If taxes need to double, triple, then so be it. We need to put peoples health above all else.
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) Cable companies would prefer to not provide cable to all people in a state, only providing cable to those who will buy premium services and in highest concentration areas so it's most profitable, but states general have laws stating "no, cable for everyone or you ain't in business." So the USPS should not provide mail service to absolutely everyone in the US?
I wonder when this nonsense started. We used to have the ability to make progress in an economically sensible and viable direction.
Imagine if New York hadn't been allowed to have paved roads until there was a plan in place to pave the entire Western frontier. No rail roads in California until Louisiana has a direct line to Idaho. No canal to the Great Lakes until the government builds a canal for North Carolina.
At some point we lost the idea that progress has to start somewhere. Now it's all or nothing whic
Actually, it's being killed on purpose (Score:3, Insightful)
To what purpose, I don't know, but making them fund pensions and expenses in a way never budgeted and that no other Government Sponsored/Sourced/Seeded Corporation has to, it is designed to fail.
Anyone know why, other than to break the unions and piss away the pension money?
duh (Score:3, Insightful)
And this is a surprise?
Lets see:
Can't raise the price of stamps faster than inflation regardless of actual cost to deliver.
Can't layoff employees
Can't reduce the delivery days
Must deliver to everyone
How many people see a positive outcome for this 'business'.
Re:duh (Score:4, Informative)
Nailed it. (Score:5, Insightful)
In 2006 Bush and the Republicans put a forward funding mandate on the USPS. That payment is due this year, to the tune of $5.5B -- 5,500,000,000.00. Guess how big the shortfall is expected to be in this "crisis."
It's easy to make government fail, just cut revenues below expenditures, then cut expenditures, then repeat -- sooner or later the food isn't safe, the roads fall apart and Medicare can't be sustained any longer. Unfortunately, one party in the U.S. has embraced this as a "policy" of "governance." The other party is full of messaging fail.
-GiH
Re:duh (Score:4, Informative)
Unsolicited stuff and junk mail? Why should the government pay for something to be hauled to my home, which will land in a recycle bin, which the government will pay to pick up at my home.
My wife, the retired postmasters daughter, has explained, and I have verified, that the most profitable segment of delivery is junkmail due to intense automation, and frankly, zero insurance claims (who really cares?). The next most profitable market segment was magazines. Commercial bills break even, more or less. Finally they lose money, big time, for each handwritten envelope. He retired in the 80s, supposedly not too much has changed since then.
To be honest, the simplest and least painful way to balance the books for the USPO would be to make the sale of greeting cards and postcards illegal. So few handwritten/homemade ones would be created and sent that it wouldn't matter.
I pity the USPS (Score:3)
From everything I have seen over the years they are between a rock and a hard place. They either need to be set free to be a private corporation or be yanked back in to be a complete government service. Both political parties over the years have successfully pushed the USPA into a situation where it has the worst traits of a government organization and a private corporation.
A postal service is simply too important. (Score:5, Insightful)
A postal service is simply too important not to have, just like the roads. It is necessary for the smooth running of a country to be able to reliably move physical goods from one point to another in a moderately expedient and cheap fashion. It is so important that the very basic service should be run by the government.
Has the US government done anything to actively sabotage the USPS?
I know that in the UK, the Royal Mail has been sabotaged to the point of being unable to opeate profitably. The Royal Mail has been forced to outsource the only profitable part of mail, which is the bit where you take letters and charge people for the privelige. As a result, there are suite a number of companies who rake in vast amounts of money doing the easy bit. The hard bit is the sorting and delivering which the Royal Mail still has to do and is legally not allowed to charge very much for. In a sane world, the latter part would be funded by the former part. But the government has managed to separate the two so that the Royal Mail simply cannot turn a profit so that it can then be sold off. In general, though mail in the UK is still a profitable venture and the Royal Mail would run itself comfortably if the world was half way sane.
Has the US government done something similar?
Re:A postal service is simply too important. (Score:5, Interesting)
Has the US government done anything to actively sabotage the USPS?
Yes. Not every dollar of lobbying spent by UPS / DHL / fedex has been wasted.
From the fine article
"laws forbidding postage rates from surpassing inflation rates keep income down."
The inflation figures are fabricated by the govt to be unrealistically low, because so many outlays depend on it being low, in addition to incumbent reelection campaigns. Realistic inflation figures would mean realistic COLA increases for SS and frankly almost all other salary expenditures. However bad our deficit situation is now, being realistic about inflation would make it even worse. Therefore the numbers are doctored up until we can sorta afford the result. (Same thing with unemployment stats)
On top of that, the proliferation of e-mail and online bill-paying services have contributed to a 22% reduction in snail-mail volume since 2006.
Everyone I know either got email in the 90s, or frankly never will get email. For me it was '90, at least for a globally accessible internet address, if you're counting BBS / compuserve I guess I go back to '83. For my elderly mother in law it was 99. Everyone else in between. Other than children coming of age, I have never even heard of someone in my circle of friends / family / coworkers getting email after '99. It would be like blaming myspace for a sudden drop of TV viewership in 2011. Something that did start around the latter half of the 00s was the global economic second great depression, which is still going on. I would say economic local maximum peak year was probably about '07 and we've been in decline since then. That Might have a little to do with it. Abandoned homes don't get much mail. Unemployed people don't order many packages from Amazon (who mostly deliver with UPS around here, anyway). Business that close don't send bills or get payments. There are multiple "dead malls" in my area where seemingly permanently empty storefronts will never tx or rx mail. Ditto semi-abandoned industrial parks, etc.
Outside the article, think about it. UPS doesn't deliver on Saturdays, unless you pay some crazy rate, assuming they still offer that service. Does anyone care? Anyone? I'm told that UPS doesn't even attempt to deliver every day, in some rural areas. Like the driver gets the "north route" on even days and the "south route" on odd days and that's just how it goes. Does anyone really care? If my mailbox never got anything on Saturday, and twice the junk every other day, I really wouldn't care. Much like when they switched to "alternate week recyclable pickup", I gave a big "meh".
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I'd say Reaganite morons have done a lot to actively sabotage our postal service, because despite the fact that its existence is enumerated right the fuck there in the Constitution [usconstitution.net], it represents a huge item that they can sell off to their campaign contributors. And most of the 'troubles' with the postal service did start to erupt in the 1980's, when Reganism and the "privatize everything" mentality were running wild in our government -- whi
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To be clear, the USPS management is looking to lay off 120,000 employees this month. That's so it can make its pension pre-funding requirement (added in 2006 under Bush) -- to the tune of $5.5B. That happens to b
Remove free mail for non-profits and religion (Score:2)
an engineered crisis (Score:5, Informative)
Strange that /. is missing the real crux of the problem; a bad 2006 law:
>In 2006, Congress passed a law requiring the Postal Service to wholly pre-fund its retirement health package – that is, cover the health care costs of future retirees, in advance, at 100%.
most organizations are allowed to fund retirement and pension funds in a graduated manner that provides funding at the time of need rather than decades in advance. Its almost like this crisis has been engineered...
Source:
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/18/is-benefits-law-dragging-down-the-postal-service/
Re:an engineered crisis (Score:5, Informative)
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I was going to point out the same thing ... that their massive retirement health package was a huge boat-anchor weighing down the ability of the USPS to function profitably. Still, I'm not sure that even without that, they'd be successful at this point?
If you look at the numbers, they would be.
The problem I have with the whole thing is the same issue I've had with the USPS for decades. It doesn't seem like there's any good reason to keep them around, vs. allowing existing package delivery services to delive
Funny, I get ten times the mail now than I used to (Score:2)
...with literally 3 letters and 2 catalogs a day being shipped to my home address.
Of course, my wife spends money at a reedonkulous rate through catalogs like this, but my neighbors seem to get 'bundles' of mail every day just like we do as well.
In court... (Score:3)
It's much easier to get evidence of delivery in if it's USPS ("official records" don't need the testimony of a custodian of records in, e.g., California state courts, unlike FedEx/UPS "business records"); that, and statutes requiring USPS (e.g., CCP section 1013), are pretty much the only reason I use the postal service anymore...
Lousy service (Score:5, Interesting)
They've got a delivery route to every single household in America every single day, and yet they can't seem to track a package through their system or guarantee a delivery day. Even their "Next Day" service is "We'll do our best, but it's not really a guarantee, and even then there are some places where we charge you the "next day" rate but we know it will be two days."
Fedex and UPS do essentially a semi-custom route each day, and they drivers are pretty well taken care of (though they have long hours certain times of the year), and they can track and guarantee your delivery dates, for essentially the same price as USPS. USPS needs to be a value option, or a better/more reliable service. Right now they're neither, and they cannot compete.
Go to your PO... (Score:2)
No kidding (Score:2)
Look at the bulk of mail you get over the week in the mailbox.
For us, it's about 80% junkmail.
Of the 20% that matters, probably 17-18 points of that are bills, which could easily come as email, but in any case don't (or shouldn't) require first-class handling.
The other 2 points are miscellaneous mail that matters for one reason or another - magazines, notifications, netflix, etc.
Do the postage charges for junk mail really cover the costs? I'd definitely agree that the bulk rates can float above inflation -
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In fact, we personally have discussed that we wouldn't be put out if mail delivery stopped entirely - we could stop by the post office on the way home from work 1/week.
My wife is a rural postmaster's daughter, and lets just say the local retailers loved him and his post office... Guaranteed the entire village walked past their storefront at least once per week, if not daily. I'm told the "new urbanist" types have a similar line of thinking, to encourage downtown walking foot traffic.
USPS.com needs love (Score:3)
The web and electronic services offered by the USPS are certainly part of their problem. You would think that by now, almost everyone would be logging into USPS.com to print POSTNET/IM barcoded prepaid envelopes and labels with inexpensive tracking and delivery confirmation options. You would also expect USPS.com to contain complete information and offer every service your local post office offers.
Instead, USPS.com has not changed much at all in the past 10 years. You cannot print out an envelope with delivery confirmation from your PC. Delivery confirmation is not even available for the first-class envelope you use to pay your electric bill, unless you stick in a couple of styrofoam peanuts to make the envelope 1/4" thick to convert it from a flat to a parcel. The post office does offer a certificate-of-mailing service, and their legacy certified and registered mail services, both of which require you visit a post office and handwrite all the information out on paper forms.
The USPS offers a bloated Windows desktop "Shipping Assistant" application, which still cannot print out a simple envelope.
They updated the USPS.com website about a month ago, but that was barely more than a homepage redesign. click a few times and you're back to their old web apps.
It's such a stagnant situation that the only viable fix is to have the federal government just sign a contract with stamps.com and make it a free service for everyone.
Some ideas (Score:4, Interesting)
Currently you can get shipping materials for free https://shop.usps.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10052&catalogId=10001&categoryId=10000036&parent_category_rn=10000002&top_category=10000002 [usps.com] which is ludicrous. They need to stop giving away shipping materials and charge for it like everyone else does. Countless times I have known of folks to hoard the materials, and use them for shipping using other carriers, or for personal storage. This needs to stop NOW.
Raise the rates on the bulk mail, even if it requires congressional approval to do so. Bulk mail companies already pay way less than the general public to send their spam direct to your box, and at times they receive hefty discounts as well ( http://www.dmnews.com/usps-provides-more-details-on-summer-sale/article/131151/ [dmnews.com] ) which should be stopped. The First Class postage we pay subsidizes junk mail. It is high time they pay their own way. The ridiculous threat that bulk mail companies will stop using USPS if rates for them are increased is pure bullshit. Call their bluff, and raise their rates, for they can afford it. Do you really think they will start using FedEx or UPS to deliver their junk? The US mail is a government monopoly they must use, due to the cheapness of it when compared to other options. A friend of mine who works in the sorting of US mail told me that bulk mail has steadily increased every year.
Additionally, the Postal Regulatory Commission believes that bulk mailers do not pay their fair share, and that their rates should be increased roughly 22% overall. An audit found that the current rates bulk mailers pay run afoul of the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act http://www.prc.gov/PRC-DOCS/UploadedDocuments/ACD%202010_1697.pdf [prc.gov] , which is hotly contested by the lobbyists in the bulk mail industry. The current Postmaster General caters to the whims of the bulk mail industry, and needs to be gone.
Create a Do Not Mail registry, which works similar to the Do Not Call registry. Currently I have no way to stop all the loose-leaf flyers/advertisements from infiltrating my mailbox. The sorting and delivery of this bulk-junk takes up a considerable amount of time, including mine. The junk mail problem alone has me flirting with the idea of eliminating my mailbox entirely, for I can pay all my bills, and do all my banking electronically now. Granted, this may cost money initially, but I can dream, can't I?
Granted, there are many problems leading to the current crisis, and I have only touched the tip of the issue. We have to start somewhere.
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an every-other day delivery schedule would be fine by me and would lower costs (thinking Mon, Wed, Fri only).
That would be great, I could have a single reminder for both mail and XKCD.
Re:Yep. Pretty standard. (Score:4, Insightful)
Fedex doesn't have a legal mandate to provide service to most addresses 6 days of the week. The comparison isn't particularly useful.
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FedEx pays much more per package for labor. But as a percentage FedEx' labor costs are lower because FedEx delivers $18 packages, while the USPS delivers 15-30 cent letters.
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Point being, if an area of the country has low enough population density that delivering there is unprofitable, FedEx doesn't. (Or, rather, they'll turn the package over to the local USPS for final delivery.)
Whereas the USPS isn't allowed to say: "Fuck Montana. We're losing money delivering mail there. Let's just focus on cities instead."
Re:Yep. Pretty standard. (Score:5, Interesting)
Fedex labor cost is 32%, USPS is 80%.
There are so many things that Fedex isn't required to do that the USPS is that it doesn't seem useful to look at just labor costs as a percentage of operating expenses. Fedex isn't required by law to deliver packages six days a week. Fedex isn't required by law to maintain an office in every dippy little town in the US. Fedex isn't required by law to investigate cases of mail fraud, they leave that the the USPS. Fedex doesn't hold packages and mail when people are away from their residences. Fedex isn't required by law to fully fund 30 years of pensions and medical expense for retirees in a ten year time span as the USPS is. The USPS actually makes a profit on its operations. There are estimates [apwu.org] that the USPS has been overcharged $75 billion in contributions to the Civil Service Retirement System pension fund. If it weren't for a 2006 law requiring it to over fund it's retiree pension and medical expenses it likely wouldn't be in the financial mess it's in.
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I don't generally dislike the use of epithets like "Rethuglican" and "Democrap" because it just makes you sound childish, no matter how important your point.
It also obscures the fundamental issue: A significant majority of Congresscritters and Presidents, and at least a few Supreme Court justices, regardless of party, are making it very clear that they can be bribed to wreck the US government. How they wreck it varies, who bribes them varies, but that's the problem in a nutshell.
Re:Yep. Pretty standard. (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, "Congresscritter" makes you sound just as childish as using "Rethuglican."
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And when the Democrats had all 3 branches including 60 in the Senate throughout 2009 and 2010 what did they do to fix this problem?
Since every major democratic party initiative since 2009 was held up or killed by the threat of a republican filibuster, I'm not sure they could have done anything about it. The democrats never really had a filibuster proof majority in the senate. The death of Kennedy and the interminable series of re-counts in Minnesota effectively kept the democrats from controlling the senate for most of 2009 and all of 2010. Since all legislation has to pass through the senate it's difficult to argue that the democra
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Only a few short years ago, the USPS was boasting of profits and windfalls. It's present demise is clearly not due to email, but rather it is due to mismanagement.
Yep. Now if only Congress would stop passing laws telling it what to do and how to do it, it might be able to manage itself. Bonus points if Congress repeals the laws they already passed.
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A colleague of mine calls this Government Cheese Syndrome. To whit: the US would never do something like, eg, France or Switzerland and regulate the production of cheese to ensure quality and regional branding. That would be socialism and Interfering With The Free Market. On the other hand, they have to have something to sell to fill in a spot on the food pyramid and the dairy boards have a strong lobby, so they legislate a lowest-common-denominator product.
And this is why Europe has Gruyère, Emment
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You're thinking like an American tax planner: penny-wise and pound (dollar?) foolish because you're spending more trying to figure out how to precisely make it fair than if you just made blanket policy.
In most nations, the central authority (sometimes state/province, sometimes federal, often both) doles out funds as needed using a known and documented process (eg, region B needs roads this year, etc, whereas A might need a
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