Finnish Mail System Abandons Tuesday Delivery 183
Reader jones_supa writes: In a world moving to electronic communications, the snail mail traffic has seen a huge drop. Because of this, Posti, the mail delivery organization of Finland will not be delivering letters and magazines on Tuesdays anymore. Tuesday was selected because it generally has the lowest volume of mail. For example, magazines and advertisements are targeted to the end of the week, so that people have more time for shopping dreams in the weekend. Another reason is that Posti recently launched a lawn mowing service which operates on Tuesdays.
USPS had its tyres slashed (Score:5, Insightful)
The USPS would be willing to make similar reforms, but is prevented from doing so by a congress that wants to cripple it with unreasonable pension obligations that not one single company would have to meet, and all manner of restrictions that prevent it from actually competing with private couriers.
Re:USPS had its tyres slashed (Score:5, Informative)
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1) it's not the free market crippling the USPS, it's the government itself, and
2) pretty shitty if you have a business and the government decides to take over your commercial niche: no taxes to pay, not to mention a host of organizational advantages, immunity to lawsuits, and the opportunity to have laws written on their behalf without even paying a lobbyist to smoke a congressman's pole to get it done.
Re:USPS had its tyres slashed (Score:4, Informative)
I'm a little confused by your response. The postal service is written into the constitution, but the laws for funding of the pension obligations was written by Fedex and UPS and passed by the congress after a little campaign cash got passed around. I'm struggling to remember a law that the postal service got written on their behalf. Can you furnish an example?
The security and dependability of the mail was a big deal to the founding fathers, because it ensured privacy, facilitated commerce and provided the handling for unfettered communications between the people and the government. The logistical conditions are different, today, but those same elements still apply. It's the infrastructure of a free society, in gross terms. Voter information, tax forms, subpoenas, government invoices, correspondence with government agencies and branches of government, benefit payouts all need a dependable and timely way to get to people that is not influenced by or unduly affected by private industry. Everyone needs that stuff, so a basic foundation of affordable service for all citizens is necessary.
Postage actually used to be a tax when I was a kid, but they changed it to a service back in the eighties, if I remember correctly, and this opened up the private letter delivery market for UPS and Fedex and the rest. It's really the exact opposite of your contention that the USPS took over a commercial niche. The postal service can still be sued for liability, so I don't know what kind of immunity you're talking about. What offenses are you thinking about?
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Thank you for remindzing me of the shallow comments that stopped attracting me to /. In recent years.
I don't think you can afford my more insightful comments.
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Only insofar as you're not allowed to charge less than the USPS, and you're not allowed to use people's mailboxes. The private express statutes permit you to charge the same or more, though.
It's not just that you have to charge at least as much as the USPS, though that is part of it; you also have to pay the USPS their customary postage for the mail that you delivered. In other words, assuming similar operating costs, you'll have to charge about twice as much as USPS before you can hope to make a profit.
Even if it was just a matter of not being allowed to charge less, though, that would still be an effective ban on direct competition. What else would you compete on for first-class mail deliver
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There is no way in hell that Fedex or UPS is every going to change only $0.47 to deliver a letter. Even if the USPS is eliminated you can be sure they're going to gouge the customers.
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Yet, the USPS still has exclusive access to the mailbox at your home -- the mailbox YOU paid for in most cases. Hard to feel much sympathy for the USPS with that sort of advantage over other carriers.
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4) USPS delivers to every address. None of the other carriers do. They hand their packages off to the USPS when it isn't cost effective for them to manually deliver it themselves. I lived in one of those locations for a summer. It was very annoying. All those guaranteed 2-day delivery services and stuff like that? Oh, they don't apply to your location even though you already paid for it and we won't offer refunds.
BULLSHIT. In My town of 3000 people the USPS has NEVER delivered a single piece of mail. The only way I get mail is through a PO box. It is always a SNAFU ordering off the web. I have companies ALL the time that will not ship to a PO Box. Yet mail me a package to my street address. SCREW the USPS.
Re:What's so "unreasonable"? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's so "unreasonable" about keeping a government monopoly to a higher standard?
Please name one Fortune 500 company that Congress has required to fund 75 years of pension obligations NOW rather than over time?
*crickets*
That's what I thought.
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Please name one Fortune 500 company that Congress has required to fund 75 years of pension obligations NOW rather than over time?
*crickets*
That's what I thought.
Fortune 500 companies almost all use 401(k) programs, not pensions. 401(k) funds are deposited now, not at some distant point in the future.
Pensions are stupid Ponzi schemes, to benefit the current generation at the expense of the next (or even the unborn) generation. Governments and unions are the last main holdouts for pension systems. Everybod
Re:What's so "unreasonable"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fortune 500 companies almost all use 401(k) programs, not pensions. 401(k) funds are deposited now, not at some distant point in the future.
What if Congress pass a law that requires Fortune 500 companies to pre-fund employee matches for the next 75 years now?
Governments and unions are the last main holdouts for pension systems. Everybody else can understand the economics.
You missed my point. Congress UNDER THE LAW requires the USPS to fund 75 years of pension obligations NOW. It's the only federal agency that is obligated to pre-fund pension obligations. Because the USPS can't meet the pension obligations, their fiscal year ends in the red every year. Remove the draconian pension obligations, the USPS can turn a profit every year.
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What if Congress pass a law that requires Fortune 500 companies to pre-fund employee matches for the next 75 years now?
Those corporations create valuable products and services, that I can chose to buy to not buy. The USPS delivers a pile of crap to my house everyday that is 99% garbage. The sooner Congress gets rid of them the better. Bills should be sent by email. Packages should be delivered by UPS, Fedex, etc. The only thing left is all the second class advertising garbage, and that should disappear, leaving forests standing, and freeing up space in my trash can.
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Wow.
You don't like the USPS because of what other companies which "create valuable products and services, that you can choose to buy or not to buy" send to you, using the postal service?
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Packages should be delivered by UPS, Fedex, etc.
I would never get a package at my apartment because the package will walk away the moment the delivery person drops it off. I have a post office box for package deliveries, which is closer and more convenient than the nearest UPS Store or FedEx facility.
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I would never get a package at my apartment because the package will walk away the moment the delivery person drops it off. I have a post office box for package deliveries, which is closer and more convenient than the nearest UPS Store or FedEx facility.
I have a lock box next to my front door. UPS and FedEx packages are placed in the box, and then the courier closes the lid, which locks the box. USPS deliveries are placed in my unsecured mailbox. If the USPS was downsized and privatized, you would still have your PO box, only it would be better because you could receive UPS and FedEx packages there also (privately deliveries to PO boxes is banned under current law).
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[...] it would be better because you could receive UPS and FedEx packages there also (privately deliveries to PO boxes is banned under current law).
Wrong! I get FedEx and UPS deliveries to my PO box all the time. DHL will drop ship to the post office street address and POB number.
https://www.ups.com/content/us/en/resources/track/sp_definition.html [ups.com]
http://www.fedex.com/us/smart-post/outbound.html [fedex.com]
http://www.dhl-usa.com/en/ecommerce/businesscustomers/domestic_products.html#parcel_plus [dhl-usa.com]
When was the last time you walked into a post office — the 20th-century?
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When was the last time you walked into a post office — the 20th-century?
It was the last time I needed to mail something, so yes, probably last century.
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The USPS provides the service of delivering that crap to the companies that produced it... In this instance case you're not the customer.
And yes i hate all that crap too, i refuse to buy anything advertised to me through unsolicited channels like that - if i want a particular type of product, i will go and search for it in the usual places. All of the junk that arrives here gets thrown straight back out.
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The USPS provides the service of delivering that crap to the companies that produced it... In this instance case you're not the customer.
But why should the government be providing a service that is the physical equivalent of spam? Is that really an appropriate role of government? I understand why the USPS was established back in 1775, but those reasons are no longer valid today. Personal correspondence is a negligible amount of the mail.
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But why should the government be providing a service that is the physical equivalent of spam?
Because corporations are still paying for the privilege to have spam delivered to your mailbox. A typical advertising campaign require a 1% response rate to make it profitable. While 99% will toss out the junk mail, 1% will respond to it and make the corporation some money.
I understand why the USPS was established back in 1775, but those reasons are no longer valid today.
Let's abolish the USPS. Does that stop paid spam being stuffed into your mailbox? Oh, hell no. It might get worse.
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USPS delivers a pile of crap to my house everyday
And UPS/Fedex wouldn't deliver those if USPS wasn't around?
Bills should be sent by email
email is a cluster fsck as it is. I get waaaay more spam email than I do in my mailbox. I don't want to have to find my bills in that pile of shite.
The sooner Congress gets rid of them the better.
I don't think it will work that way. See Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 [wikipedia.org] of the United States Constitution, known as the Postal Clause or the Postal Power.
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And UPS/Fedex wouldn't deliver those if USPS wasn't around?
If one Nigerian spammer was removed another would take his place. That doesn't make spamming a legitimate function of government. The government of the United States should not engage in sleazy practices just because "someone else would do it if they weren't".
I don't want to have to find my bills in that pile of shite.
Solution: Use a spam filter with a whitelist. I get 90% of my bills by email, and have never missed one.
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The USPS makes a PROFIT if you discount the congressional restrictions, which means that plenty of customers do want this service. If you don't like this then you can put a permanent "return to sender" sign on your mailbox. Just don't screw it up for everyone else because you get bills by email.
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If you don't like this then you can put a permanent "return to sender" sign on your mailbox.
No, you can't. There is no way to block 3rd class junk mail.
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Have you tried putting a hungry mongoose in the mailbox so that when it's opened the letter carrier backs away quickly?
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Let's even make it a private corporation for the sake of the argument.
Yes, let's do that. If it is a private corporation, then I can remove my mailbox, and they will have to walk to my front porch, increasing the cost and reducing the volume. I can also sue them through a class action lawsuit if they leave litter on my property. I have no such recourse against the government.
I just don't buy the argument that it is okay for the government to engage in scummy practices just because some corporation is just as scummy. The government should be held to a higher standard, and
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Pension costs are crippling most state and local governments these days. I don't know what's behind the USPS deal, but I know the solution: outlaw pensions. 401Ks are good enough for all of us peasants that work in the private sector, and they're good enough for our ruling class (and their servants) too.
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Pension costs are crippling most state and local governments these days.
That's because the politicians made too many sweet deals with the unions during GOOD TIMES without considering the consequences of BAD TIMES happening in the future.
I don't know what's behind the USPS deal, but I know the solution: outlaw pensions.
It's a deliberate attempt to sabotage a profitable federal agency by forcing it to run into the red each year with unreasonable pension obligations with the expectation to shut it down in the future.
401Ks are good enough for all of us peasants that work in the private sector, and they're good enough for our ruling class (and their servants) too.
Never mind that most Americans used to have pensions. The tax law got changed in the early 1970's got changed so the corporations could move away fr
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That's just a problem with how 401Ks are structured, not with the concept. The concept: you become wealthy by accumulating stocks and bods in your own name over your lifetime. That's better, far better than being dependent on an employer or government for life-or-death checks in the mail.
However, to be a safety net, it needs to follow widely accepted retirement planing advice, which makes the stock market crashing the year before you retire a non-issue.
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You're still assuming that the government won't just seize the retirement funds. It's happened in plenty of countries before, but don't take an AC's word for it, look it up.
Meh, there are enough armed Americans with 401Ks to dissuade that approach (and it would come to that).
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If the stock crashes just before you were supposed to retire and the value of your 401K is cut in half
Why would my portfolio, which should be mostly bonds when I am close to retirement age, lose 1/2 if its value because stocks went down? If anything, I should see a small increase in value as the "flight to safety" happens.
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You missed the point. Pensions are scams.
My late father had a private pension from being a union construction worker. He retired at 59.5-years-old because his older brothers kicked the bucket at 60-years-old. He lived until he was 75-years-old. For those 15 years, he had the same consistent income from his pension and Social Security. He spent his pension and banked his Social Security. The money he saved from Social Security paid for six weeks of medical bills, funeral expenses and settling his estate. His death had zero impact on the rest of the
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Re:What's so "unreasonable"? (Score:5, Insightful)
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And don't forget that they can no longer raise the prices of stamps....the guys that saddled the Post Office with that giant instant Pension Obligation also made it so they couldn't raise their prices to cover extra cost at the same time. Almost as if they wanted to insure they would fail. I'm sure the UPS / Fedex lobbyists loved it...
Of course they did. The wrote the text of the legislation.
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Of course they did. The wrote the text of the legislation.
[citation needed]
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[citation needed]
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/dont-let-business-lobbyists-kill-the-post-office-20120423 [rollingstone.com]
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Like you did, just there?
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Any company with a trajectory similar to the Postal service should also fund its pensions.
Shrinking businesses can't fund pensions out of cash flow and need to set aside reserves. Duh.
Actuaries work this stuff out all the time. Insurance boards are all over this in the private sector, with varying degrees of success.
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Any company with a trajectory similar to the Postal service should also fund its pensions.
But companies aren't required BY LAW to fund 75 years of pension obligations upfront. Not over time, but RIGHT NOW.
This 75-year requirement is not being applied to military and civil federal pensions, state pensions or municipal pensions. All those pension shortfalls are coming due in the next 20 years as baby boomers retire.
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Baby boomers are retiring everywhere, but the postal service's core business is going away.
Companies are required by law to maintain actuarially sound funding levels for their pensions. When their investments tank, they often have to make pension contributions that materially affect earnings. GM is now effectively owned by the union pension fund, stock and bond holders got fucked.
Most government and military pensions and Social security are being run as ponzi schemes. But that's not a reason to not fun
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ONLY the USPS has this extraordinary pension requirement. No other government body has to do this. In their holy fight to prove that government is wasteful the ultralibertarians have taken the fight to the one government body that makes a profit and is not being wasteful. The USPS can fund it's pensions, it just can't do 75 years worth of it in advance.
Basically these idiots felt that if they voted to eliminate the postal service that they'd be pilloried by the public (rightfully so). So instead they us
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This actually happens in state government too - politicians or talk show hosts say the pension isn't viable (ie - they take in less than they have to pay out). You look at the data and its like yeah if every single employee retires right now this very second - no they cannot pay it all out, but the data overwhelmingly shows they can keep up with the rate of retirement.
I have no clue, but I'd guess that if everyone collecting a 401k (or a 403b if you are a gov employee) - retired today - it probably couldn't
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But-but-but, those are evil KKKorporations, so of course they get away with shitting on their workers. My question was — and remains:
Don't you mean an impossible standard, you amusingly stupid mucksavage?
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Well, the USPS are still there 10 years later, so it must be possible. I, for one, expect nothing but the very best from our benevolent and omniscient government. If they can decide, how I should pay my doctors and what medicine is good for me, if they can know, what foods are healthy, how children should be reared, Internet-service provided, and retirement financed, they can certainly figure out, how to pay for their own workers' retirement. Especially, since they are e
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Well, the USPS are still there 10 years later, so it must be possible.
Congress yells at the post master general every year for an artificial crisis that Congress created in the first place.
I, for one, expect nothing but the very best from our benevolent and omniscient government.
The post office near my home went from being a 30,000-sqft facility to a 3,000-sqft storefront. Other post offices, large and small, got closed in recent years. Each distribution center now handles mail for four or five zip codes with fewer workers. If my package gets lost at the distribution center, it takes two weeks to find it. Service have gotten worse to meet the impossible demands tha
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The standard you are defending is excessively high given that approximately zero people live 75 years after retirement. (If I understand FERS, https://www.opm.gov/retirement... [opm.gov] it looks like if you start working at 18 the earliest you can possibly retire with pension is after 25 years of work at age 43, assuming a "major reorganization")
Additionally you are forgetting to include the federal government's price controls against
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Are you demanding a citation for "approximately zero people live to 118"? There is exactly one American known to have lived past 118: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] She was a manager for an insurance company, and did not work for the government.
If you're demanding a citation for my calculation of a minimum age to retire with benefits, I put a link to a FERS retirement guide right in the next sentence.
Sure. Fortu
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Strange, I quoted the part I'd like substantiated. Here it is again for you:
Sure! For that to happen USPS just has to become private — as everyone else .
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This is why whatever can be private, should be.
The problem with market fundamentalists like you is you think everything that can't be private should be abolished, which is exactly what your corrupt buddies in Congress are trying to do to the USPS..
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The USPS is the only government entity that makes a profit, so naturally the free-market priests demand that it be destroyed lest mere citizens be fooled into thinking that something good can happen in government.
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It's religion. You can't fight that. The core dogma is that government of any size or shape is bad, and that any corporation is good and holy. If the government is wasteful then it's proof of how bad it is; if the government is efficient then it's clearly preventing private services from competing (and any one who thinks that FedEx is an example of a company being prevented from succeeding because of government competition is a moron).
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Once Congress kills it and hands it over to FREE ENTERPRISE, they won't dare to ask any of these things of a private corporation because it might impinge on their profits which they use to bribe Congress.
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tyres...
Yes. Tyres.
Seems reasonable. Coming soon to USPS I hope? (Score:2)
Seems reasonable: it you have less volume, reduce your costs by dropping your capacity. Coming soon to USPS I hope? (Even every other day might be worth it - the USPS's "no Saturdays" plan actually leaves a three-day gap in most weeks.)
Re:Seems reasonable. Coming soon to USPS I hope? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Seems reasonable? Really? How do poor people get mail, then? In the US, poor people used to have guaranteed mail delivery 6 days a week. Now, if, they can afford to live in the right place, and can afford to get Internet service, and the Internet service happens to work correctly, and they can afford a working computer, THEN they can pay their bills? That doesn't seem reasonable to me at all.
If they are receiving bills that are due without even two days for turnaround time, then that's the unreasonable thing. Fortunately that rarely if ever happens.
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1) Centralized and postbox mail pickup would still be daily.
2) If you're waiting until the last possible day to pay your bill, that's dumb for another reason: mail isn't guaranteed to be delivered by a certain time even it it's received.
3) The mail would still arrive every OTHER day, and we know that's no problem already because (wait for it) sometimes we already SKIP TWO DAYS in a row (e.g., Sunday + a federal holiday on a Monday) and nothing b
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How does alternate-day snail-mail substantially and disproportionately impact the poor?
Put down the Kool-Ade. Not every "basic" service needs to operate a firehose so your mythical underserved poor can take a sip of water on occasion.
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Seems reasonable? Really? How do poor people get mail, then? In the US, poor people used to have guaranteed mail delivery 6 days a week.
Who do you think end-up paying for that mail delivered 6 days a week? How does that improve the situation of the poor?
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All that because they have to wait until Wednesday for their mail?
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I don't check my mail every day. Most of us have locked mailboxes which are large enough that they don't fill up that fast. You don't have to pay bills the second they land in your mailbox, waiting a day won't hurt.
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And lets talk turkey. Bills? I went paperless ages ago. I get an alert on my phone and then I pay the bill, also on my phone.
About the only thing that I expect to get in the mail are election ballots and replacement credit cards, and maybe a monthly update on my health insurance or my retirement plan. The USPS is delivering all of that to me essentially as a free service (because I no longer even buy stamps). For Christmas packages etc., I generally use UPS.
So most of the time, the only thing I can expect t
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My concern is that the USPS was designed to be a catch-all for ALL Americans, rich or poor. Anybody living anywhere in the US could have anything picked up or delivered for a reasonable price. By taking that away (even gradually), we're making the US a less democratic place.
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I'm not comfortable with a reduction in mail service but if there has to be a compromise this doesn't sound bad.
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Actually I'd expect a significant cost reduction in letter carrier costs, which, as you pointed out, is mostly time spent walking or gas burned driving from box to box. If you cut the delivery days in half, your delivery cost should drop nearly as mu
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Except that there is no significant cost reduction. You've got a certain amount of mail to deliver. That doesn't change. Reducing the number of delivery days simply means you have to deliver 6 days worth of mail in 5 days, so your overtime costs go up.
Are you sure about that? Are you sure that it's not "you have a certain amount of houses that need delivery to". If delivery trucks are operating at capacity then yes, reducing the number of days wouldn't help but the point is that the volume is down so by moving to every other day delivery, the volume on the remaining days increases while the same number of houses are served. The amount of time it takes to drive to each house is the same regardless if it is one letter or 10 letters but the revenue per h
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Except that there is no significant cost reduction. You've got a certain amount of mail to deliver. That doesn't change. Reducing the number of delivery days simply means you have to deliver 6 days worth of mail in 5 days, so your overtime costs go up.
Is sorting mail really the most costly function of the USPS in 2016? I would have thought it was physically having a carrier walk to each address on his or her route and stuff the pile of mail into each mailbox. If you have the carrier walk the route half as many times per week and simply stuff a slightly thicker pile into each box, it seems to me you would slash your delivery costs by almost half.
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I usually don't reply to AC posts, but something here needs to be cleared up. Bulk-rate "junk mail" is exactly what is keeping the postal service in the black, given that the number of letters has fallen off dramatically with the advent of electronic communications. Incidentally, bills go via bulk rate postage, too.
If you don't want junk mail in your box, you can contact the people that send it and get taken off their mailing lists. I do this every five years or so. It's a bit time consuming, but it does wo
Not sure if serious (Score:3)
Really? Delivering newspapers and mowing lawns? Do they only hire teenagers?
headline facepalmtime (Score:5, Funny)
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You, madam or sir, are part of the problem...
If I had my way, everyone who thinks it is pinnacle of wit to make their company slogan, headline, product name or service a pun will be required to append "get it?" after it
You should really provide a link (Score:3)
Another reason is that Posti recently launched a lawn mowing service which operates on Tuesdays.
http://www.theatlantic.com/int... [theatlantic.com]
Lawn Mowing Service? (Score:3)
This all sounded reasonable until the last line. What!? Did I read that right? A lawn mowing service? Talk about a non sequitur. Does anyone have any insights into this? I've never been to Finland, but I imagine they only need to mow their lawns for a few months a year. What do they do on Tuesdays during the rest of the year? Are these the postal workers who are mowing the lawns?
Re: Lawn Mowing Service? (Score:2)
It's not uncommon in some countries for the postal service to offer services that have nothing to do with mail. In Japan, for instance, their postal service is also one of the country's largest banks. The USPS is more the exception with their sole focus being mail than the rule.
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The USPS is more the exception with their sole focus being mail than the rule.
How soon people forget:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
They still do Money Orders:
https://www.usps.com/shop/mone... [usps.com]
There are those who think the USPS should get back in the financial business to help serve the underserved/underbanked
http://www.latimes.com/busines... [latimes.com]
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A lot of national postal systems act as banks offering low cost checking and savings systems. It's very convenient.
However, in the US, the bank industry bribes Congress to prevent USPS from offering any competition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I think it makes perfect sense. There are probably a significant number of mailboxes surrounded by high grass and since the carrier is going door-to-door anyway...
It just seems efficient. No need to pay two different services and waste a bunch of fuel...
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Yup, they do. Just for the summer months, on a subscription basis, and on the Tuesdays.
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Once a week snow shoveling?
Snow shoveling is not the same as lawn mowing. One you can put on routine schedule, the other is after storms.
I, for one, (Score:2)
welcome our Finnish, mail delivering, and lawn-mowing overlords.
Will they make it illegal for others to mow lawns? (Score:2)
USPS was (barely) self-supporting, before its government's monopoly on First Class Mail [fee.org] was obsoleted by e-mail.
I wonder, if Finland will now similarly make it illegal for private competitors to mow lawns...
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USPS was self-supporting, and still would be, were it not for conservatives in congress sabotaging it at the behest of their corporate paymasters.
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Khm, at least, you aren't questioning "the sense" of a nation's postal service mowing lawns... Now that would have been a tough one...
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Fee.org? Lets just say they have their own axe to grind and are not unbiased source.
But then again, you knew that which is why you intentionally cite libertarian/conservative/randroid sources.
Reality has a Libertarian bias (Score:2)
I didn't cite it for their opinion, which may, indeed, be biased. I cited them for their facts: the figure collected by NYC in parking fines from delivery-companies. Unless you are accusing them of bona-fide lying, your rebuttal is without merit.
But then again, you knew that already — and just had to say something, didn't you?..
No, that's bec
No wonder they are looking for more things to do (Score:2)
Posti has developed new home-delivered services to add more work to mail delivery operations,” the statement said. “Traditional mail volumes are falling, but mail routes nevertheless reach some 2.8 households on every weekday.
If I only delivered to 2.8 households each week day, I'd have a lot of spare time on my hands too.
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For the .8 (th?) house do they cut 20% of the letter off and deliver it the next day?
Email every where ? (Score:2)
There are still quite a few places in the US that don't have cable service for TV's let alone decent email. So what do we do, just decide that they don't require/deserve mail service ? Granted Finland is very proactive in having connectivity everywhere but it is a relatively small country as well.
Communicate with magical sky-beasts! (Score:2)
Most of the US has sufficient view of the magical sky beasts we call satellites which can deliver perfectly acceptable* TV and email services.
*By acceptable, I'm referring to the level of discourse of cable TV stations - whether that meets your personal standard is an entirely different issue.
Re: (Score:2)
Sat TV is quite acceptable and generally accessible everywhere, but internet via satellite is very expensive and the inherent delays suck.
Hughesnet offers speeds up to 5Mbps down and 1 Mbps up for a mere $79.00 a month and tops out at 15Mbps download. Hardly what I'd call acceptable.
Canada should have done the same! (Score:2)
This is what Canada should have done rather than phasing out home delivery of mail in favour of not-so-super "super mailboxes".
For those not in the know "super mailboxes" are basically community mailboxes located somewhere in your neighbourhood. The not-so-super aspects of this is that they are subject to vandalism, theft, and arson (yes, arson). Additionally, some people feel it acceptable to drop their junk mail straight on the ground, rather than take it home for recycling. And, finally, for some folks (
Buried under steaming piles of political bias (Score:2)
jk (Score:2)