Head of Postal Workers Union Says Postal Service Could Be Dead in Three Months
inthesetimes.com
inthesetimes.com
No you don't, you just need some kind of mail delivery service with either reasonable rates, or 'paid for' by dear government.
Everyone knows the USPS isn't going to stop running. Republicans will try to gut the union as a precondition for emergency funding. Democrats will try to beef up the retirement funds. Of course the head of the Postal Workers Union will want to prevent the former from getting pushed through the negotiations, so they'll talk up the potential shutdown now. But that doesn't mean it's a realistic outcome.
We'll inevitably get a shitty, 18 month funding deal out of it, and kick the can down the road to the next congress. It will suck, we'll live with it, whatever. Everyone knows this is the outcome though, and there's no point talking about THAT stupid game when we have the stupid game of the week to cover -- in this case, re-funding the Paycheck Protection Program.
https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/financials/annual-reports/...
I can't get the numbers to add up here. Even with letters down, advertising down then their revenue should either be flat or have a slight increase based on my guesstimate for their increase in parcel business.
In any case USPS hasn't actually fully funded their pensions since the recession.
It's a requirement under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.
Lots more info here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2020/04/14/post-office-p...
But if they really are dependent on letters, why? Letters are a dying business and there is no future there.
But they can't just charge arbitrarily much for letters because people would stop sending them, which is really what they're doing regardless.
If advertising is down 40%, and their parcel business is up 150%, they should be making way more money in this climate.
150% is my estimate, but I suspect it would actually be more than that.
Just another part of our American heritage getting looted by private equity.
Without them, administrators have the ability to spend as they please by handing out future liabilities.
And FYI 'heritage' is no business to keep something operational. Either it works well, or it doesn't.
Incompetently legislating some thing to ruin isn't a failure of the thing, it's a failure of the people writing the legislation.
Such details actually matter!
If, after the real cost of operating USPS is exposed and they cannot cover it with revenues - or - cannot be subsidised enough - then the US can make a more rational decision as to whether or not it should exist.
does the military cover itself with revenues? why is that okay but a public service like the mail is not?
People on purely ideological grounds killed off, for instance, the USPS savings system, which was a profitable banking arm.
It took 20 years, for instance, of foot dragging after the stamp was tied to inflation to keep it good forever and not lose value. That was part of the original bill but killed off to make things more broken by people who run on "government is broken"... Yes, you're the one breaking it.
People on pure fundamentalist ideology grounds have aggressively redefined the post office to force it to be unprofitable. The free market fundies have been yelling the "Communist" cry about usps since the 1950s, stabbing it at every opportunity.
It's also not a fair analysis because fedex and ups get subsidies, tax breaks, and other kinds of assistance on the million dollar scale all the time, many times a year. They aren't free agents in the slightest. And unlike usps, they aren't being administered by people who want them to crash and explode.
Many other industrial countries can do this at profit (Canada for instance), but of course, we are told we can't look at that either. It's such crazy time eating nonsense. They bark back that we dare ruffle the robes of the high priestess...pearl clutching is what they turn to.
"We could fix it but then we wouldn't show how broken government is .. durr durr" knock it off already.
These ideological fundies are con artists, a 21st century version of a street hustler who hide behind optics and theater. It's a huge criminal violation of the public trust
That is should exist, or be 'owned by the government' is ideological.
You haven't provided any evidence for your cynical argument: Using FedEx and UPS examples abnegates your argument because although they do receive subsidies here and there, it's nowhere near the magnitude of USPS. If the USPS were to need only that level of assistance, few would be concerned.
Regular mail is an antiquated service that has considerably less value in the 2000's - it's a dying business and should naturally shrink to a tiny fraction of its previous use. Almost every bit of paper in the mail today is a waste, there's hardly a need for it.
The Royal Mail [1] has been privatized and it's doing mostly fine. Not perfect, but arguably better than before.
The fact it works well enough, informs us that those who believe mail must be public, archaic and highly subsidized are the ideologues.
Personally, I don't care, but I also do not see gigantic public entities being able to adapt to major changes in market conditions.
What America needs more than a debate over public or private is considerably better regulation in banking, finance, consumer goods etc..
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/fd051332-fc54-11e7-9b32-d7d59aace...
By my calculations, their revenue numbers should be flat or slightly up now.
Parcel volumes are up in excess of 150% where I live.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/98006358159204761...
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/98006541963256627...
The second part is that Republicans believe starving the Postal Service will be yet another hurdle to throw in front of mail-in voting, which is gaining momentum amidst the coronavirus crisis. After all, without USPS, there wouldn't be a low-cost option to mail ballots.
The entire thing is cynical and vile.
edit: judging by the downvoters I guess I hit a raw nerve...
Just delete every law on the books that distinguishes it in any way from UPS or FedEx and let it live or die on its own merits.
And it's not like mail would be unavailable. If it cost $2 for rural customers to mail a letter instead of $.50, would it really matter for the two letters that still get mailed a year?
Many people rely on physical mail for things like social security checks, taxes, bills, communication with family and friends.
Remember, broadband never actually got rolled out everywhere like phones did(hint: one was considered a vital utility)
All of those things can be done on the internet and don't require broadband.
Also, how many times a year do you have to file your taxes, if you really want to do it that way?
Have you actually used dial up? It's terrible slow compared to broadband but a whole lot faster than mailing a letter.
And nobody pays by the minute anymore.
An up to date windows 10 laptop? A MacBook? You are making a lot of assumptions about a lot of people.
Even on a completely updated, modern machine try throttling your bandwidth to 56k and paying your bills via your banks website.
Dial up is slow. But if that's the problem you want to solve then how do you do it by subsidizing the postal service?
I don’t know myself, but it seems within reason to me.
I feel like the most likely scenario right now is it will take on a limited form of its current self, maybe delivery once per week? Much higher postage?
A somewhat higher postage rate would not affect this that much, and no, there are not that many people always sending letters, and broadband isn't required to pay bills.
The vast, vast majority of mail (even bills sent etc.) is completely wasted, it would be incredibly more efficient to dump it in lieu of sending 'only the mail that is needed'.
Sounds like we could go to weekly or even bimontly delivery for all of these.
> communication with family and friends
My grandmother had a telephone growing up deep in rural Kentucky 80 years ago. It's 2020. Get with the times.
You know what? The best solution is lifting taxes (most of them don't pay much anyway) and usual phone bills (that are freaking expensive for the service it provides). it will probably cost less than to pay for the last mile.
it’s a lot cheaper and more efficient than this
you either support some things being nationalized for the greater benefit of society, or you take the neoliberal approach and say “there is no society, may the best corporation win”.
I have no doubt that privatizing all mail can generate better margins and return some nice profits to a handful of individuals at the expense of less citizens having access to the service.
Another approach could be to just give rural Americans more cash, and let them pick the winners, as consumers.
This would also provide an opportunity to fix it the other way -- instead of requiring the USPS to do it, allow any certified letter carrier to do it even if it's UPS or FedEx.
Lets also not forget that UPS and FexEx often use USPS for the last mile of their shipments. [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Clause
[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-mail-does-the-trick-for-fed...
It is totally obsolete for this purpose, having been almost totally supplanted by phone calls, email, text messages, IM, and video calls.
Still seems relevant.