The U.S. can now set its own rates for mail from China and other countries
ecomcrew.com
ecomcrew.com
I've bought a bunch of small trinkets from Aliexpress. For the most part, they're the same exact things you can buy off of Amazon for ~$5-15, except they take 2ish months to be delivered. For some things, it actually does make sense to just wait that long (e.g. a Google Home Mini wall mount) in exchange for the savings (>= 50% is normal).
The higher price on Amazon is due to two factors - local reseller markup and expedited shipping.
Heck many AlizonExpress sellers will have multiple listings for the same product at different prices based on how fast they’ll ship.
So we can safely assume that both items ship from China.
So we can more or less safely assume that both are shipped from China.
Now when you wait 4-6 weeks for a delivery from China you are essentially waiting for them to fill a container, when you pay more for a shipping you pay for the extra shipping space wasted by expediting your shipping.
This is because of how international shipping economics work, international shipping is economical when it’s full to the brim since shipping companies have a flat tonnage tax.
This means that shipping companies are taxed based on the total tonnage capacity of their vessels not the actual amount or value of the goods they transfer.
Unless you source something locally in a manner that it’s actually environmentally more sounds that statement is false.
And don’t forget that even buying locally doesn’t guarantee any better environmental outcome, for example buying a 3D printed case form someone on Etsy is likely just if not more polluting than buying an injection molded case from China since the filament, resin and heck even the 3D printer itself came form China.
It was super low effort. Buy wholesale on Alibaba, tell the seller to send goods to packing, and silkscreen shop, and send by regular post to my apartment. Very often, fancy packaging was costing more than sunglasses themselves.
Even when I was buying crate loads of goods, I only got a customs bill only like 2 times out of 10 in 3 years. Customs bill was pretty much nothing, and they never contested the valuation, but the extra paperwork was very unpleasant at the time when I had to study.
Then you sell $1-$2-$3 sunglasses at $100+ prices. Just make decent websites for all made up brands you have, have good marketing fluff, and make sure to call them with some Italian/French sounding name.
You make at around 10-15 sells per month, but what else you want with that level of effort? Second to that, I was very unsure of my tax/legal status at large if that business were to become too big. Being kicked out of the country, with all my money in that degree wouldn't be fun.
>>Even when I was buying crate loads of goods, I only got a customs bill only like 2 times out of 10 in 3 years.
Tbf, you should have been paying for every crate, even if the customs agency didn't intercept it. It's up to you to make sure the duties are paid - if you ever got caught you would have been wholly responsible for not paying the duties even if you weren't asked to. But yeah, I know how it works in practice.
For the same reason, I did not risk buying plastic frames. They break/bend too easily.
I'm still amazed that Chinese factories managed to make optical grade glass, cut, and polished for glasses almost as cheap as molded polycarbonate.
When buying fake sunglasses or unknown orgin, always buy polycarbonate plastic lenses as these filter out most UV light.
It's the fake glass lenses that are a culprit and can be very harmful to your eyes.
I have tested this with a UV light.
Since the delivery time is so long, I’d expect the parcel gets shipped with multiple others.
The only items that get shipped are the ones that have been actually bought, which sounds efficient.
Of course there are negative aspects too and I wouldn’t know if the overall outcome is positive or negative, when compared to buying a product from Amazon.
Again, a link or more details would be very helpful.
I can't imagine that there's a significant environmental impact outside of what it already takes for normal imports and and your daily mail.
Besides, a lot of products on AliExpress don't actually meet western safety standards. They're not allowed to be imported and sold here, but you can buy them abroad and ship them to a private customer. But they still won't meet our standards.
I'm not denying the environmetal impact, but that's not from Ali Express, it's from us building everything there because it's cheaper.
There are several entire youtube channels dedicated to dismantling chinesium gadgets and showing how they'll burn your house down. Lack of reverse current protection, lack of overcurrent protection, trace spacing that's way too small and will arc under the right temp/humidity, mains side traces right next to each other, no grounding, ground shorted to neutral, under-rated caps and resistors that reach unsafely high temperatures, etc, etc.
In the EU, products that conform to EU standards can be identified with a 'CE' logo[0], which means "Conformité Européenne". "Chinese Export" can have a deceptively similar logo[1] that does not guarantee such adherence at all, but still looks comforting to European customers of Chinese web shops. It's a blatant violation, but hard to stop, because it's a foreign sale shipped to private customers.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking
[1] https://siloscordoba.com/blog/corporate/china-export-is-not-...
Just ask people trying to receive PinePhones in Germany.
You don't have a german manual? Bye bye, try again later.
There may be ways to be greener by manufacturing near consumers... but that doesn't have much to do with amazon vs alibaba. These products are manufactured in the same places.
In theory. In practice resellers are free to dropship whatever they want from AliExpress to Amazon and sell at a markup.
This is an article about postage. It's not about counterfeits or locally produced goods.
Not necessarily... In cases something s not marketed for the domestic market, Chinese electrical (and many others) standards do not apply.
And it is not something given even if they were...
No, most of goes around as airmail. In fact, actual physical transport times are super low.
In fact, sea shipments can be faster than that. There are container lines shipping Shenzhen-Losangeles in just 7-10 days.
So do Amazon products.
> I'd rather see more local products
How is that related? I asked for sources that would confirm claims about worse environmental impact of Aliexpress vs Amazon.
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/576:_Packages
https://web.archive.org/web/20150116084115/http://www.urlesq...
Alternatively, you could buy a $0.06 phone stand with free shipping: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001172525823.html
https://m.tb.cn/h.VpeyELi?sm=ddc20e
Opened the taobao android app, searched for 手机套, filtered by 包邮 (shipping included) and sorted by price.
And yes, shipping companies can still make normal profit on these.
From this standpoint, your example isn't nearly the cheapest it can get. Sellers regularly offer entirely free ones in exchange for reviews.
Break even, assuming you could never get a refund, would be if the failure rate and average discount were the same. My experience is that the discount is >60% and failure rate is <15%.
I've never really had an issue with online refunds anywhere. That doesn't mean Amazon's experience isn't superior. Amazon's policy of refund first, ask questions later (for stuff in the <£15 category at least) means that I don't really consider the other options.
If I have a choice between buying a USB to DC5v adapter from amazon for £3.99, with next day delivery, and I know that if it's not the right cable I'll get an instant refund, or from aliexpress where it's £1.99 [0] but I have to wait 30-50 days for it to arrive, plus 3 weeks for a refund if it doesn't work, I'm just going to buy it on amazon. I don't care if I don't come out ahead!
[0] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33051428867.html?spm=a2g0o.p...
The items I buy are exactly the same on both sites: down to the same stock photos.
It's ridiculous
Large container ships hold 14,000 TEU (twenty-foot-equiv) containers, each of which has a volume of 33m^3.
Let's use an iPhone's size as a stand-in for the phone cover: it's 173 x 70 x 8mm.
Divide the first by the latter: (14000 * 33m^3) / (143mm * 71mm 8mm), and, as google will helpfully tell us (https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&sxsrf=ALe...) you can ship 5.6x10^9, or 5.6 billion of these on a single ship.
From some related information it seems shipping rates for a single container are around $1,000 for China->US. Plug that in and the costs are ... $0.002, or 1/5th of a cent: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&sxsrf=ALe...
I may be off by an order of magnitude somewhere. But it just feels intuitively obvious that most of the costs of any delivery are incurred during the 15 seconds or so the mailman spends in your driveway or trying to find the mailbox with your name.
https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2019/1114-...
That said, allowing them to set rates will likely help the bottom line a great deal, but the USPS is a business.
Further, rural routes are things that should continue but are cost prohibitive without subsidies. With those two considerations combined it seems like a pretty meager use of taxpayer dollars.
Think of it like a "cost centre" in a business, does the utility outweigh the price?
So while I agree with you that we don’t necessarily need a profit motive at the usps, at the same time the taxpayers don’t need to subsidize cheap crap from China.
That's the real kicker in this whole thing.
Given how ubiquitous ordering stuff from China is these days I'm not really sure the first impression of this being some good deal is accurate.
In fact subsidizing transport to a degree might probably have a progressive effect because low wage earners are more likely to order cheaper foreign goods.
So really what was happening is that other people or companies sending mail or packages were subsidizing overseas mail and packages.
"they're just subsidizing themselves" -> they are spending money that they wouldn't choose to spend if they had fine grained control over the taxes they paid.
You pay health insurance so you don't have to pay the full cost later on. And it could easily be that the shipping cost + taxes generally means that the system stays afloat. And besides, if you tax correctly, it wouldn't be the same rate for everyone (income taxes should be higher for those making more, for example) nor would it be more than the flat shipping costs so long as the tax money actually went to the postal service.
In both cases, are the employees getting paid fair wages?
Does the tax mean I'm not getting charged for receiving packages? Are there hidden costs to the lower amount?
When you buy health insurance you pay more than the expected value of the full cost, both as a result of the cost of providing the insurance and the over-consumption as a result of insurance making patients price insensitive.
The reason you buy insurance is in case your medical bills are more than average and you can't afford them. For the average person the insurance is a net loss but the cost savings of not having it aren't worth the risk.
> And it could easily be that the shipping cost + taxes generally means that the system stays afloat.
If the system is worth more than it costs then it will be able to charge prices that allow it to stay afloat. We generally don't need systems that cost more than they're worth.
> And besides, if you tax correctly, it wouldn't be the same rate for everyone (income taxes should be higher for those making more, for example) nor would it be more than the flat shipping costs so long as the tax money actually went to the postal service.
Everybody always wants somebody else to pay for it. But it's the people in the middle and not at the top who actually pay for stuff, because they're the only ones numerous enough to do it.
> In both cases, are the employees getting paid fair wages?
That sounds like a question for the employees and not the customers. Naturally if they're getting paid below market rates they should consider seeking other employment.
> Does the tax mean I'm not getting charged for receiving packages?
You can already get charged for receiving packages. It's called COD. Nobody really uses it because it's much more convenient to charge up front than have the carrier try to collect payment from the recipient.
In some countries without mandatory health insurance, medical cost is a lot lower and simpler. If major medical emergency happens, then families usually need to take out a loan. But for regular medical issues, you save for it. This includes issues like childbirth which in America very few people can afford without insurance.
I imagine, having health or car insurances gives some sense of false security, which leads to poor lifestyle choices or driving fast, which in turn causes one to experience bad health or accidents, thus using their insurance. Which causes insurance rates to rise. And one is not directly negotiating with hospital or bodyshop, those prices rises too.
... And the system is more efficient because of standardization and pooling money together.
The US system doesn't have much of any standardization, and in general has a lot more facilities than it might otherwise need - plus things like some of the government provided insurance not paying enough and not having the ability to act like public insurances. These all make it more expensive. Heck, even standardizing insurance coding would help.
It is cruel to expect folks to take out a loan for medical emergencies. In some places, you die if you can't pay. It isn't like health is completely under your control: Type I diabetics couldn't prevent it (for example). Many cancers can't be avoided. And so on.
Negotiating with medical facilities is a pipe dream. There are many cases where you simply don't have the choice (emergency) nor the mental space to do it (for example, do you know how to judge what facilities are better for a gall bladdar removal surgery? How about where to get cancer treatment? How does one judge any of that?)
Does care insurance cause you to drive fast? Seriously? Isn't that more cultural than whether or not you have insurance?
"You can see from the above anything under 4 ounces is actually cheaper to ship from China. From 4 ounces to 8 ounces the rates are pretty comparable. Once you start hitting about 2 lbs, the prices from shipping within the U.S. start to get comparatively cheaper and cheaper than shipping from within China."
I seriously doubt this was ever an existential in the sense of the shipping cost itself destroying a business. China is simply able to produce cheaper things because they have lower labour cost and so on, and that is actually good for American consumers. It's simply free trade.
If anything I see a much bigger threat in the ability of the US to raise the prices, because given the current administration it may be used as a protectionist tool.
[1]https://www.statista.com/statistics/974065/cross-border-deli...
How can it possibly be free trade if one side is subsidized and one side is not.
This is a good thing, I hope same thing will happen in Europe, if it haven't already. The law/agreement in europe is to help people send hand written letters across the globe, and to help people from poor regions send letters ro the more developed regions on earth.
This was the case back then, now, the same agreement is used so that you can send stuff worldwide without any fee. That is NOT free trade.
https://www.svenskhandel.se/contentassets/5db334c2740b4b7ebe...
Surely it does the opposite - someone living in the poorest country in world would have to pay rich-European country rates to access their postage system.
Btw. I strongly suspect that the international rules on charging for postage were chosen for simplicity of implementation and not out of a sense of altruism for people in poor countries.
If you believe it's still neccessary to keep sending letters across the world a neccessity, well, then we could only allow thin letters that can not hold anything else than a written letter - no items, what so ever.
Your original message seemed to express concern that the original purpose of the rules for international shipping was to support people in poorer countries?
If this cross-subsidisation is removed, then people in poorer countries will pay more and people in richer countries will pay less to send stuff to each other. That's simple arithmetic.
And I was wondering how someone could simultaneously support such a policy while expressing concern about access to international post in poorer countries.
It was definetly not designed to be abused by the world's biggest companies to be able to ship stuff for near zero cost world-wide. If you can't see how it's clearly being abused, I don't know what to say.
A trade union created in the late 1800's that made sense then, may need a change now. Although alot of damage is already made.
The problem is not physical letters, it's the postage of goods across the world, being cheaper because of subsizidies.
I've read many e-commerce blogs with US sellers lamenting that they can't compete with China on $5 items because shipping costs are 5X as much within US. Maybe not killing businesses, but definitely keeping many out of the market.
> China is simply able to produce cheaper things because they have lower labour cost and so on, and that is actually good for American consumers
Lower, but not nearly as low as it used to be. Minimum wage in China is almost 1/2 of US now.
There's real instances of shipping cost offsetting lower labor. Manhole covers are a somewhat famous example. They're still made in USA because shipping offsets increased labor and materials. Would it be the same for ecommerce? I'm not aware of any studies but to me, the increased cost and shipping time make it plausible
The major thing compared to local stuff is lack of VAT on cheap foregin goods. Noone locally can compete with that.
Also most of the stuff I buy on Aliexpress (electronic components, SBCs, ...) simply isn't available locally, or is simply bought there and resold locally (because the manufacturer's main shop is Aliexpress).
This was the most nonsensical self-destructive American policy that strangely never caught much mainstream media attention.
1. https://www.affirmhealth.com/blog/word-on-the-street-fentany...
Please read this briefing by the US trade commission https://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/executive_briefings/e...
"The illicit trade follows the standard e-commerce model of small-scale shipments and B2C and B2B distribution channels. The trade is SME-focused, with small-scale Chinese suppliers primarily exporting to individuals and small independent U.S. criminal networks.China was the source of 97 percent of inbound shipments of high-purity fentanyl during 2016 and 2017"
"Given the high purity of Chinese fentanyl, most illicit imports are less than 700 grams (1.5 lbs.) per shipment. "
So what? 100 grams would be bought, by the numbers above, for $600 and sold for $8,000. If shipping cost $200, no one would care. That would add $2,000 in shipping costs to the full kilogram, but, again, no one would care. It's just not significant.
Do you have an argument to advance that isn't ludicrous on its face?
1. Chinese fentayl shipments do not need to have high weight due to purity. Mentioned explicitly in the trade commission report linked above.
2. Due to 1), it is convenient to leverage e-packet shipment as inspection of massive volume of e-packet shipments is near impossible.
3. Small-scale US businesses were adversely affected by e-packet rates https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/trump...
> It is not a matter of the shipping cost.
Seems like your original point was centered on shipping costs destroying domestic businesses. In light of the downvotes it became mostly a matter of drug imports in small, cheap packages:
> most fentayl imports are less than 700 grams - which get lost in the massive flood of UPS e-Packet shipments and thus near impossible to inspect
Which is irrelevant, shipping costs (within reason) won't change this.
I made both points right at the beginning, though the thread got focused around one of them.
1. e-packet shipping cost adversely affecting US businesses
2. e-packet being used to hide fentayl shipments thanks to massive volume and delivery convenience. (cheap and fast)
"Which is irrelevant, this will be the case regardless of the shipping costs, within reason."
I fail to understand this statement. How will reduction of e-packets - one of the major causes of the bloat of international packages not help in inspection ?
If you reduce the total number of e-packets by removing the subsidy, then it becomes far easier to inspect which packages have fentayl and which do not. EMS shipments apparently quadrupled after the e-packet scheme was introduced which adversely affected all inspection procedures as agencies could not cope with the volume.
Reduce the volume by removing the subsidy - the inspection agencies can then manage their job.
[1] https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2020-03/DEA_GOV_DIR-...
Just because opponents will likely evolve their tactics in the future should not prevent one from mitigating their extraordinarily successful tactic that is running in the present.
In FY 2012, USPS handled about 27 million ePackets from China. This increased to nearly 500 million ePackets by 2017. (Thanks to that disastrous subsidy agreement in 2011)
None of our inspection agencies could cope with this volume. Remove the discount-from-China subsidy, this will automatically reduce the volume of all e-packets and thus will ameliorate the load on inspection agencies.
Congress is responsible for the rates. Politics and likely donor interests are why the rates are this way.
What's sickening about this? It's different quality of service. Your $5 package will be received in a few days. With $.50 shipping, your Chinese trinket will be delivered in a couple of months.
> So while I agree with you that we don’t necessarily need a profit motive at the usps, at the same time the taxpayers don’t need to subsidize cheap crap from China.
Too late for that. China is world's manufactory. Your stuff will be shipped from China one way or another.
Given that, subsidising direct shipping from China is the reasonable thing to do. Otherwise you will be paying a 5-10x markup to middlemen for the exact same item.
The system was illogical. Whether you want to say that US shipping is too expensive, or Chinese shipping to the US too inexpensive is unimportant.
It's shipped by air. It is so slow because of sorting, customs, paperwork. The last mile postal shipment is actually quite fast in USA.
Not an American, but I believe there's a 2006 bill that prevents USPS from selling services below the cost. Learned about it in a John Oliver's video [1], mentioned somewhere else in this thread. I'd guess that Chinese epackets are part of an international agreement, so they are exempt.
> The system was illogical.
It would be illogical if USPS had flexible costs.
But the USPS costs are more or less fixed. The mailman will go his round every day and will get his salary, even if he has little to deliver. So, you may as well have him deliver Chinese epackets, for whatever price the Chinese are willing to pay. And that's a good deal for the public. Otherwise the $1 trinket for China would be $6 (if Chinese had to pay full shipping), or $10 (if bought through a US-based reseller).
I think that’s only true until it arrives in the US though and USPS delivers the package to your door. Sure, total time is long, but the cost to USPS seems similar?
Here’s a planet money episode on the topic.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...
If domestic mail is too expensive maybe let's address that.
It's not like that isn't already done all over the place.
It's not like that would happen often. They'd quickly adapt and start charging more for sending, making it a non-issue most of the time
I don't see any problem if taxpayer is the one is paying cheaper price as the end result. It's not like Chinese are charging full rate and sending for dirt cheap and booking mega profits like that.
And if a student can order cheaper pen and paper from china or a mechanic can order cheaper nut bolts and screwdriver from china, what's the harm?
https://www.quora.com/Does-China-ePacket-hurt-American-busin...
"COMBATTING THE OPIOID CRISIS: EXPLOITING VULNERABILITIES IN INTERNATIONAL MAIL" https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Combatting%20the%...
US Senate Staff Report: "Fentanyl Flows from China" https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Research/Fentanyl%2...
You can find extreme examples in anything.
But let me tell you, sometime back I was unemployed. I bought machining tools from china and setup a good business, I could have never been able to afford local manufactured tools without accuring debt.
I paid a lot of money in taxes as my business grew, I bought better quality machines which were locally available from local suppliers because local suppliers ensures a maintenance package.
LOL, do you really think people buy chinese fentanyl 'cos the shipping per gram is a few cents cheaper than it would be if they had to pay higher shipping rents?
It also contributes to the dismounting of American industry. When the poor people can't make any money to buy things made in USA because their jobs got exported to China, the next level of workers in USA will also lose their jobs and this will just continue for the next level and sooner or later hit the software world too.
Please read this report by the US trade commission. I can quote further citations if needed, but this one is a succinct briefing. https://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/executive_briefings/e...
Please also read the United States Senate Sub-committee on Investigations Staff Report.
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Combatting%20the%...
"The preferred method of the international online (fentayl) sellers is Express Mail Service (“EMS”), a global delivery service for documents and merchandise contained in letters and package."
Further reading in that report will show you how difficult it was to scan/inspect e-packet shipments due to immense volume.
There's no reason American taxpayers and postal rate payers should be subsidizing shipping costs for Chinese Ebay/Amazon merchants at the expense of their American competitors.
But China isn't a developing country anymore; it's the #2 economy of the world. And the volume isn't small either. The rule should not apply to them, but it's hard to change.
The fact that you have to explicitly point this out to derriz ...
Worth noting also that the USPS in particular has been politically sabotaged (and they explain how to fix it): https://ips-dc.org/how-congress-manufactured-a-postal-crisis...
I could go on, I guess (random google) an article like this sums it up for me: https://www.singlelunch.com/2018/10/01/bad-economics-shame-o...
For all I know, there could be articles that do debunk MMT but this one doesn't.
But in this case, the US (and EU) are subsidizing products that compete with local products, undercutting local products in price, in quality, and often not complying with safety standards, while also avoiding customs and sales taxes because the individual packages are too small to meet the limit.
You're basically supporting unfair competition, and paying to undermine your own quality standards and taxes. There's no benefit at all to the country that's paying for this.
Shipping is a major part of the equation so it's screwing up commerce.
They should dump the agreement for all but regular letter mail, it makes no sense otherwise.
It's rational if the price of shipping is more transparent and consistent with the actual, underlying cost.
For example, if this system did not exist, and China was subsidising their own shipping to the US, ironically, it would be illegal under WTO rules!
It's absurd and it should have ended long ago.
I still cannot believe that US companies have not been able to lobby to have this cut two decades ago.
The poor rate structure and widely publicized losses are due to artificial and quite excessive benefit pre pay mandates going out decades and a rate structure mandated by Congress for political reasons.
These changes were made during the Bush Administration.
2. It included a 10 year prepayment period. This ended in 2016. It is 2020. Current USPS financial woes have nothing to do with that act. We are now in the follow-on period in which the USPS is intended to be amortizing its remaining unfunded liability over 40 years, to 2056. And this 40 year amortization period is exactly the same length of time as private-sector employers are given.
3. The USPS gets ~$18 billion in taxpayer funding/subsidies annually.
Fact is both parties receive significant financial incentives aimed at privatizing the Post Office. There is no benefit to the American people down that path.
That analysis is incomplete and inaccurate. 3 is particularly egregious. Compute it prior to the act, and the arguments evaporate.
Another fact: That bill was, and remains unnecessary, and is intended to undermine an otherwise exemplary service.
I won't respond to this again.
And unlike police who, when trying to be profitable are driven by perverse incentives to be corrupt, the post office doing more business is hard to see as a bad thing.
Also as many others have mentioned, the Chinese shipping rates were much lower than domestic rates, to the level that cheap products made in the US couldn’t be given away for free cheaper than things could be imported from china. $0 + shipping cost more than similar products sold at a profit and shipped from China.
A public service doesn't but the USPS is effectively run as a highly (and hostilely) regulated private monopoly, rather than a public service.
The postal service is one of the few gov't agencies explicitly created in the Constitution; it's vital to national cohesion and commerce (especially rural areas).
> The Congress shall have Power...To establish Post Offices and post Roads
And that's it. The rest is left up to Congress to figure out; they could, if they chose, punt entirely and allow eg FedEx to run post offices. I think the USPS is vitally important, and we can make arguments for its role as a public good without being hyperbolic about it.
A nit: The postal service wasn't actually created in the Constitution. Congress is merely authorized to do so.
[1] https://about.usps.com/what/financials/10k-reports/fy2019.pd... Page 18, labeled "Controllable loss".
"The debt it carried jumped from $7 billion in 2008 to $10 billion in 2009. At the end of 2019, the GAO calculated that the Postal Service had $160.9 billion in debt, $119.3 billion of which came from retiree benefits" https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/15/postal-se...
https://federalnewsnetwork.com/agency-oversight/2020/02/hous...
The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act has pretty much been at the core of why the USPS has had such extreme woes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Accountability_and_Enha...
Can you clarify? My understanding is that US Federal Employee retirement benefits (for new employees) have been comparable to private sector benefits since some point in the 80s, though existing employees at that time kept their old, more generous pension plan.
I think this might be what I'm talking about: https://www.opm.gov/retirement-services/fers-information/
> Unless you think the money to pay pensions will magically materialize out of thin air in the future, I don't see what's artificial about it. They have obligations to pay and recognize them.
My understanding is every other entity that has similar obligations is allowed to pay them as they go.
*John Oliver
This isn't about a policy that costs money, and creates benefits. It's not even really a policy. It's a side effect of quasi-diplomatic arrangements created decades ago... with no relationship between original goals and current outcomes.
Maybe it makes sense to subsidize a national package delivery. IF so, they can make a policy that does this, but this one isn't it.
However, in a world where basically 100% of the business of the postal service is junk advertising and amazon packages, subsidizing it is just a payout to business, and I agree that the externalities now greatly outweigh any social benefit.
Shipping from China is well past that point, though, it's clearly providing perverse incentives and it's good that it's changing.
I can absolutely see a situation where products being shipped from China are given cheaper rates than products shipped domestically. In fact, I expect that’s how it should be. Simply because for products from China, USPS would be tying up with the Chinese postal service, and due to the massive volumes they have, they would be able to offer extremely low rates that they couldn’t offer anyone in the US besides Amazon and Walmart maybe.
However, those rates should be profitable rates for USPS.
While I think your comment may have been imbuing a value judgement on my original comment where I wasn't making any.. it does bring up a good point. Obviously this mindset doesn't hold true across the board for all services.
The one that immediately comes to mind is farming. I think more people are averse to the idea of farmers/farming operations going bankrupt. I think most people would be fine with a pure wealth transfer to that industry to help it get through a massive downturn. But why does that industry get a general pass?
My guess is that food production is perceived as more of a core need than mail/package delivery. Even when mail/package delivery is an important part of a modern economy.
In the US, the idea is to disdain public services unless they can be used to socialize a cost of doing business. The USPS has been allowed to function because it made shipping cheaper, which is the lifeblood of business. However, other political calculations are coming to the fore (such as international competition) so they are thinking of kneecapping cheap rates to China.
The "loss" is artificial, imposed by the Bush administration, which required the Post Office to prepay benefits so far in advance, that at the time of the decision, there were people not even born yet, who would go to work for the Post Office having bennies paid for now.
Frankly, the Post Office could meet that burden if it were not also for deep rate cuts that essentially force the Post Office to deliver for big publishing at a loss.
Yes, that volume is significant, and Congress is responsible for it, and the artificially low costs for it today.
The Post Office is in the Constitution and it must be run by the Federal Government.
Many in said government want to further privatize the Post Office which in every other way has given the nation exemplary performance, at respectable rates, while serving everyone equally.
I am always saddened, and a little bit disturbed, to see the hobbling and abuse directed toward a clear example of a public service delivering a net good so well.
Prior to that mess, the Post Office made regular and significant contributions to the treasury, funds to be part of the General Budget.
It is a shame to see leadership priorities and politics cause so much grief.
That's a little broad. Oversight would be sufficient.
The Post Office is fundemental to our society.
It needs to be treated as such.
These ongoing games being played by Congress are expensive and should bot be tolerated by Americans who should demand a remedy so the otherwise exemplary service can continue as it has since the beginning.
There literally is no benefit to a private service being primary. State laws, etc... Federal govt is entirely appropriate here.
Your comment about what oversight means, is separate and also not legal or factual. It's partisan comment that adds nothing.
It means Congress needs to do it.
"Shall" has specific meaning too. "Shall" is not optional. It means "must" and or "will"
And that is the basis for my comment.
fortune.com/2015/03/27/us-postal-service/amp/
An analysis that talks about "the subsidies and legal monopolies that Congress bestows upon the post office" without talking about their unique costs - being required to deliver first class mail just about everywhere, at prices mandated by Congress that represent a loss in many geographic areas - is incomplete.
There is nothing wrong with the otherwise exemplary Post Office, other than too many in both government and private industry don't like it and want it privatized.
They want that as an opportunity, not any meaningful benefit to the American people.
If there are extra taxes on tobacco and alcohol, there can damn sure be extra taxes on junk mail. Let's start at 5000% and adjust from there.
Or, put some sort of escrow/credit/thing in the opt-out mechanism. Where the sender has to swear on a stack of dollars that I actually want this. And if I do actually want this, cool, I keep receiving it, they keep their money. But if I opt out, then the sender forfeits their bet, and next time it's more expensive for them. This would incentivize senders to make their mailings carefully chosen or highly valuable (think bribes to the recipient), or both.
Really, what I want is a postal equivalent of that "button that shocks the shit out of someone on the internet". I would just lean a brick on the button until the junkmailers have smoke coming out their ears.
I'd imagine this would actually be quite difficult on first amendment grounds if you start filtering by sender / message contents and would sweep in things like paychecks if you don't.
That is, until they come to tax email.
Here in Finland you can opt out of unaddressed bulk mail by adding a "no ads" note on your mailbox/mailslot. 99%+ of bulk mail is unaddressed here (addressed mail would be more expensive and senders would need address databases etc.).
Though there are also other companies delivering both addressed and unaddressed items (the state-owned postal service has no legal monopoly).
> Mailpieces are simply addressed to "Postal Customer" and your mail will be delivered to every address on your selected routes.
The area the customer selects are carrier routes. When you select a route, the carrier is given a stack of your fliers and they simply hand one out to each address.
First class mail just barely edges out shipping packages here.
For anyone who wants to check it out: https://about.usps.com/what/financials/annual-reports/fy2019...
Direct mail marketers, since the 1980s, buy lists of huge swathes of Americans. These lists include full name, address, estimated income, political affiliation, companies you've worked for - and the records are pennies each.
It doesn't contain my GPS coordinates over years.
It doesn't contain the list of my interests, based on my likes and the tracking of my web browsing.
It doesn't contain an analysis of the conversations with my friends and family.
It doesn't contain the pictures of my weekends and holidays, uploaded by other people.
It doesn't contain my face.
However it's still quite bad and such dataset shouldn't be available like this.
Which is nothing like using Facebook data to peddle false information through ads.
Facebook shouldn’t be allowing access to that kind of data in both cases, but that doesn’t mean what was done with the data is the same thing.
Say a pretty basic personal information (address, income etc) cost a dime each person, it can get deeper and deeper until it is no longer worth any extra. 10 political opinion from this person? Interesting. Full reddit history? Maybe worth 2x the former. Facebook images? probably worthless. The point is that it quickly gets to the point where all of these information are noise and essentially worthless to an advertiser.
It is completely another story when you have people with authoritarian intentions coming in though.
The Nazi party went from ~2-3% of the vote to 37% of the vote in 4 years [0]. 5 years from 2-3% to the last election they had to contend with.
If the strategy is to wait for people with authoritarian intentions to come though before getting worried about privacy it will be far to late; things can go south extremely quickly. It is advised to stop the databases being developed before it becomes obvious that someone is abusing them.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party#Ascension_and_conso...
What happened was people installing a quiz app or game which requested unnecessary data access but collected profile data and then (against Terms of Service) provided this data to a third party.
I don't consider this Facebook selling data. And auditing this kind of behavior is incredibly difficult.
Don't install apps that request access to your data, especially if you don't understand who owns the app and what their motivations are.
Auditing such process is a joke. No such audit will ever exist, as the results would be documented and leave a trail of misappropriation and abuse (of data). The only audits 'allowed' by the business would me the innocuous ITGCs.
I invite anyone from FB with audit related experience to comment (please use a TA account and be as vague as you can to prevent tracing).
Facebook build api and functionality that enabled data to be slurped, they also build how the warnings of what data is being exported to whom are displayed (or not).
Further more, since they control all the data in the first place it wouldn't be difficult for them to show a page that shows exactly which entity accessed what data they have on you.
Bottom line is that this whole mess couldn't happen without Facebook deliberately making decisions that enabled it.
And I know some of the smart people that worked there at that time. I don't believe for a second that nobody at Facebook had any idea what was happening.
What if a quiz app could not require so much knowledge about privacy by design? Facebook is responsible.
Several reasons...
(1) Facebook/Alphabet have a lot more data. Leaking anything implies something about data security, which is scarier.
(2) Scale. Direct marketers in the 80s did use most of the techniques digital markets use, definitely in the early stages. The scale is totally different though. I'm pretty sure my city (dublin) produces more "digital marketing" grads than all engineering specialities combined.
(3) Power at Scale. Your address is not data, it's a datum. Your address, alongside lots of other data about your, alongside data about lots of other people... that's where data becomes powerful.
Prediction, in advertising, is the demonstration. It's responsible for most of FB's revenue.
Govs have done that many times, and they still do.
They build this sample data by compiling huge swaths of public records and buying private data.
Your political affiliation is not the worst of it, they can have the school your child goes to, the grocery store you visit, anything.
The worst really isn't the violation of privacy, it's the propaganda.
Most of the time the surveys themselves were meant to push information, the questions and answers were usually loaded.
Source: worked as a CATI technician, typist, and interviewer for a survey company in college.
And that's just official sources; when it's gathered via private questionnaires or inferred from other data, it's even less likely to be regulated.
FYI, this is not an anomaly. In Israel, amazon did a deal with the national postal service that gives amazon packages priority. Before that, Aliexpress' free delivery ruled. It's easier in Israel, because there isn't a local amazon to compete with faster shipping.
Long story short, local businesses pay much more, for slower local delivery than global companies shipping internationally. This is on top of de facto exemptions from duties & product regulations.
Israel is a tiny country. Geographically, it's a city state. Local ecommerce is not viable because international is cheaper, faster & has extra advantages.
I disagree, some companies in my own country try to claim the same, but when I look at the market, there are a lot of players, a lot of profit being made, it can be done.
In a sense I have a suspicion that this is just some companies gotten lazy and not realising multitude of thing e-commerce provides. People want warranty, a nice fast mobile app in their native language, fast shipping, to support local companies - there's quite a lot a local company could offer. But a customer doesn't want to pay 10x as much and get quarter of that, that should be very clear.
But, at least in that country, you cannot use the postal service or major delivery services to deliver packages locally for a similar cost and delivery price as internationals... With amazon being the recent, and blatant culprit.
They deal they did with the postal service are not a secret. Neither are delivery times.
Monopolies, and the effect they have on the economy are not newtonian physics. It's not deterministic. Economic structures create prevailing winds, not airtight control over outcomes.
Postal services are a structure. The structure creates a prevailing wind that heavily biases an outcome.
~~ Charles Ponzi
It'll be nice , in theory, to be able to set up a widget shop in the US and sell to China at the same parcel rates that my counterpart in China could, to the US.
Glad to see it gone (and I'm not even an American).
Until recently the US was on the winning side of the deal, too (according to wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union#Shiftin... ) they even blocked an increase of dues in 2010. Until they started to lose money in 2015. Now it's unfair and a decades old treaty (even though it is adapted all the time and serves valuable reasons).
In the EU for most items over €20 purchased outside the EU, you will need to pay customs duty and VAT, and possibly a processing fee. The rates depend on what exactly the item is, but can be quite substantial. I bought an action camera from a site like GearBest (I can't remember exactly which one) a few years ago for ~€60, and when it arrived I needed to pay another €50 in fees.
If it wasn't for this I would buy a lot more swag - as most companies will ship from the US, it means a $25 t-shirt would end up costing me closer to $50.
They heavily depend on the specific item category - in my experience usually 0% or ~5% for the tech items I've imported (but that is not really enough to draw any conclusions from). The de minimis for import duty in EU is 150€ (compared to $800 in US).
Edit: here is the Finnish Customs duty calculator: https://tulli.fi/en/customs-duty-calculator?current=goods&cu... (VAT is Finland-specific, duties are the same EU-wide). A quick look shows that e.g. phones, computer components, and DVDs are 0%, which probably accounts for most of my €150+ imports and thus explains my experience above...
Edit: it seems there's no de minimis threshold for VAT anymore, so that's even more of a contrast
I thought you meant that USA import duties are much lower than EU import duties, but I now see you meant EU import duties are much lower than EU VAT taxes.
Completely agree then.
The removal of the €22 low-value exception for VAT will happen in EU on July 1st 2021, so not in effect yet.
This system was undoubtedly maintained so that US business could get cheap labor rates in China. Sending mail from China should be more expensive than domestically if the cost is based on distance. However, that would be a barrier to trade. US business spent the 90s trying to outsource manufacturing to China and a barrier to trade would foil that plan to exploit cheap labor overseas and avoid unionization domestically.
Clearly the US national business community must feel threatened by China's changing policies or by a change in their negotiating position or this wouldn't be going through.
Collecting more money from the sender sounds like the better solution.
Also for big mailers, they are even subsidize in US shipping.
This is kind of political theatre, US sellers will never match up with chinese sellers even after this change, even not in 5 years.
US is trying to close this 75M usd gap in 5 years with this agreement, what china will do? They will just subsidize 75M more.
This 75M will not make any difference in US pricing of mail. Chinese will continue with free shipping, US prices at best will get little lower.
Like. Do some QOS?
The Postal Union predates the UN by at least 50 years, the notion that each nation would honour each other's mail predates commerce as we understand it and doesn't make sense.
This program should have been abolished decades ago.
Is this that much different from net neutrality, phone call routing, email routing, etc? Should an ISP have to carry data belonging to other services? Should a mobile operator just refuse to route calls coming from another operator or country? Should Google refuse emails from another email provider or country?
I pay to get my mail delivered to a foreign country and both source and destination postal systems get a cut. Honoring the deliveries works in the favor of all sides. If the implementation is bad fix that, don't drop the system.
In shipping, they have to charge you a different rate for packages than they do mail (i.e weight) or else it won't work.
With data, it'd be nary impossible to clear prices for such services. With mail, it's entirely possible.
There is basically no reason that China Post can't charge their customers a rate to get something to the US, and then another rate by the US Post to get to final destination.
Because shipping involves real labour and money, it's like any other service, it should be priced normally.
If the postal union was not borne 150 years ago with this odd kind of arrangement, nobody would suggest it today. It needs to go.
> On September 25, 2019, the United States and United Nations reached a deal for America to stay in the UPU in return for being allowed greater flexibility in setting prices. In other words, the U.S. can now set rates for mail from China and other countries. The U.S. will be allowed to set its own postal rates starting on July 2020 and other countries will be allowed to starting in 2021. There will be a five-year period of phasing in new rates.
> The maximum annual increases for all countries cumulatively from 2020 to 2025 will be between 119%-164% (with China being on the upper end). This works out to annual increases of 15% in 2021 and 2022, 16% in 2023 and 2024, and 17% in 2025.
Submitted title was "USPS loses on average $1.10 for each package it delivers from China"
[0] Blocking TPP is another candidate, although I think I'd rather see it fixed than blocked completely. I suspect Trump might actually have agreed with the original TPP, had he known what it was about.
The major complaint about TPP was the IP protections. But the hypocrisy is that the lack of the IP protections is exactly the same people complain about China.
There was absolutely no reason to block TPP, which in a nutshell, gave Chinese neighbors the opportunity to do business that the US was doing in China currently, and in return agree to implement an IP protection environment that everyone agrees China should have but doesn’t.
Besides providing American (and non American) companies with multiple alternatives to China where their IP would not be stolen, it would have built massive American soft power with Chinese neighbors at absolutely no cost to Americans, since the business going to those countries was business being done in China anyways.
But yes, TPP also had its upsides, which is why I prefer a fixed version rather than blocking it completely. The US, by the way, was the biggest proponent of those corporate courts. Sadly the Trump administration lacks the know-how or desire to negotiate that sort of nuance. So while I agree with blocking it in the form it had at the time, I disagree with blocking it completely, which is of course what Trump did.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/business/universal-postal...
The UN being unwilling to separate China from the rest of the lot until being threatened says enough.
No, it was not 'designed' to fund Chinese competition and outsource massive numbers of manufacturing jobs over there. This was a side-effect of the program gone obviously and terribly awry.
The original program is ancient and really was a matter of national courtesy in delivering other nation's international mail.
EDIT, FYI:
"The Treaty of Bern was signed on October 9, 1874, establishing what was then known as the General Postal Union.
The treaty provided that:
There should be a uniform flat rate to mail a letter anywhere in the world Postal authorities should give equal treatment to foreign and domestic mail Each country should retain all money it has collected for international postage."
The current practice of giving China free postage was established 150 years ago, not in some modern trade strategy, and it was a means of simplifying postage and not having to worry about balancing accounts (i.e. host nation keeps the fee). This kind of economic reciprocity is basically unheard of in anything else, but it makes sense for a strategic industry that's not necessarily very expensive.
For shipping goods, obviously, it makes no sense.
I challenge anyone to explain how an agreement made in 1874 for critical international communications, that has unexpectedly given China a massive trade advantage in developing industries, was part of any plan. The argument that the terms may have been advanced due to helping places like Africa with trade just don't hold in the current context. The US government subsidisation of Chinese e-commerce doesn't really make any sense.
According to your wikipedia article in 2010 the US blocked increases because they were on the winning end of the treaty. But as unforseen changes actually made them lose money on the deal, it was suddenly unfair and out of date.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union#Shiftin...
The principle that 'nations pay for local delivery for free' as a matter of convenience, was established 150 years ago.
That basic principle remains today.
If that agreement were not made an eternity ago, nobody would even think to suggest it today - because it doesn't make sense.
You are missing the point when you're referring to 'making or losing money' on the deal. It's not so much about the cost of regular shipping - it's about the subsidisation of entire competitive industries.
The rise of e-Commerce has changed everything related to shipping, quite fundamentally.
A US subsidy on their own imports to China, even a smaller one, can make quite a substantial change in commercial trends.
The treaty was not designed to do that, nobody was thinking in those terms, at that scale.
Not even 25 years ago did we think individuals were going to be buying little parcels from China on an individual basis.
The treaty now has to live in the context of e-Commerce and it should essentially be abolished for packages, because it simply does not make sense. In an era before computers, it might have made sense to honour each others letters. But now there's no reason why the sender just can't pay appropriate rates for shipping.
Edit: I should add - there isn't a single argument presented by anyone on the entire thread as to why one nation would arbitrarily deliver another nations physical packages 'for free' or on reciprocal basis. This is because there is no reason to support it in 2020. It exists for historical reasons, bureaucratic and political momentum.
This breaks down when one of the parties starts sending a lot more than they receive.
Also, there's a price break for "underdeveloped countries", and 20 years ago, at the last round of rate setting, China qualified.
Despite all the noise from the Trump administration back in 2018, 2020 was the next scheduled year for updating terminal dues. Here we are in 2020, and there's a new terminal dues agreement, as scheduled.
[1] http://www.upu.int/en/activities/terminal-dues-and-transit-c...