US post office carriers "forced to work fewer hours," leaving "buckets of mail" | Hacker News Reader

US post office carriers "forced to work fewer hours," leaving "buckets of mail"

theguardian.com

118 pointscs70282 comments

Shame that this got flagged.

From the site Guidelines: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon..."

I'd say that rampant voter suppression in the United States is a an interesting new phenomenon.

Voter suppression would be when people are actually kept from going to polling stations to cast their votes. Limiting mail-in voting is not voting suppression, it is limiting access to a specific - and rather contentious - way to cast your vote. These are not the same things, at all.

First of all, that is absolutely not the definition of voter suppression— it is much broader voter disenfranchisement, from voter ID in neighborhoods with low ID ownership, to this example, which is giving people who do not want to risk their lives to vote the option to vote remotely in a manner that is proven as secure.

From what I gather - correct me if I'm wrong - voter ID is not a thing which is limited to 'neighbourhoods with low ID ownership' but a state-mandated policy where 36 of 50 states require some form of voter ID [1]. There seem to be possibilities to vote without an ID, the procedure varies from state to state and the eligibility may hinge on the voter presenting ID at a later moment.

Also, people who do not want to risk their lives to vote the option to vote remotely in a manner that is proven as secure is quite a bit of hyperbole in many ways. The risk[ing] their lives part should be clear, there is no reason for a visit to a polling station to be more risk-filled than a visit to the supermarket. Those who really can not vote in person can still request absentee ballots as far as I can tell, it is not as if the USPS is being dismantled. The part about a manner that is proven as secure is just untrue as can be seen by the percentage of mail-in votes which are marked as invalid (up to 10%) and the fact that the registers used to send out ballots seem to be heavily polluted with ballots being sent out for dead people, for previous inhabitants, for pets (!) and more. The system suffers from a garbage-in-garbage-out problem, as long as those registers are polluted that part of the problem remains. Mail-in voting also suffers from the problem of enabling voter coercion in which someone - say a gang leader - uses a threat of force to coerce people into voting for 'his' candidate.

[1] https://www.usa.gov/voter-id

> 36 of 50 states require some form of voter ID [1]

The key thing here is not that any voter ID law is necessarily voter-suppression. Some may argue that any ID law is, but most people would evaluate these on a case-by-case basis. For example, in many of those states, you can still vote without the appropriate ID. Some of these laws include alternatives like simply having a person working at the polling place vouch that you are who you say you are. We could argue the merits of such a law, but it's fairly clear that it's still possible to vote in many places without ID.

On the other hand, some laws have been found by the courts to be disenfranchising. Therefore, we should take the skeptical position and assume that new Voter ID laws would disenfranchise legitimate voters, and force the state to provide evidence that such a law's benefits outweighs the rights of the people it injures.

> The risk[ing] their lives part should be clear, there is no reason for a visit to a polling station to be more risk-filled than a visit to the supermarket

This seems ignorant of how polling places work in some neighborhoods. I've never seen lines like this outside of a grocery store. Many polling places will have people waiting for hours to vote, and these issues tend to effect predominantly black neighborhoods... for reasons. https://www.texasobserver.org/lines-wait-vote-texas-primary-...

> Those who really can not vote in person can still request absentee ballots as far as I can tell, it is not as if the USPS is being dismantled.

Yes, but the USPS has said that they will likely not be able to deliver those ballots in time for the election. This combined with having less in-person voting places. When you place your vote, and that vote isn't counted... then you've been disenfranchised. So what will happen to those people who waited in those long lines to vote in the past? Will they go wait for hours with dozens of other people? or will they vote by mail and risk the USPS not delivering it?

Your first sentence is essentially what gerrymandering is. Sadly, Republicans have spent decades doing this and closing down polling places in non-GOP friendly districts [1][2][3][4].

Here are some recent facts I tied together based on the current state and Trump's actions. Trump doesn't want mail-in voting because he knows that it will result in more democrats voting and him likely losing the election. Every decision he's made about the USPS has been with that concept in mind. He even said in an interview on Fox news last month that if mail in voting is allowed you'll never see another Republican in office again. He knows it. Everyone in politics knows it. The right will never admit they know this, and will look for any and every excuse to hold back the USPS without directly saying that its because they don't want more democrats than republicans voting.

With mail-in voting being accepted in a majority of states, and even set as the primary method for a few with COVID present, it really screws things up for the GOP. Couple that with Trump's gamble that convincing his voters the virus is no big deal will get them to the polls, while the scaredy cat democrats will stay home. So he spent a very long time building up this giant "virus hoax" to calm his masses. He is simultaneously trying to train them to believe that mail-in voting is fraud, even though he, himself does so, as have many, many of his voters, historically.

It worked. But what he didn't account for was states creating blanket acceptances of mail-in voting applications. That instantly turns the tables, because not only does it undo the removal of polling places, but it also allows the democrats (and the GOP, if they so choose) to vote from the safety and comfort of their homes while avoiding lines, saving time, and not risking COVID. His supporters, however, will be going to polling places in full force, in what will likely be a very bad time for the country as COVID starts to rear its face again between flu-season and school openings (especially in red states that are in denial and have entirely in-person classes).

So then, what happens, is a ton of his voters are going to be against voting by mail, and most will have not applied to do so, forcing them to go to the ballots, in what will most likely be a time that the pandemic is gaining speed. His advisors basically laid out the future for him of his silly comments, and where they were leading. So, in recent weeks, you've seen him compliment "absentee voting", trying to making it a completely separate thing from "mail-in voting", as not to look like an incompetent liar to his voters. But he knows his advantage still lies at the polling places, so he is simultaneously trying to hinder the USPS from delivering ballots. The number of mail-in voting applications for democrats FAR surpasses those for republicans, so while it may cost him a few votes, he is betting that it will cost democrats so many that his supporters who do show up will be able to tip the scales. He is also taking the approach of preparing to call the election invalid due to the amount of mail-in voting, should he lose.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-locations/so...

[2] https://civilrights.org/democracy-diverted/

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/02/texas-pollin...

[4] https://www.governing.com/topics/politics/sl-polling-place-c...

It is sad to see how party politics get in the way of solving problems in the USA. Your whole reply is worded from the standpoint of someone who is clearly against the GOP and - given the practical reality of the de-facto two-party system in the USA - most likely planning to vote for the DNC candidate. From that standpoint you come to the conclusion that the GOP is planning to use the reliability problems with mail-in voting to contend the election results in case their candidate were to loose the election.

Then there are those who do not support the DNC - which is not the same as stating they support the GOP - who claim that it is actually the DNC which intends to contend the results in case their candidate looses on base of mail-in voting being thwarted. Add to that the fact that the USPS workers union has voiced its explicit support for the DNC candidate [1] and the story gets even more muddled.

Meanwhile Fauci has stated he sees no problems in people going to polling stations [2] which should give rise to doubts about the reasoning behind the urgency of mail-in voting.

I am not an American and as such consider myself to be an interested bystander in this drama. What I can state with certainty is that this type of manoeuvring is extremely unlikely to happen in my country of birth (the Netherlands) but is in some ways comparable to the situation in the country where I currently live (Sweden). The Swedish voting system has come under criticism from the OSCE [3] partly due to irregularities in the way ballot forms are being distributed - forms for specific parties have a tendency to 'get lost' in the mail or otherwise end up missing at the ballot stations, often to be found in garbage containers or dumped in some ditch somewhere. There are other criticisms but this one comes the closes to the current conundrum with mail-in voting in the USA. Sweden accepted OSCE inspectors to watch the election procedures, it remains to be seen what the country will do with their recommendations. It would be enlightening to have an external, non-partisan organisation do the same with the coming elections in the USA. Which organisation that would be I do not know, it will be hard if not impossible to find an American organisation which is truly neutral towards all parties and probably even harder to find a foreign one which is neutral towards the USA as a whole.

[1] https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/512128-union-represent...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2020/08/07/fauci-w...

[3] https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/6/2/403760.pdf

No doubt your president wants to limit it, but you have to understand most of the people in the west would see postal voting without proper documentation and system that is verifiable is insanity and borderline corruption.

True, in my country it is mostly forbidden. Essentially it is only allowed when living abroad and even then voting via the embassy is preferred.

Why? Because when you and you alone go into the voting booth, take that red pencil, and tick the box, it is guaranteed you and you alone who casts that vote. You can only be allowed by two other people to vote for them. We also have no voting computers so maybe my country is just old fashioned.

In any case, if something needs to chance in the USA it is far too late for that. The current elections cannot be allowed to be compromised so voting by mail should be facilitated.

For some historical context, IDs cost money in most states and there's no national identification system. So if you implement voting ids, all it does is end up being voter suppression because generally the poor cannot afford to get a driver's license or cannot afford to drive therefore don't have a license. State Ids have a similar issue.

Historically, voter ID laws have been associated with disenfranchisement.

You could make a sane argument in EU countries since getting documents and keeping them updated in every 8 years costs money here as well but no one would take that argument seriously here.

Yeah but the EU or EU countries will just eat the costs for the populace. In the US, this is a contentious issue (as is every social program for the poor tbh).

Depends what you mean, usually there's a small 20-30 euro tax for documents.

It's interesting to see that in America, some government services can run at a loss but others are expected to be solvent. No one complains that the military doesn't pay back the 700 billion a year it takes but if public transportation goes over budget or the post office, suddenly it's a big deal.

I honestly don't get it. Most services in most countries run at a loss but they provide huge public benefits so it's worth it. The USPS allows people to vote, seniors to get their medication, people to pay mortgages or send packages.

It seems so non-political and yet somehow even the most basic of services provided by the government are now a battleground.

I feel like this country has just collectively lost its mind.

Possibly due to those services charging fees and generating income tends people to envision them as a business instead of a service.

A service is just a specialized business though.

Interesting. If there are two objects with fields a, b and c, and one object initializes them to 1, 2 and 3, while another - to 1, 2 and 4. Does it make sense to derive the second object from the first? Or the other way around?

I thought business can be viewed as a specialized service. But both approaches are possible, so the choice of "default" says about our preferences.

Yea but your critique-reply is to that of an explanation on why people are thinking illogically here. Of which, your reply seems unsound. Ie, people seem to be thinking illogically here but your comment seems to counter their illogical stance, which is already described as illogical, rather than supporting/countering what is being discussed - their pattern of thinking.

To the issue at hand though; much of America is embroiled in various angles of anti-taxation. There seems to be wide support for the idea that the government is incapable of doing anything right and any amount of money going towards them is viewed in a negative light.

I think government in America really needs to step up on the deliverables and communication of deliverables. Efficiency likely could be improved, i don't deny, but i also think that the lack of "Here's what you paid for, here's what you got" leads people to think they get nothing for their money.

Regardless of what your personal opinions are of taxes, i think it's safe to say that America has a problem with them - and doesn't know how to solve it. This infighting over mail delivery, a staple of communication, just highlights a deeply rooted issue.

Even if there was some sort of budgetary problem, it seems logical that services that are explicitly required by the Constitution, such as mail and census, would have precedence over those that are not.

Article 1 Section 8 gives congress the power to collect money to provide postal service it does not require that they do so. This is opposed to Article 1 Section 2 which states a census shall be done and how often.

This isn't to say I'm against the USPS or anything of that matter just that lately I've seen "postal services are mentioned in the constitution" turned into "postal services are required by the constitution".

That is due to their financial structure, not simply a cultural expectation.

The USPS isn’t funded by taxes at all, so of course they need revenue from operations.

It doesn't have to be that way, though, right?

We could make up the shortfalls with a subsidy. There's a bill to do exactly that in the House right now.

Correct, but that's the reason why it is fundamentally different than other government services, like the military.

The military is paid by taxes. In general, no single citizen has much control over how much it costs. The USPS is different because if we eliminated stamps and paid it all out of taxes, individuals would abuse the system.

Because we pay out of pocket for postage, we expect the USPS to place no further burden on taxpayers. However, it keeps going going into debt. This signals that there is something wrong at an operational level, since its competitors don't go bankrupt despite not having the huge subsidies and advantages in the law that the USPS has.

Nothing about that dictates it must be an operational level issue. No other carrier has government mandated delivery schedules to remote areas or laws requiring them to prefund pensions for 75 years. Of course no other carrier has tax breaks and government funding. It doesn't mean it's an operating issue though but maybe it is. The point being "government service isn't making money" assumes the goal for that service is purely to make money, which is not the sole purpose of the USPS.

It also does not follow that because stamps cost money we therefore expect the USPS to need no other funding. It's possible for something to be partially subsidized.

This isn't an argument about what should be done with the USPS one way or the other it's an argument against trying to shove everything into "because it's not A it shows it is therefore B" type arguments which don't consider there could be more to the story than A and B.

Prefunding medical pensions is not the reason for their cash flow problem:

> In addition, with respect to financial reporting, here are the key figures for 2019:

> Healthcare benefits paid out of the Benefit Fund: $3.7 billion.

> Normal costs scheduled to be paid into the Benefit Fund to cover current year’s current employees’ retiree healthcare cost accruals: $3.775 billion.

> Amortization payments scheduled to be made into the fund: $789 million.

> Overall net loss for the year: $8.8 billion.

> The math just doesn’t work to blame retiree healthcare contributions for the USPS’s losses. The amount they are recording on their P&L for retiree healthcare costs (which, again, they aren’t paying out in cash) — $4.564 billion — is only moderately more ($800 - $900 million, depending on rounding) than the amount that they would be paying out directly for pay-as-you-go benefits had the PAEA never been implemented. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2020/04/14/post-office-p...

And I actually do see this as a "because it's not A it shows it is therefore B" type argument. When the USPS runs at a deficit, tax payers ultimately are the ones that have to bail it out. That goes against the principal necessitating stamps in the first place: individuals who don't place extra cost to the USPS end up paying more than their share and subsidize individuals who do cost the USPS extra.

I didn't say it was "the" reason it's just an example of something mandated that doesn't help their cash position. The postal service, having been mentioned even in the constitution, has a lot of such mandates that public companies don't have.

And again it's possible for something to be partially subsidized not just either income based or free. As you mentioned if it were 100% subsidized it'd lead to lots of abuse of the service. That does not mean the only alternative is it be 100% funded via shipping fees and 0% subsidized there is still 1%-99% subsidized which are valid options. Maybe you'd personally like it to not be partially subsidized but there is nothing strictly requiring it to be only one or the other.

Another example of partially subsidized services would be the roads the postal service and everyone else uses. They tend to be 30%-60% paid for by e.g. gas taxes or tolls and the rest subsidized via general taxes. That doesn't mean roads are failing to turn a profit they are also working as intended being somewhat use based and somewhat a public service.

The difference is that a postal service is rival + excludable. Most roads are (generally) non-rival and most people at least expect them to be non-excludable, but as you mentioned, some use tolls.

When you have rival + excludable, it is straight forward to charge on an individual basis. This efficiently allocates resources and punishes abuses.

It's not as easy to efficiently do that with non- (or perhaps less-) excludable goods. Also, when a good is non-rival, there is much less worry about abusing the system. That makes subsidies and "everybody pay the same" easier to be seen as a fair enough system.

The above is your reasoning (or part of) why you would not like the US postal service to be partially subsidized not why it must not be partially subsidized or why we must all consider it A or B. A+B is still a valid legal option and can also be a logical conclusion by others with different arguments.

It's a perfectly valid stance to hold though and certainly brings well thought points to the examples mentioned earlier.

I posted this article.

To dang and the other moderators: I hesitated quite a bit before posting this, due to its possible interpretation as a "political post"... but after some thought decided to go ahead and post it, because I find it both important and interesting, in the sense described in the HN guidelines, so I felt it was on-topic. But if you judge the OP is off-topic or should be flagged to avoid unproductive commentary, please leave it flagged; I know it's a matter of judgment and I trust yours :-)

> DeJoy instructed USPS employees to leave mail behind if it delayed carriers from their routes

I mean, this does make sense. The more time you can spend doing the route itself, instead of waiting or coming back mid-way for whatever couldn’t be sorted in time in the morning is more “lean” efficient.

While some mail would take an extra day, it results in more mail delivered per carrier-hour.

Hmm, it does make sense, but I think delaying carriers from starting their routes probably put backpressure on the upstream team to complete their work on time. Really hard to say if this is good or bad without more knowledge of the internal incentive structures that keep the system running smoothly.

It makes sense in isolation except that it’s illegal and leads to delays in delivering or attempting to deliver, say, first class mail.

If they already have stuff waiting for days to be delivered, I don’t understand the insistence on delivering stuff that arrived in the afternoon. Either way they’re out of compliance with the law.

Are they? How is "detains" and "delays" defined? It doesn't seem like requiring delivery of late-arriving mail on the same day is the intent of that law.

But should the USPS operate that way? The purpose of a government-operated mail service arguably is to guarantee the quality and types of services that free-market competitors can’t or don’t want to offer.

The irony of so many anti-service people is that most of them turn around and hate big corporations just as much. It's like they envision a Comcast-esque corporation taking over USPS, but forget that they hate Comcast.

Disliking corporations and anti-competitive behavior of big corporations seems to be a non-partisan issue; and yet there seems to be much support for making everything ran by massive corporations. I don't understand their line of thinking here.

I'm not sure if they're the same people or not -- but I don't think it really matters. There are pros-and-cons to any system of organization. Whether you have chosen the right one depends on the goals of the organization.

Be wary of anyone who fanboys too hard for anything in particular without discussing its merits and weaknesses versus the alternatives. They likely don't have a full understanding of either.

According to mail carriers, the actual result is an ever-growing backlog of undelivered mail. The first mail to be delayed may only be one day late, but as the backlog grows, the undelivered mail gets later and later on average.

It sounds like carriers are being given more than they could possibly deliver in a day.

If that’s true, it’s still better to leave with what you can first-thing in the morning, than wait at the depot or return to the depot mid-shift.

Trying to deliver something that arrived at noon today doesn’t make sense when you have stuff from 2-3 days ago still waiting.

Somehow I suspect that the folks at the USPS have put at least as much thought into the logistics of mail delivery as HN commenters in this thread have—maybe even a little more if such a thing can be conceived!

If we all thought that way, this place would be dead.

"prohibited employees from working overtime" Cause they can't pay them overtime rates.

Genuine question: seems like this is mostly a political post without much relation to the typical content one would expect on HN. Is there some kind of “off-topic” policy at HN for these things, or is it fair game given that enough people upvote it?

Edit: article seems to be flagged now, guess I have my answer.

It's all fair game until the mods bump it off the frontpage.

That's not an accurate summary. HN users flagging an article is the primary reason articles go missing from the front page.

Yeah, why was this posted?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If I remember correctly, HN is supposed to have information interesting and useful for thinking people. This example doesn't qualify as off-topic then.

> If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic

This is part of the framing from the guidelines, this type of article would very much be covered.

Apparently the guidelines even explicitly say:

“Off-Topic: Most stories about politics”

I would certainly classify this as such.

Good exception. I think you're right... benefits of discussing can be outweighed by how easy it is to drop into a bad quarrel.

I imagine your comment is being downvoted because a significant portion of your comment is a statement, not a question, and that statement is something that people disagree with.

HN has an off-topic policy, but it's enforced primarily by user flagging. In recent months, there's been a large influx of people who feel political activism is so important that it needs to happen everywhere, so posts tend to get upvoted faster than they can be flagged.

You'll note that this article now has a [flagged] tag next to it, which means enough users flagged it that it's removed from the feed.

It's probably not new users, but the current time period. This is a US election year, which (for US users in particular) brings many political topics to the fore. Some posts are more appropriate here than others, but political content in general will get more attention as a result.

True. I don't remember it being so bad in 2016 - but then again I spent much less time reading HN then.

I remember a lot of posts (and a lot of them being flagged) but I have no solid numbers to base this on. But I also let myself get caught up in the politics in general and probably noticed them for that reason as well (my brain was primed to notice them).

I need to start taking year long retreats every four years.

The article says:

> Trump said on 13 August that he opposes providing additional funding to the USPS to make it more difficult to deliver mail-in ballots.

That comment links to another article, where the first paragraph states:

> Donald Trump admitted on Thursday he opposed additional funding for the United States Postal Service (USPS) in order to make it more difficult to deliver mail-in ballots.

I searched Google and YouTube but can't find the original source, only commentary on it. Does anyone have a link?

Edit: Maybe it's referring to https://youtu.be/0ieLG29X_oE?t=840. I don't know much about the facts here, but Trump seems to be asserting that Congress is bundling $15–25B in USPS funding in a mega-bill that includes trillions of dollars of bailout money for states, and thus the bill has stalled. He also keeps harping on the failures of mail-in voting (but says absentee works well). I don't know what to make of it, but it's certainly frustrating that multiple news orgs are claiming that Trump is intentionally hamstringing the USPS to harm democracy, when I don't take away any such conclusion from that shitshow of an interview.

The source is this Fox News interview:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-seeks-to-starve-post-...

No timestamp because I couldn't bring myself to listen to all 40 minutes.

Thank you. Yeah, these interviews are painful to listen to. Trump said:

> [Democrat representatives] want $3½ billion for the mail-in votes, universal mail-in ballots. They want $25 billion for the post office. They need that money in order to have the post office work so that it can take these millions and millions of ballots. Now those are just two items [in the bill]; if they don't get there, they can't have mail-in ballots. [A bunch of rambling about failures of mail-in ballots in VA, NJ, etc.]

He seemed to me to be saying that if the Democrats want mail-in ballots, they're going to have to find a way to get this bill passed that would give more funding to the post office. Trump emphasized repeatedly that they're asking for $3.5 billion dollars ("that's a lot of money") for the mail-in ballots.

> Trump himself has admitted to wanting to starve the postal service of funds so that mail-in voting will become difficult, as tens of millions of Americans are expected to vote by mail during the coronavirus pandemic.

This is why I can't help but admire Trump, the fact he remains untouched proves how cunning him and his team are. Either that or how fragile the checks and balances system truly is.

How is anything about his hamfisted (publicly admitted) attempt to disenfranchise voters even close to cunning?

Maybe it’s because his party and half of America is also on board with it?

Be careful to not challenge people’s beliefs too much, they’ll get upset and start screaming about censorship

If someone can stand in line for the cashier at Home Depot and Whole Foods, they can also do so at the voting booth.

Mail-in voting has no tracking of the voter receiving the ballot and if a filled out ballot is counted. It also has no verification of who votes and no protection to make the vote anonymous.

Yeah, none of that is true. There was a recent article about how it works in Colorado: https://www.denverpost.com/2020/08/16/colorado-denver-mail-v...

I am talking about the "last-mile" problem of securing that the mail carrier getting the ballot into the voters hands and securing that the ballot gets from the mail box to the counting location.

At a physical voting location you know 100% a person gets a ballot and you track the ballot from it's put into the voting box.

As far as I can tell this process deals with neither of these problems.

I think checks and balances system was built for different condition, and sort of past due to get updated.

It's like the Web... which was built for academic document exchange, and now we're in a hurry to bolt on zero-trust features on top.

Nothing "cunning" about this. He simply knows that his supporters are okay with it.

What he is doing, though, is setting the bar lower and other politicians will do similar in the future. His supporters will then be all up in arms when a Dem does it.

Lowering the bar also invites others to lower the bar themselves, in their own way. Say, McConnell claims SC judges shouldn't be installed in the final year of the presidential term. Why then not to add a rule that SC judges (justices) can be suspended - not removed - by an executive order? Surely additional conditions can be invented, like a controversial judge selection or change in Senate majority? Everything flies, right?

I think Republicans are ok with there being no mail-in voting.

At least 50% of the population does not trust the large-scale move to mail-in-voting, so considering that people can stand in line at Home Depot and Whole Foods the loss of election trust does not seem worth it.

> At least 50% of the population does not trust the large-scale move to mail-in-voting

Source on that?

Your argument does not take into account the systematic closing of voting locations. Not everyone can vote in person if there's only a single voting location.

I agree that all voting locations should be open, and I see now reason to close voting locations because of Covid when Home Depot and Whole Foods can be open. I actually don't see why we can't utilize government resources to open more voting locations to facilitate social distancing.

I don't see why we can't utilize the USPS resources to mail in a ballot. I just did it for the local elections being held tomorrow and I was able to track my ballot online. Easy and Simple.

USPS has been bound to fail for years. Isn't HN all about efficiency? What's so great about wasting money on a company that can't compete in the private markets and refuses to innovate?

Give it to the markets, but give them tax breaks or loans for offering services USPS offered. (Shipping to far away areas for a low cost, for example)

It's incredibly that some people still think we should have this cash burning & horrible service business alive.

Copy/pasting jorblumesea's comment above that I think answers your questions.

"It's interesting to see that in America, some government services can run at a loss but others are expected to be solvent. No one complains that the military doesn't pay back the 700 billion a year it takes but if public transportation goes over budget or the post office, suddenly it's a big deal.

It seems so non-political and yet somehow even the most basic of services provided by the government are now a battleground.

I feel like this country has just collectively lost its mind."

Would you want a socialized fast food chain, or computer company? Probably not, and do you know why? It's because these are services clearly designed for the market to solve. I hope we can agree there. Delivery is just something that's FAR more efficient in the markets.

And the difference in inefficiency is just going to grow. Look at what UPS has been doing the past x years. They constantly reinvest money into new tech and decreasing labor, and USPS just gets more money from the government.

It's a fair question to ask "at what difference in cost should we stop giving USPS money because we're wasting so much of it". I think we've reached that difference already.

You know what happens when you raise a child with an unlimited allowance and no incentive to work?

America will stay ahead because of our belief in the private markets. Socialization of services can do good in the short term, but almost always looses out to competition in the long term.

The USPS has mandates from the federal government like having to deliver mail to far flung unprofitable areas and to deliver mail on Saturdays. Lets see UPS get saddled with these requirements and then "look at what UPS has been doing the past x years".

There was a time when taxpayers were taking money out of USPS, maybe it should be returned to USPS with interest?

> maybe it should be returned to USPS with interest?

Interest is an evil and harmful practice. We've known it for thousands of years.

> USPS just gets more money from the government

My understanding was that USPS does not receive funding from the government. Granted, I'm not counting reimbursement for franked mail because that seems equivalent to the sender having paid postage like any other sender would. Can you provide a link with more info on USPS receiving money from the government?

Delivery is just something that's FAR more efficient in the markets

Why then do private companies like UPS and FedEx rely on USPS for deliveries to rural areas?

Don't have much knowledge into the efficiency and the economics of government services, and you do have a valid point. But would the millions of elderly that rely on it for their medicine, SS checks, etc., still reliably receive their mail without additional cost to them or the sender if they were shipped through a private carrier? The suspicion and outcry for the changes to the USPS is clearly a timing matter. Why does Trump all of a sudden care about the postal service?

Lets be real here for a second. Trump simply doesn't want mail-in voting because he knows that it will result in more democrats voting and him likely losing the election. Every decision he's made about the USPS has been with that concept in mind. He even said in an interview on Fox news last month that if mail in voting is allowed you'll never see another Republican in office again. He knows it. Everyone in politics knows it. The right will never admit they know this, and will look for any and every excuse to hold back the USPS without directly saying that its because they don't want more democrats than republicans voting.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com