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USPS Reports $15.9 Billion Loss, Asks Congress For Help
New submitter Gaildew2 writes with news that the embattled United States Postal Service has posted a $15.9 billion loss over the past fiscal year, more than three times the amount it lost the previous year.
"The USPS, which relies on the sale of stamps and other products rather than taxpayer dollars, has been grappling for years with high costs and tumbling mail volumes as consumers communicate more online. In September, the Postal Service hit its $15 billion borrowing limit for the first time in its history. That leaves it with few options if it suffers an unexpected shock, such as a slowdown if lawmakers are unable to prevent the year-end tax increases and spending cuts known as the 'fiscal cliff.' ... Postal officials want Congress to pass legislation that would allow the agency to end Saturday mail delivery and run its own health plan rather than enrolling USPS employees in federal health programs, among other things."
The only people using mail anymore are junk mailers. And they get an ENORMOUS discount to send out thousands of flyers and coupons. So let's raise our taxes even more to prop up a bunch of spammers. If you don't, the union gets angry and leans on politicians. That's just good policy.
Another F-22 crashed recently, and that's about the same value...
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
This is simple.
1. Cut deliveries to three per week -- MWF and TThSa.
2. Raise rates to cover costs.
3. Close local post offices and replace them with contractors where required.
USPS provides a great value -- just think about it, for about half a dollar you can get your first class letter delivered almost anywhere in the U.S. Alas, they are burdened with costs that other enterprises don't share, and their very existence seems to be against the flow so to speak. I think it's time to abolish the U.S. Mail monopoly and let it compete on a fair playing ground. If you didn't know, U.S. Mail has a legally granted monopoly. It's illegal for anyone but a postman to drop mail into postboxes marked U.S. Mail, and if your postbox is not marked, then the postman is obligated not to deliver mail in it. When U.S. Postal Service (however they were called back then) was starting up, they did actually have competition, and that competition was providing better service, apparently. The competitor got killed when USPS got granted the monopoly. I think we should see a return of healthy competition once the USPS monopoly ends. There's no reason for it.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
a republican clutches the constitution and screams bloody murder, kindly ask them to stop wiping their jackboots on it. The postal service is in the constitution as well. Lets go back to bush junior, or as i like to call him, the acid reflux republicans just cant keep down:
H.R. 6407; The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act was passed in the Republican-controlled Senate two days after it was introduced in the Republican-controlled House. It was subsequently signed into law by Republican George W. Bush. One of the provisions in this hastily passed law requires the USPS to prefund ALL of it's retirees health benefits 75 years into the future. That's right. The USPS is supposed to set aside money for the future health benefits for people that haven't even been born yet.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I would have gotten first post, but I sent my post via USPS instead of fedex.
The ridiculous retiree benefits mandate handed down from congress is pretty much the sole reason for this unnecessary debacle.
No other organization is required to provide such an absurd level of retiree benefits payment so why is this insanity allowed to persist in light of the fact it could potentially doom the USPS?
in other places like Canada they don't have that any more.
USPS is failing because it's been "grappling for years with high costs and tumbling mail volumes"?
No. The truth is that the GOP has been trying to kill USPS by mandating the prefunding of all USPS benefits for the next 75 years!
The Post Office would be solvent if it had reasonable requirements placed on it, but the GOP wants the public to think that is impossible.
See: http://jonathanturley.org/2012/05/06/going-postal-in-washington-d-c-the-usps-the-postal-accountability-and-enhancement-act-of-2006-union-busting-and-paving-the-road-to-privatization/
even using the highest estimate of F-22 cost I could find we'd need to give them 44 F-22s. Raise rates on mass mailers perhaps? The only reason I check my mail anymore is to get information the government wants me to know about, car registration, voter registration, jury duty etc. If I could give an email address to uncle sam, I would be more than happy to do away with my mail address. Let it die.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
When they were entirely self-sufficient, no one could really complain--they didn't cost us anything, and they provided a decent-enough service. Now that they're asking for help, though, I think it's time we cut them loose, or significantly reduce their capacity. Maybe only have mail for those without computers, and deliver once a week.
Isn't USPS in the shithouse because congress saddled them with a bizarre, unfunded, unprecedented mandate to pre-fund all future retirement plans? Which literally no commercial or public entity does or has ever done?
Of course there's the internet and email and all. Mail volume had declined, but it's still an invaluable service.
This smells rotten. I can only imagine there is some congresslime with an (R) at the end of his name at the bottom of this mess.
I think someone is trying to dismantle USPS so it can be privatized by someone's campaign contributer.
I also think someone can't stand to see well-paying public jobs with good benefits(who probably all vote D), and are directly attacking USPS employees for some twisted political form of vengeance.
Yeah, this is the sort of shit the R's pull nowadays. No wonder they lost.
In 2006, Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. This law requires the Postal Service to do something that no other business or government agency has to do–pre-fund its FUTURE retiree health care benefits. This is a 75 year liability that has to be paid in 10 years. The Postal Service makes a payment of approximately $5.5 billion on September 30 at the end of every fiscal year to meet this obligation. The Post Office has been paying these benefits the past four years into a trust fund for employees who have not even been born yet. This is the burden that is creating the “financial crisis” for the Post Office. The recession that has gripped America the past few years has undoubtedly affected the Postal Service, but even in the worst economic times since the great depression, the USPS has had a net profit of $611 million dollars. Unfortunately, the red ink associated with the post office is the mandated pre-funding since 2006.
Exactly. Having to pre-fund the next 75 years of retirement benefits, including for those retiree's not yet born makes little sense. Its 11 billion dollar "paper" loss.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
The whole point of the insane prefunding mandate (what is ridiculous isn't the retiree benefits, it is the mandate to prefund them 75 years into the future) is to doom the USPS. Its not allowed to persist in spite of the fact it could doom the USPS, it is allowed to persist because it will doom the USPS.
They sell 27 billion stamps a year. They need 15 billion dollars. Raise the price of each stamp by what, 55 cents? Is that math okay?
They're not really a department of the government any more.
They don't get government funding.
So why do they have to submit to the whims of insane government-agency-style regulation? (Specifically, they have been required to fund many years worth of healthcare and retirement benefits for an absurdly larger-than-reality estimated worker-base in a short timespan is insane. They are being forced to pay orders of magnitude more than reality says they should.)
I say either make them a fully-funded, doesn't-necessarily-need-to-pay-for-itself government-run utility again; or else completely free them, spinning them off as an independent company. Then it can compete in the open market for both revenue and expenses.
The USPS is a closed, proprietary mailing system which does not embrace Libre and open standards. Let it die.
The health plan mentioned in the blurb is what did this, not the Internet. The 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act forces USPS to put 75 years of healthcare benefits into an account within 10 years, something which was noted as ridiculous when the law passed. Also, this law is filled with provisions that say the USPS is *not* allowed to modernize in this era of the Internet. The law was pushed by lobbyists from companies like UPS and FedEx. It makes no sense to blame this on the Internet, since the direct cause of this massive shortfall was the 2006 law which caused the shortfall, a law which also prevents the USPS from modernizing. A postal service is one of the few "socialist" government nationalized enterprises mandated by the U.S. constitution, the Republicans and private mail carriers are doing all of this to try to do an end run around the constitution they supposedly love so much.
1. Cut delivery in most areas, definitely the rural ones to every other day. M-W-F and T-Th-Sa. This will cut number of mail carriers and fuel and vehicles needed, as 1 carrier now will get two routes. Express mail has it's own carrier so that will be unaffected for the people that pay for it.
2. Offer to take UPS and FedEx packages at the post office. People who want package for stuff they don't want delivered at home (theft, gifts, adult purchases, etc) have to rent a box at UPS or Fedex location at exorbinant rates. Let them rent a cheaper USPS box, get their mail and packages in one spot, come in, and bring some more business.
3. Consider offering an electronic mail service, where you can send certified/registered mail or even purchase money orders and send them right off online - and have USPS print them out and deliver them like normal letters. Premium services without ever going to the counter. Lawyer offices rejoice?
4. Call an international Postal Office congress. Get a cheap international tracking number and while at it, standardize all customs forms and registered form and other forms the world over with symbols. Too many packages get lost, too many registered packages with funny foreign postal languages go unheeded and the cheapest tracking number (unreliable) is with Express mail or Fedex/UPS with around $150 minimum ridiculousness, less for a business but still). Domestic tracking is like 0.75 cents. Even if they charge $5 for intl tracking, would be way cheaper than what's out there now and an untapped market. Especially for eBay sellers and the like.
5. On the eBay sellers front, try to break down customs barriers, especially with the EU. It's ridiculous.
The USPS's primary role these days seems to be cramming my mailbox with unsolicited and unwanted advertisements, and providing landfills with a limitless supply of dead trees.
Remind me again why we're still spending $billions to keep this going?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
This is so completely unnecessary. According to the census, there were 132 million households in the US last year. If everyone gets one piece of junk mail PER WEEK, that is 6.8 billion pieces of junk. At 2.5 cents per piece, they could come out with a profit (which they would spend, of course), but obviously they are not charging enough for junk. My household gets AT LEAST 4+ pieces of junk per day, though I am an engineer with decent income and mailorder presence that gets me put on a lot of lists. But seriously - 99.999% of it goes straight to the recycle bin. Make them pay!!
Be great to think they could improve efficiency and spend appropriately too...but there are plenty of other folks here pursuing that path.
What's killing them is continuously paying ridiculous pensions to their workers who retired years and years ago. They need to default on those pension agreements and stop the payments cold turkey or else they will *NEVER* financially recover.
The whole idea of continuing to pay someone's salary long after they've quit working is utterly stupid. You're supposed to put aside a portion of your earnings into retirement savings while you're actively working.
This is not about mail volume or heath costs. Try funding 75 years of pension value in 10 years. ..public or private entity.
"Unlike every other governmental agency, the Postal Service is required to fund 75 years of retiree health benefits over just a 10-year span."
Yep.... would not want the government to be successful at anything..except war and destruction. Oh and let us not forget....printing money for the rich.
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/8/1/as_us_postal_service_faces_default
For example, some sizes of PO box are sold out in some areas. This proves that they charge too little for those.
And there are surpluses of other sizes of PO box in other areas. This proves they are overcharging for them, and they lose PO box customers as a result.
Charging the wrong prices is a good recipe for failure. Is it any wonder why the USPS is losing money?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Just in time for Christmas :)
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Financial problems are not unique to the US postal service. The same kinds of issues are affecting mail carriers the world over. That said, our situation is particularly absurd. Keep in mind that this is the same entity that decided to eliminate clocks from post offices so that customers in line wouldn't have as clear a sense of how long they had been waiting. And they've got a tracking system that is complete and utter garbage. The service I've experienced from postal services overseas is better than what I get here.
There are two fundamental problems here: the first is the complete and utter chaos of a government run entity, although private corporations aren't necessarily any better, and second, the insane burden of employee entitlement programs. You've got these excessively generous pensions that should have never been offered to begin with and guaranteed pay raises. Why should government workers be entitled to these pensions? Don't they have social security, investments and personal savings like the rest of us?
It's tough to run what is a legacy business in decline when you can't change your service to suit the new environment due to the law. Case in point: Saturday delivery. It's just not necessary anymore and is hugely expensive, but they can't eliminate it without Congress getting involved.
That's no way to run an agency. Congress should remove all these restrictions and let the USPS modernize.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
The only reason the Post Office is having financial problems is because "fiscally responsible" republicans passed a bill that requires it to pre-fund pensions 75 years in advance. Yes, that's right. The USPS is required to have cash on hand for pensions for employees that have not even been born yet.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I get pretty tired of people demanding that public services operate as if they were private. I mean we already paid for this service with our taxes (theoretically) once. To demand that it run as a for-profit business is just going to kill it while charging us more and more for something we've already paid for. It's similar to British rail. First UK citizens paid for it dearly with taxpayer dollars to build it over the years. Then the government, in its infinite wisdom, sold it off and privatized it. Now British citizens, who already paid for BR many times over in the past, also have to pay for the privilege of using it! What a ripoff.
I'm okay with public services charging a nominal fee for the service, if anything just to keep it from being abused. But to be mandated to make money, or cover their own costs, is silly. Just budget the thing and be done with with. Why make citizens pay twice, which is what we are currently doing with the USPS. US citizens are paying taxes which provide money which the USPS borrowing/being rescued with, _and_ paying for their service. Of course that's a waste of money and not efficient.
I know the Libertarians will cringe here at all this, but really, since the USPS was part of the constitutional structure of the country to begin with, just make a department and be done. Running it like a private company is neither intrinsically more or less efficient than a public service can and ought to be.
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That's they way government should run its corporations, with a huge deficit. I'm telling you this by experience from a little communist country in eastern-europe.
Privatizing the USPS was a huge, huge mistake. Government services can't fail, but business can, and making the USPS a business opened up the door for potential failure.
Seriously, during Sandy, the USPS seemed to be the only service in Connecticut that seemed to be doing anything right.
Of course, if the the light and power companies were properly staffed and were proactive about outages, they'd be operating at a loss too.
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it goes against the capitalist ideals but maybe if only one company had trucks driving around to all of our houses it would be more efficient . and possibly a little cheaper.
The UPS proposed most of these. But Congress refuses to let them do this! It mostly Congress's fault.
I know USPS is part of the Govt, but can they file a case against the Govt for making them do this?
Make bulk mailers pay full price. This will have many effects: less volume => fewer workers needed, less gas used. Higher revenue per item means the now-smaller workforce is more sustainable. I don't get those stupid spam mails that just go straight into the recycle bin unopened.
I hear that ex-cons can work miracles with inefficient postal systems.
I'm simply going to say this.
The USPS *has* been gutted by corrupt politicians. No argument with that particular statement. That's the problem with government in general. Power corrupts and people need to CONSTANTLY be vigilant, trying to keep that power in check, if we expect to keep any kind of fair and functional government.
As for the "public is less efficient than private" comment? I wouldn't say it's a lie so much as "it depends". Government does certain things pretty efficiently. It's particularly useful when the country wants to undertake an extremely big project that has notable long-term benefits, but just doesn't show enough short term return on investment to interest private investors enough to fund the whole thing. (That's pretty much how we got the first man on the moon, for example. It's also how we put together the road and highway infrastructure we've got today. If that was done privately, I think at the very least, you'd see FAR more toll roads and roads with rules on who can use them and for what purpose.)
The thing is though, times change and what was "too big a project for the private sector" initially becomes doable over time. Space is being privatized successfully right now, making NASA increasingly irrelevant. The USPS is in the same situation. They have to adapt or become an anachronism.
As it stands today, I find the USPS very much a mixed bag. Generally, yes, the letters I send get delivered on time and efficiently. BUT, here's a prime counter-example. When I shut down my on-site computer service business recently, a buddy of mine wanted to take over with his company and service as many of my former customers as possible. So he paid to mail out letters to everyone in my address list informing them of the situation and enclosing his business card. Turns out nobody ever received that first batch -- and he even used 1st. class stamps on each one (not a bulk mailing rate). He sent out a second batch, which apparently finally started making it out to people, but took at least 2-3 weeks to arrive consistently. That is HORRIBLE service.
Just raise the price of postage a little and discontinue delivery services on Saturdays. That should take care of it. I know people have advocated replacing the USPS with private carriers but I don't like that idea at all. First, the USPS is a longstanding service invented by Ben Franklin before we even became a nation. Second, private carriers would probably be more expensive. Third, private carriers probably would not deliver to many rural and residential locations (much like Fed Ex and UPS operate now) that the USPS delivers to now. Fourth, we've seen that private carrier quality of service is really no better than the USPS http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57345876-71/computer-monitor-tossed-over-fence-by-fedex-man/
Case in point... the post office is open from 9am until 4pm here. Closed an hour for lunch. I get off work at 330 and can't get to my local post by 4pm... Really, I've pulled up at 3:57 by my cell phone and was greeted with a locked door and a friendly voice on the other side that said "We're closed". If they want to turn a profit, they should be open when people can get to them.
Case number 2... You can't buy stamps in the lobby any longer. The post master at my local office said the vending machines were too problematic and expensive to maintain, so they were removed. Now if you want to buy stamps, you have to get to the post office when they are open. See above for the likelyhood of that. I've received postcards from the USPS that offered to sell me stamps by mail.... with a postage fee added to my purchase. Are you kidding me?
It's almost like they don't want to make money and they want to drive customers away.
Contrast this to UPS. In my town, UPS is open from 1pm until 7pm. The working stiffs can actually use their services.
technically for accounting purposes it may be but the reason behind these large figures is that the congress mandated that USPS prefund the worker pension and medical plans to the tune of $11B. Aso to those calling for letting ups or fedex deliver the mail, good luck with that. It is debatable whether either firm could (or would) be able to scale to the size needed to deliver the amount of items the USPS handles each day - over 650 million. UPS does about 16 million.
As a Canadian, USPS is the only carrier option where I don't have to worry about insane brokerage fees (often 45% and upwards of a package cost).
Fedex and UPS both tend to be really horrible for this.
No more USPS, and I'll be ordering less packages from the US. I'd imagine that this won't be particularly good for business in the US.
The Republican Party wants the government to fail. They want to abolish the constitution and establish an Oligarchy. They want to end democracy and they want to enslave the population. They will do everything they can to cause government to fail. They will work to push us over the Fiscal Cliff and then say, "See, Government doesn't work!" They are trying to do exactly what the Nazi party did in taking over Germany in the 1930's. They are nothing but criminals, liars, and traitors to the nation. Keep you eye on them. They want to enslave you. All us "Liberals" (such a dirty word) need to ensure that we are fully armed and fully stocked with Ammo. Keep united with one another so that we can preserve the democracy and these United States for "We the People" and be not afraid to be prepared to have to fight to the death against these plutocrats!
Maybe they could get a reimbursement from Lance Armstrong for their sponsorship of his Tour de France cycling team.
Why they would be spending money on international advertising has always been baffling to me.
The United States Postal Office was created by the Second Continental Congress in 1775, became, the US Post Office Department in 1792, and remained a cabinet-level government department until 1971, when the Postal Reorganization Act moved it out of the regular structure of government into a government-directed corporation.
As much as I agree with the problems congress saddled on the post office, it doesn't need to me repeated 20 times in the same comment section and modded to +5 insightful every time. Repeating something louder and more often only serves to irritate, people who didnt get it the first or second time have their head in the sand anyway.
I'm not in the U.S. but the situation must be pretty similar world-wide.
What the post office needs to focus on at the moment is those areas where electronic mail can't touch them. Parcel delivery, for one. Now, I don't know about you, but having a job, Saturday is one day where I can guarantee to be at home pretty much any time, as opposed to other days, when I'm at work trying to earn a living.
And so, what do these smarties do and propose?
- Ending Saturday deliveries. Brilliant. That means that from now on, I'll never be home to accept my parcels. I'm sure many people couldn't care less if they don't receive any mail on Mondays or Wednesdays. They're likely at work and unable to receive the parcel anyway. If you must cut down on deliveries to the extreme and deliver mail only once a week, Saturday would be the best day to do that.
- Moving parcel pickup to the other side of town. Any time I'm not home to receive a parcel, I'll have to drive to the other side of town now to pick it up at my new "local" delivery office. Note that they haven't closed the actual local post office. As a result, any parcel now makes a giant detour to the other side of town. Sure, I can ask to have it redelivered at my former local delivery office. I'll have to make an extra call, it will take an extra day, they'll have to drag the parcel back to the delivery office (which is near my front door... where they already went with the parcel before) so they make more miles (i.e. more expensive transport!) and I'm supposed to pay extra for the added inconvenience. Once again, Brilliant.
Here's a clue bat. If people can email nowadays, they will. It's fast, convenient and it doesn't cost anything. For all other situations, we're still bound to your friendly physical delivery service. Sometimes you just have no choice but to send a letter. if 55 cents isn't enough to get the job done, for your own good, charge me double. If I've got to send it by post, I've got to send it by post. Same with parcels. Rather than charging me personally for the privilege of getting them delivered locally as before, but adding inconvenience and delays, how about just raising the postage by default? It's a physical package, so it can't be sent electronically just yet.
Oh wait, you've got competition of course! Somehow, though, other couriers seem to be doing fine delivering parcels at a certain price. If the postal services can't provide the same level of service at the same price, then I guess here's to survival of the fittest.
I'm tired of my forced upon me PO box being filled with dead tree products on a daily basis. I refuse to use US Mail out of spite. Get rid of bulk rates, let the US Mail service become the essential service it should be.
Currently, post is the only way to reliably transmit mail to someone. With email, there is no guarantee of receipt. There is no way to guarantee it went to the correct person. And it is the only way to send a message to someone when you only know their physical location. The USPS could step-in and provide these features.
For some examples of why this is a problem, note that legal documents are always sent via snail mail. I prefer to receive all my bills in snail mail because when I setup my credit card for email delivery, I get the email intermittently. The messages aren't in my spam mail folder. They aren't filtered at the server. They just never arrive. I have no idea why. The credit card company says they sent them, so who knows what happened.
It would be great to to be able to send something to "123 Lexington Street Hudson, OH" from my computer and be legally guaranteed it was received. If such a system required some reasonable postage, AND required the sender to prove their return address (a simple logon), then it would be no more subject to spam or abuse than current postal system. It might be better because it is easy to forge a return address with the current system.
All criticisms aside, it seems to me that the immediate problem can be addressed with a price adjustment on retail services. This PDF provides some interesting rough figures to play around with on page 4. I am specifically looking at the first figure ($66B in revenue), the second figure (167.9B "pieces of mail" delivered), and comparing with the reported $15.9B loss. Adding $66B revenue (all spent cash) plus the additional $15.9B loss gives us a total of $81.9B operational expenses.
Now divide $66B in revenue by 167.9B pieces of mail delivered and we get an average revenue of about $0.39 per piece of mail delivered - that is less than the current price of a "forever" stamp which is $0.45. That means that some amount of mail is being handled for less than $0.45 which is averaging down the revenue per piece of mail by almost 14%. If we divide our total operational cost of $81.9B by167.9B pieces of mail, we get about $0.49 actual average cost per piece of mail. If we correct for the 14% averaging down, that brings us up to $0.56 per piece of mail.
So I propose raising the base price of the forever stamps from $0.45 to $0.56 and proportionately for other lesser cost mail as well (e.g.post cards, flyers, etc.) Is 11 cents really all that much to ask? This doesn't seem like that big of a problem to me. Furthermore, I think this spoiled new generation of citizens has become so accustomed to their daily conveniences that it takes a hurricane Sandy to remind them of the value of a payphone. Will it take a collapsed postal system to realize the value of mail delivery? How much would it cost you to deliver the same piece of mail via an alternative commercial carrier? (hint: a lot more) How much would it cost you to personally deliver it and use none of them? (hint: unbearably more)
That one is easy: because they are required to serve everyone.
If they were run as a normal company, they would not want to run rural routes because they're not cost-effective. Fedex does not deliver to rural Alaska. USPS does.
Government agencies are better when (a) the service being provided falls into the category of "natural monopoly", and (b) when coverage is required to be universal. Especially (b) because as long as you have to serve everyone, you should probably be accountable to everyone. That whole "by the people, for the people" thing, as opposed to "by the employees, for the shareholders" thing.
I'm not a big fan of having a universal tax for the benefit of the shareholders of some company.
You can disagree with the necessity of having a good postal system, but (a) as you mention, the Founders did not, and (b) I'd suggest you try living in someplace that does not have a well-run postal system.
I've lived in rural Alaska. It's a lot like frontier America in 1776: the USPS was often the only way to get things. I've also lived in rural Costa Rica, and the inability to get anything by mail was a sharp and unpleasant contrast.
Honestly, I see the USPS as being an excellent example of how government services should be run, although I would rather they be subsidized a bit more heavily. Service charges should be designed to prevent (or recoup the costs from) overuse; the majority of operating funds should come from taxation. Charges on services with a universal mandate are a form of hidden taxation: I'd rather be up-front about it. The idea of government agencies being run as for-profit businesses is actually a severe misunderstanding of what government is for.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
It has ever been thus. Post offices were some of the first structures built in frontier America. In 1776 when the USPS was mandated in the Constitution, most of the country lived in rural areas. Socialism ain't all bad, you know, and in this case it's pretty obvious that this is how the system was designed to work. Take it up with those dead guys who are on all the money in this country.
Money! Now there's a socialist venture. We should go back to when all the banks printed their own notes.
Next time pick rural Alaska for the target of your sociopathy. It's an easier target.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
There are a lot of things that could be done to save the USPS. Unfortunately, it is business as usual with the Congress/Senate and USPS. The silly advertising for a government service, especially sponsoring Dragster/NASCAR/Sports Stadiums. The retirement plan, although nice, needs to get with all other business and have the retirement utilize employee 401K. Make Spam-mailers pay more for shipping, even citizens paying for shipping. Does a letter really only need to cost $.42 nowadays. Find out how much it costs now and charge accordingly, granted they would lose a some business, but that is where increasing spammers and catalog rates would come in. Mail deliverys and pickups, especially residential, only Mon-Wed-Fri and have the Actual office open on Tue & Thu only. Defintely should get rid of Saturday deliveries.
I infer for your use of "programme" that you're not a U.S. native. Thus you are excused from not knowing that it is explicitly illegal for one class of mail to subsidize another. The only (somewhat) credible evidence to suggest there is any subsidy in the U.S. system is the contention that the USPS overestimates the savings resulting from bulk mailing, and thus undercharges. One accusing voice: a postal union. Arguing the rates are right: the thousands of accountant types that work for the USPS. I'm not sure why you'd believe the union, myself, given that there's no motive for the USPS to miscalculate.
Anyway, you're not alone- I see at least 5 positively-modded comments that seem to believe there is some explicit and intentional subsidy for bulk mail
1. Have congress declare anything delivered by the USPS to have the same legal protections as the mail it currently delivers.
2. Establish email addresses that correspond to physical addresses; issue digital stamps.
3. Profit
dumbshit.
The USPS is bamkrupt because the republicans and liberatarians in congress have demanded they fully fund the pension for people who haven't been born yet, much less entered their payroll system.
Your Dorito munching ass would be broke too if you had to fully fund your retirement program, before you even started earning a living.
Maybe give USPS some sort of premium priority over other kinds of "deliveries", especially in Colorado and Washington. I bet the profits would be pretty high inside a month or so.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
That USPS loss is bigger than NASA's annual budget in any year up to 2007.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
my sister owns a water quality lab that tests drinking water for most of the state of Montana. she gets her samples by USPS. FedEx and UPS either don't deliver to most of her customers or are prohibitively expensive. note, these are many of the small farming and ranching towns that grow the wheat you eat and raise the cattle that turn into the juicy steak on your plate. if the USPS vanished tomorrow those places would not be able to certify their drinking water safe to drink, which they must do by law. that means fines they can't pay and the knock-on effects that brings for communities that teeter on the edge all the time anyway.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I check my mailbox once or twice a week. The only mail I ever send out is Christmas cards (no checks in my country). What's the use of delivering mail every day? You only collect trash once a week on a particular weekday. Why can't mail be the same way?
Markets are not a solution to everything. Read about natural monopolies. Like, before you read the rest of this post, even.
Rephrased, you're saying that the government can delegate authority to charge a tax for something to a private profit-driven entity.
Capitalism is what we call it when many entities compete to provide services. The competition part is what is good about that; it forces efficiency.
You're advocating Fascism.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
The Constitution says that Congress has the power "To establish Post Offices and post Roads" (Constitution, Article I, Section 8). A modern post road would include a medium of data transmission. Let the Post Office get in the business of including fiber down their post roads. Let them be responsible for the US network addresses.
You have it slightly wrong. There are Pensions, and Defined Benefit Plans. In a Pension plan you get a defined amount of money every month/year you live after a well defined retirement age.
Apparently you are confused about the definition of defined benefit plans (aka. pensions) and defined contribution plans (eg. 401k).
To reiterate: "defined benefit" is synonymous with pension. The *benefit* payout is defined as per the pension plan terms.
A "defined contribution" is a plan where an employer contributes a defined amount into an individually-owned account that is held by a custodial trustee. In the USA, these are the 401(k) plans Americans have come to "love". The retirement planning is the individual's responsibility, though there are basic actuarial tables one can use to determine the amount of money required for retirement.
Simply put, one can convert between a lump sum account like a 401(k) into a pension-like payout by purchasing an annuity (the present value of an annuity is simple to calculate using Excel, Calc, or a financial calculator). So, if you *really* want a pension-like guaranteed payout for the rest of your life you can buy an annuity on the open market by cashing out your 401(k) when you retire. Valuing an annuity is very straightforward.
Also, in a defined *contribution* plan like a 401(k) it isn't hard to avoid losing your shirt. Just contribute your money in the defined retirement date fund for your target retirement date. The "trick" is that equities (stocks) have more risk and potential reward (aka volatility). Thus, when one is young the preponderance of the portfolio should be in equities. When the time horizon is short (retirement is near), one should have a portfolio weighted in stable investments like bonds or cash equivalents. Those target retirement date fund options are configured to handle this portfolio shift automatically over time for the investor. "I put all my money in Enron" is a horrible excuse for ending up penniless.
Pensions are essentially extinct outside of government entities, for good reason. Defined contribution plans require more individual responsibility, but at least the account belongs to the individual and their heirs, in residual. That is an excellent feature that defined contribution plans have that defined benefits plans lack. As you stated, when you die (or perhaps your spouse as well, depending on the plan), the plan stops paying.
The USPS is the second largest employer in the nation behind Walmart. Republicans purposefully poisoned it to make it suffer and push people towards private. In 2006, during the lame duck session (before Dem control) Congress passed a bill forcing the "USPS to pre-fund retiree health care benefits for the next 75 years; a requirement that has not been placed on any other government agency. This pre-funding has to be completed in a ten year time span. In other words, the USPS is being required to pre-fund benefits for employees it has not even hired yet."
http://dailynewsfinder.com/2012/11/15/postal-service-in-danger-of-collapse-under-weight-of-retirement-funding-mandate/
...in a country where coal and oil companies receive large government subsidies.
Together with the strange pension requirement set by Congress, none of it makes sense.
The Post Office is not broke. The Post Office is required to set aside bilions in a retirement account that is covering people who have not yet been hired. The Post Office could use improvement in the way customers are served at the counters, but lots of people depend on them. http://youtu.be/KWKMPRFNowM?hd=1.l;
I talked to a postal employee that told me that the income from their services goes to support the war and other needs of the U.S. Government. So the big loss wouldn't be so big if the Government kept their hands out of the till. Just another example of the subterfuge that's goes on.