Slashdot Mirror
US Postal Service To Make Sunday Deliveries For Amazon
guttentag writes "The New York Times is reporting The USPS has struck a deal to deliver Amazon's packages on Sundays — a first for both. The Postal Service, which lost nearly $16 billion last year, often loses money on first-class mail delivery, but package delivery is profitable. The Postal Service said it expected to make more such deals with other merchants, seeking a larger role in the $186 billion e-commerce market. For this holiday shopping season, Sunday delivery of Amazon products will be limited to the Los Angeles and New York metropolitan areas. In 2014 it is expected to expand to other cities including Dallas, Houston, New Orleans and Phoenix."
privatize those fuckers!
http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2012/08/us-postal-services-forced-financial-crisis
In 2006 – Republicans in Congress passed a poison pill piece of legislation forcing the Post Office to pre-fund retiree health benefits 75 years out into the future – basically funding benefits for future employees who aren’t even born yet. The Postal Service has to do this by giving the Treasury $5.5 billion every single year. That’s a requirement that no business, or any government agency has ever had to comply with. And it’s the reason why the Post Office is going bankrupt today and looking into closing down post offices, laying off workers, and cutting down delivery service.
I always found that USPS was the way to go when buying things on Ebay and having the shipped from the US to Europe. I never had a problem with them, but the other players always ended up botching things up. I just cannot fathom how they can have such a bad reputation in the USA.
Across the Western world, it has been the Right's strategy to privatise popular public services by first deliberately ruining them. Then public perception changes toward, "Oh wow you're right state ownership doesn't work!"
Occasionally, this comes at a cost to human life, such as Thatcher's deliberate underinvestment in the railways, followed by Major's spinning off of Railtrack without any clear identification as to who is responsible for maintenance. But usually it's just a huge fucking waste of money, and the privatised industry ends up enjoying multiple subsidies and regulatory capture.
Well, based on your assessment I would say that 75 years in the future there will not be a Post Office, so the amount that is required to pre-fund retiree health benefits is exactly $0. Problem solved.
This, of course, it pretty much the way it ought to be, at least for current employees: Retirement benefits fully funded, instead of vague promises.
Of course, since this money is paid to the government, instead of being put in an independent fund, the government will just steal it and replace it with IOUs
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I wonder how soon people will realise that there is really no need for almost all normal non-packet mail. Most could be sent by email. There are very few documents that have to be sent physically but don't require signed or tracked delivery.
They are losing $16 billion a year because they pay out $5.5 billion a year for future pensions?
Bad math is bad math. If they didn't fund pensions at all, I guess you should expect future tax payers to just pay that, they are STILL behind $10.5 billion a year. Is that a success for your?
Also note, this bill was passed with STRONG bipartisan support as a way to show private business that pensions should be fully funded and how to do it. Revisionist history is revisionist history.
Just remove legislation protecting the USPS, together will any subsidies.
You mean remove the Constitution?
Despite your glib implication that subsidies are not needed, mail remains a vital service and it is important that it be available to everyone, even if this requires subsidies. There is no one else who realistically can replace the USPS including UPS and FedEx. This remains true despite falling mail volumes. Just because the postal service often seems to be mostly a paper spam delivery service doesn't mean it isn't also a vital service for communications. Remove subsidies right now and the USPS will collapse and yes that IS a Bad Thing (tm). While the USPS will need to adapt to modern times, the role it serves is a critical one and that isn't going to change.
And for those of you who remember fondly the good old days - The Post Office used to be open and deliver on Christmas day.
They also used to deliver multiple times a day. So what? We don't need that now. Times change.
Originally, the USPS was a government service, subsidized where necessary. It wasn't designed to operate as a private business or to make money. It was OK if it lost money because it was an overall boon to the economy. It worked fine that way for 200 years before it was privatized.
Now it's expected to operate as a private business and turn a profit in the existence of a competive marketplace while bound by rules and financial burdens its competitors do not have to bear. FedEx and UPS do not have to deliver anywhere they don't want to, to deliver on any days they don't want to; they have unregulated rates, don't subsidize anything and don't have to pre-fund retirement benefits.
It's a recipe for destruction. It might be saved by completely removing all regulations OR by giving it real subsidies in exchange for the regulations it bears that its competitors do not. It can't go on the way it is.
That's not so far off. If the USPS must pay $5 billion per year, then it shows continual losses, and the whole program can be cut. The Treasury then has a surplus of cash that's no longer earmarked for future employees, so it's a simple bit of labeling magic to release it into general funds.
That means that whatever party does eventually kill the USPS gets to claim responsibility for a few tens of billions of dollars additional revenue for the Treasury. With the right spin, the public at large will be aghast at how the irresponsible other party could have let the Postal Service survive so long when it was so obviously financially beneficial to shut it down.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
The last word from the USPS was that ending Saturday delivery was the key to staying solvent. Now opening on Sunday is the key to survival?
While I personally would appreciate their taking Saturday off and bringing me just goodies on Sunday, the underlying cognitive dissonance seems awfully loud this morning.
With cities in China.
In Shanghai, same day delivery or delivery in 2 hours is often the norm.
Yes, really.
I see this posted over and over again but nobody can explain why it was passed or why the Democrats never tried to stop it.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Well, while it was signed by a republican president and sponsored by a republican, it was cosponsored by 2 dems and a republican. It also passed house with a voice vote, and the senate with a unanimous vote.
This was a completely bipartisan bill that our whole government went in on.
Even the postal unions were for this (Why I have no idea).
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let's also remember the current post office is protected from many searches by the government, private entities are not. That is also a driving force here.
The Democrats strongly supported it. He is pretending that didn't happen. They also never tried to repeal it when they had the chance.
He is attempting to deceive you and hopes you won't go around asking questions.
Whatever their cost, they should charge appropriately. First class mail should not be losing money. Bulk mail should cost more but instead they neglect the delivery cost, claiming the mail person will be making the stop anyway. If USPS is losing money it's because it's used to subsidize marketing for business. If the low cost mail wasn't there I think I'd only get actual first class about 2-3 days a week, so those other 3-4 stops are really for mail that they charge next to nothing for.
Please stop repeating this lie, granted it is repeated enough on alot of hate sites. For you it was probably a mistake since you did not know the truth.
Congress want to protect the taxpayer from having to take over the duties that the USPS said they would do,back in the 70s, the postmaster general and the postal unions want to make the taxpayers pay for their poor management and keep things as they are.
The postal accountability law,2006, requires the USPS to actually do some proper financial management and dropping it would not make them competitive again; even ignore the money they owe for this they would of lost money for the last couple of years. Without the money set aside they would not be able the meet the obligations they agreed to back in the 1970s and the people who retiring now would not have the monies that they are suppose to get. Privatization would solve nothing of this since the obligations would follow the person who purchased the company.
BTW the 75 years is number of years that is for ACCOUNTING purposes they have to figure future liabilities. It is NOT how long they have to fund benefits. That 75 years of accounting is followed by the DoD, social security, department of Housing, etc.
I wonder how soon people will realise that there is really no need for almost all normal non-packet mail.
Not even remotely true. Delivery of physical documents remains a vital service for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that many people do not have computers. Furthermore there is no other organization, public or private (including FedEx and UPS), that has the infrastructure to deliver envelopes to virtually any mailing address in the US like the USPS can and certainly not for the price point the USPS charges.
Most could be sent by email. There are very few documents that have to be sent physically but don't require signed or tracked delivery.
Which helps people who cannot afford computers how exactly? Paper mail has a least common denominator quality to it. Pretty much everyone with an address can and does utilize it. Not everyone has a computer or can afford an internet connection nor should they be expected to do so. Perhaps many years down the line electronic delivery of documents will become ubiquitous and computers will become sufficiently cheap but that time will probably require another generation or two to die off before it happens.
Because it actually forces the pensions to be funded - it's obvious why the union would like it.
Look at the cities going bankrupt in California, as an example. It's unfunded pension liabilities that are dragging them down. The USPS is being forced to actually make good on their promises, otherwise we'll have to bail out their pension fund in the future. The gripe (somewhat legit) is that they're being singled out for this treatment while every other government agency with promises that are going to be broken aren't given this treatment.
Do you have ESP?
Well, while it was signed by a republican president and sponsored by a republican, it was cosponsored by 2 dems and a republican. It also passed house with a voice vote, and the senate with a unanimous vote.
That doesn't mean as much as you think it does. Perhaps to the surprise of nobody, our lawmakers rarely read the full text of the bill they vote on, instead trusting their underlings to summarize it. Sometimes hundred page documents get about as much space as a Twitter post in the mindspace of these guys before they vote on it. And you might have noticed... the names are less and less related to the thing they're about with every new session. At this point, I fully expect to see a Strengthing America's Freedom Act authorizing labor camps and bringing back debtor's prisons in the not too distant future. :/
So there is that. And the argument can be made that whether it was the Republicans or the Democrats... the result rather speaks for itself. Also, questionable what difference there really is between the two parties... since right now over 93% of candidates who win elections are better financed than their opponent. It's clear there really is only one political party: The Richy McRich Club. What colors you wanna wear they leave up to you, but ultimately, both parties are just part of one organization that's only really distinct in the minds of the poor and the uneducated.
But the OP is right: It was fine before it was shot in the head by our government.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I got a Sunday package delivery via USPS from Newegg.
https://tools.usps.com/go/TrackConfirmAction_input?origTrackNum=4200705492748901015478100001164480
the 10th(yesterday) was a Sunday, kind of weirded me out when I got a knock on my door and a package was dropped off.
One would think, in a better age, that the Right would recognize the having taxpayers pay for the creation of large-scale infrastructure, under one understanding of their relationship to that infrastructure, then selling it to a private industry in violation of that understanding... ...could be described by the term "MASSIVE THEFT".
Such consistency in thought process seems long gone nowadays, though.
The other gripe is that they are funding pensions too far into the future.
The requirement should be, that money is put away for a person's pension the day they are hired, as the pension grows, the appropriate funds should be put into the fund. This way when the person retires the fund has the money and the employer isn't suddenly on the hook for anything (all the funds already having been put into the account).
What it should not be, is funding pensions for employees that have yet to be conceived much less born.
Add that to the fact they have to go to congress whenever they want to make changes to their business structure (stop letter delivery on Saturday, change price of stamps, etc).
They might not be funded by congress but they ultimately are controlled by congress. With congress as dysfunctional as it is, is it any wonder USPS is having issues?
would of
the people who retiring now would not have the monies that they are suppose to get
$5.5 billion is a lot of money... however the USPS lost about $15.9 billion last year.
http://todaynewsgazette.com/usps-losses-2012/
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I remember the USPS advertising Sunday delivery for Express Mail quite a long time ago -- ten years or more, I think.
Still advertised today: http://pe.usps.com/businessmail101/classes/express.htm. A bit more digging indicates that there's a $12.50 surcharge for Sunday/holiday delivery.
So, since USPS was already offering Sunday delivery, the news here must be some favorable pricing terms for Amazon. Which, of course, they're not going to specify in detail.
Even the postal unions were for this (Why I have no idea).
These days, many pension funds (including govt pension funds) are extremely underfunded - they don't have the cash on hand to pay out the promised retirement benefits.
There are a few possibilities:
1. The employer coughs up more cash to the pension fund.
2. Pension fund investment returns increase dramatically.
3. Promised pension benefits get cut dramatically.
I suspect that the postal workers feel safer having real money earmarked & set aside for them instead of just a promise to pay.
Do not discount the impact of the Internet on the declining use of traditional mail services, or the fact that almost half of what is delivered is junk mail, almost all of which just gets thrown away. You can't only blame privatization while completely ignoring the most significant advance in communications technology in human history. Let's face it -- traditional mail services just aren't important as they were before the Internet.
My mailbox is filled with junk mail every day. In fact, I bet I get 3-4X as much junk mail as I do legitimate mail. I probably get 1-2 newspaper-like ads every week from grocers that I've probably never opened.I bet the USPS would start making money if they started charging these guys closer to regular rates. Well, assuming they can't get the pension pre-funding fixed in Congress.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Here's why we shouldn't privatize. Capitalism thrives not on an unregulated market but on a competitive market. There are two major non-US post services in the US, FedEx and UPS. So in a population of ~300 million there is essentially no competition in the US private post business. Furthermore, if the USPS went away there's no reason to assume that we'd get more competitors in the market. It requires a huge capital investment in planes, trains (maybe?), and trucks that makes entering the market unfeasible. The only way we'd get actual competition is if we went AT&T deal-of-the-century on the two companies and split them to the point that there would be competition in that market. Unfortunately, with a population of 300 million, that'd require us to split FedEx and UPS into about 300,000 different services most of which would promptly go under and the post system would completely crash. To sum up infrastructure services and capitalism don't mix well.
Instead we should have done the logical thing and expanded the medium of services of the post office provides, make the USPS the national internet and phone provider (they should have expanded into the telegram service when that was a thing, but that is no longer relevant). Broadband would become a national mandate. Internet communications would be constitutionally protected in the same manner snail mail is as well.
they are losing $16 billion a year now partially because they couldn't spend that $5.5 billion a year to invest in new revenue streams since 2006.
had they been able to reinvest at last a portion of that into themselves then they may not be losing money today.
Don't forget that Google's transmographication of physical junk mail to digital junk mail has also diminished the revenue stream of the PO as has Amazon's 800 lb Gorilla negotiating tactics which forced UPS to lower its service price and led to DHL fleeing the US market.
The race to the bottom has many feet. The fact that pensions (which did lower capital investment costs, mainly to the benefit of stockholders) have become unsustainable when global competition pits every worker on the planet against all others shouldn't be any surprise.
The fact is that our convenient economic myths about what is 'good' for everyone are usually incomplete and slanted in favor of those who make the argument for concessions. The further out the prognostication, the less likely the underlying assumptions are to remain accurate, and fairness is in the eye of the asset holder.
Well, while it was signed by a republican president and sponsored by a republican, it was cosponsored by 2 dems and a republican. It also passed house with a voice vote, and the senate with a unanimous vote.
This was a completely bipartisan bill that our whole government went in on.
No, it was a monopartisian bill. A perfect example of how there is really just one party in Washington.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
otherwise we'll have to bail out their pension fund in the future.
You mean like we did for every major airline in the country?
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
They also have advantages their competitors do not get:
Favorable taxes on their property and fleet.
Implicit backing of the US gvt.
Meh,
If anyone at the post office knew what they were doing, they would just say they'd stop highering new people.
That way they can just report that they will have $0 in future pensions.
Job done.
So now you're selling your postal service -- one of the most heavily regulated and citizen-protecting services -- to a private corporation. Really glad I don't live there. Let me know how it all turns out.
This good news must be driving those anti-government people crazy right now.
the only thing i don't like about USPS is the preferential treatment to various users of said product.
we have gas taxes to mitigate asymmetric use of roadways. yet, bulk senders get a discount?
now.... amazon gets preferential treatment for Sunday delivery?
NO. That IS WRONG.
everyone should pay the same rate, if they send one envelope or 10 million. If they choose to deliver packages ONLY on Sunday, great!---but it should deliver packages mailed from everyone--not some backroom deal for only one company.
This is called corruption.
Delivering packages to NYC is a disaster if you don't have a doorman because you have to be home to sign for it. Many buildings have no good place to leave a package. Some buildings solve this with a "virtual doorman" which is an indian call center reachable by eyeball-camera videoconferencing that buzzes the delivery guy into a locked package-room. Most people I know get packages sent to work, so Sunday delivery is useless there. I guess this could help if you could specify the package will _only_ be delivered on Sunday, but even then staying home the whole day on Sunday is really too much to ask a new yorker---I'd rather send the package to work.
If you can't specify "Sunday delivery only," I think it won't help at all. USPS is the worst because (1) they claim to redeliver, or let you sign asynchronously and take your chances the package won't get stolen, and they even have an online form to fill out like UPS does, but in New York they don't actually do it. They just ignore the forms. They are quite sullen, and the quality of mail carriers isn't even close to uniform. It's really shocking. (2) if you try to pick up your package at the post office, YHAL. You have to wait 45 - 60 min in a horrible environment.
A carrier like UPS or Fedex seems to give lots of discretion to the delivery guy, and he will even learn that you tend to be home on Sundays and aim your delivery attempts to then, and anyway you get three attempts. Then there's also UPS MyChoice for recipient-controlled delivery timing and package holding (though Amazon disables some mychoice features). USPS however will just try once, then hold the package at their awful third-world post office. I think "competent delivery guys," "redelivery," "lots of offices with fast service and non-retarded clerks and decent waiting-environments," and mychoice, are worth way more than Sunday delivery.
Amazon doesn't let you choose the carrier, so I'm hoping I won't get more deliveries forced through USPS after these business "deals" go through.
Nope, but the USPS has seen a drastic increase in the number of packages which carry higher postage charges. When teleportation/replication becomes widespread, that's when they will need to worry.
Agree - there needs to be a balance.
Honestly, I think that pensions in the current form mislead employees and put them at a real disadvantage. Traditional pension plans allocate most of their funds to an employee only after they've been employed for many years, so it makes it hard for employees to move around. At the same time, companies have no obligation to actually keep the employee around. So the employee is staying put for the promise of a future gain that the company may never deliver.
And that is all if the company actually makes good on the pension in the first place. Pension funds are considered the property of the company and employees become just like any other creditor if the company goes into bankruptcy.
I'm fine with creating incentives for people to save for retirement. However, ALL compensation really needs to be paid in full at the time the work is done. Every two weeks the employee and the company should be "even" - neither party owing the other anything aside from minor transactions like expenses/etc. Any kind of retirement savings should be in an account owned by the employee, like a 401k. Companies would not be permitted to advertise the future value of these plans - they could only declare what they contribute to them up-front. I wouldn't allow any kind of compensation based on years of service either (including vacation time and retirement contributions). Just pay people for the work they do.
Socialize the losses, privatize the gains. That's the Republican way.
Down here in Blood Red Texas, they're floating an idea to have all of us invest in power plants so the power companies don't have to spend their capital on capital improvements. Of course, none of us will get dividends or shares in the power plants, the power companies get to own the power plants the rest of us paid for. We get the worst parts of socialism and capitalism combined.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I think mail delivery on weekends is strange.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
If you want to get into "what we really should be doing", then the answer is "get rid of pensions and give everybody a 401K/403B/tax-sheltered-retirement-savings-plan".
Do you have ESP?
otherwise we'll have to bail out their pension fund in the future.
You mean like we did for every major airline in the country?
Yes. What's your point?
Do you have ESP?
They are only protected from indiscriminately opening every package. Since they are a gov't agency, they helpfully scan the outside of every letter/parcel for use by our overlords as the FBI/CIA without even a warrant.
Hopefully, the other package services require law enforcement to have a warrant to do the same or to seize/open packages [but we can't be sure].
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Well, another way to think about it is that the bulk mail is there to smooth out the cost and revenue for the delivery process. You might get real mail 2-3 times per week, but I'd be willing to wager that there are individuals and even whole neighborhoods who don't get first class mail more than once a week. Without something to deliver daily, it might make sense to reduce schedules in certain areas even more, which would reduce the overall value of the service because then even sending out mail would take longer. Incremental cost of delivery would go up, overall value would go down. Without heavy subsidies, getting rid of bulk/DMA delivery would likely further the divide between haves and have-nots.
Don't get me wrong; I despise bulk mail, and it inevitably goes right in the recycling bin for me. However, to suggest that it's a pure subsidy for the businesses that use it, without also showing the benefit that the USPS and the people who send and receive mail through it is not entirely fair.
My personal view is not a popular one: I think it is OK for a service like the USPS to be heavily subsidized in locations and during times when it is losing money. Not all things of value necessarily produce enough revenue to reflect that value. Destroying the mail infrastructure would, in my humble opinion, injure our democracy and lead to problems that we have yet to imagine.
That being said, there are other ways to skin this cat. If the folks on the Hill were to amend the Constitution to indicate that Internet access is a human right, and provide funding such that even the poorest of the poor had basic access via, say, smart phones at a rate which is affordable to all, I'd be OK with gutting the USPS. But I don't see that happening any time soon.
Of course, now that I think about it, T-Mobile is sort of doing that. If you just want to pay your bills, send a few emails a week, their free 200 MB for life for tablet owners is actually pretty good...
The CB App. What's your 20?
As I understand it, for regulated services USPS is not allowed to offer any negotiated prices to any company. Sunday delivery is presumably an unregulated add-on, but for normal weekday package delivery Amazon has to pay the same prices as any other shipper. One way Amazon gets around that is by using their own trucks to move packages as close to the consumer as possible, then mailing the package only a short distance. The post office can also unofficially rebate money by doing joint advertising.
Isn't that far far better than the current situation, where companies *don't* have the money to fund the promised retirement benefits?
(BTW, I think there are TONS of examples seen in the news where people get FAR FAR FAR too much in retirement -- but it is also VERY wrong to change what people get after the fact/after they started employment. So the "cushy deals" should still exist for those who already got them, but new employees should have regular 401ks or similar.)
Now great employees and a nationwide infrastructure can again do something very useful!
Yes, that's why we should get rid of pensions, and make all retirement plans 401(k)s, or similar.
Why don't you simply *stop* the junk mail in the first place?
The free iOS app PaperKarma lets you take snapshots of your junk mail to unsubscribe that way.
There's more info about stopping junk mail at:
http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0262-stopping-unsolicited-mail-phone-calls-and-email
and
https://www.catalogchoice.org/
There is a war being waged against the USPS by corrupt and ideological fanatics (who ignore the constitutional mandate for the USPS.)
They NEVER had money problems, they will run at a loss if they have to - it's a constitutional required service of government (aka non-profit.) The idiotic things going on are part of the political war against them, the pensions for the unborn being a fake budgetary disaster invented by the enemy so they can exploit the "crisis."
1st moves were to cut costs, since management is required to abide by the laws passed to destroy themselves. These were known to fail because they had enough allies in government to prevent the plans from happening, it was a political move to gain public attention and to legally meet the ridiculous demands being placed upon them. Sadly, the idiotic media didn't inform the public that the crisis was BS so people think email is killing the USPS and that it has to make a profit like a business (the media get advertizing from the USPS and UPS and FedEx so one wonders why it can't be fair.)
2nd moves were to EXPAND instead of shrink. Cutting saturday service was a transition or hybrid solution in that they were keeping package delivery. This new plan is a full-on expansion -- doubly enjoyable because it is EXACTLY the opposite of what the enemy wanted! Any major change is going to have to be phased in. Plus anything that WORKS is going to be under heavy attack to prevent it from happening, just as the attacks were heavily defended against. By focusing on Amazon in major cities they'll have a quick trail run that CANT BE STOPPED with amazing results to defend further expansion of the plan. You know they are serious when they are so strategic about implementation; the Saturday plan seemed a bit heavy handed which made me think it was a compromise gesture to illustrate a point.
The USPS is ours; it belongs to the citizens.
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A Republican bill???
There were 163 cosponsors of the bill: 104 DEMOCRATS, 58 Republicans, and 1 independent.
Republican bill????
There were 163 cosponsors of the bill: 104 DEMOCRATS, 58 Republicans, and 1 independent.
Oh, I didn't mean the USPS shouldn't be subsidized. I view it as a government provided service that we pay to use. The government part means it's available everywhere to everyone, while paying to use it makes it more fair. I don't expect it to make money - at best it should brake even, so government subsidy at times is fine. What I have a problem with is first class mail subsidizing junk mail. Without junk mail you'd still need a carrier to visit every day for pickup, but the stop will still be faster without a pile of crap to put in there. Or they could make the service run every other day, but that increases worst case delivery by 2 days. There are lots of ways to make adjustments, but having bulk pay well under 10 cents is really a bad joke since it still uses all the infrastructure that first class has put in place.
If they want to run it like a business and not a government provided service then they at least have to charge enough to pay their bills, and that includes ALL mail.
Los Angeles county his huge. I read somewhere that it is about the same size as the state of Rhode Island. I wonder how big the delivery area will be for LA county. I wonder if the post office will deliver to the northern valleys (Santa Clarita, Antelope). Or maybe the post office will only deliver mail to the cities and suburbs right around Los Angeles and mabye Long Beach and Santa Monica.
Seriously, an intelligent business move by the post? This is splendid news, should it actually pan out. Now if only I could get my stuff to ship on a weekend.
Really, nothing is more annoying than how packages suddenly stop at the end of the "week". My week is tied to my payroll, and it runs Wednesday to Tuesday. If you think I stop handling orders when Saturday morning comes along, you're nuts, and I know the guys in SR don't stop either. It's about time we moved into a 24/7 model for shipping, at UPS ground rates.
Occasionally, this comes at a cost to human life, such as Thatcher's deliberate underinvestment in the railways, followed by Major's spinning off of Railtrack without any clear identification as to who is responsible for maintenance. But usually it's just a huge fucking waste of money, and the privatised industry ends up enjoying multiple subsidies and regulatory capture.
Ooh... you're so cynical, but be fair- it's resulted in a far more efficient and low-cost railway system that's affordable by everyone in the country.
Oh wait, no it hasn't. It's given us railways that cost far more than comparable systems in other countries, resulting in obscenely priced tickets that are only affordable to well-paid professionals. You know it's bad when the first result from Googling "British railways expensive compared" is a f*****g Daily Mail article making this point.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
That’s a requirement that no business, or any government agency has ever had to comply with.
Yet apparently about 1/4 of the companies with this type of long-term retirement benefit, do set aside that money. It can be done either way (set aside, or plan/calculate future expenditures), but in the case of the USPS they were basically spending that money with no plan to be able to pay retiree benefits. As that money is intended to be for the retiree's future expenses, then if the USPS isn't setting it aside, then really they are borrowing it from the retiree. It's no different than GM borrowing out of the pension funds with no plan to pay it back.
USPS would have defaulted on the Treasury Loan regardless of this bill.
That's not so far off. If the USPS must pay $5 billion per year, then it shows continual losses, and the whole program can be cut. The Treasury then has a surplus of cash that's no longer earmarked for future employees, so it's a simple bit of labeling magic to release it into general funds.
That $5b/year is due to the USPS being force to paying towards it's existing debts held by the Treasury. USPS currently has about $46b worth of unfunded liabilities because they haven't been setting aside or planning for future retiree benefits. You are aware that USPS can not be funded via general funds by law, right?
They also have advantages their competitors do not get:
Favorable taxes on their property and fleet.
Enough to offset prefunding retirement for people they won't hire for another 40 years? Enough to make them come by my house every day whether or not they have mail to deliver? Enough to allow them to deliver a letter for 46 cents when FedEx charges $9.50 to deliver a letter across the country?
Implicit backing of the US gvt.
That and two-fifty will get you a cup of coffee.
So, if you are big enough to strike some major deal then you can get a special treatment from the "basic infrastructure"? And an up-and-coming small competitor for Amazon will be at a disadvantage, since they aren't big enough for such a deal. This is different than paying for faster delivery or registered shipping, since those things can be done on a per-packet basis, with the cost being directly visible to the customer. Is it now the job of the US postal service to cement the market dominating position of a certain company by allowing such deals? If we are for net neutrality on the Internet, shouldn't we be for "neutrality" in other infrastructures as well?
They are losing $16 billion a year because they pay out $5.5 billion a year for future pensions?
Bad math is bad math. If they didn't fund pensions at all, I guess you should expect future tax payers to just pay that, they are STILL behind $10.5 billion a year.
Nope. Read TFA, and following the links. There is a GAO report linked therethat contains details of the USPS budget shortfall.
According to the GAO report, $32 billion of the $41 billion shortfall in the past 6 years is due to the pension requirements. If 78% of the shortfall is due to an unreasonable requirement, I think we can say that it's a significant contribution.
As for the rest, the new requirement for pensions came into effect right about the time that first-class mail use began to decline (2008). If the USPS had its normal budget, it might have been able to make investments in its own infrastructure, try to figure out ways to deal with that decline, etc.
Instead, every year it has Congress forcing it into more debt. Imagine if you suddenly had to make payments each year that broke your budget, and just at that moment your sources of income started going down.
People faced with desperate situations make difficult decisions, which sometimes force them into further debt. As an individual, you might be forced to drop some of your insurance coverage, get into credit card debt, etc., rather than investing money in things that would help you recover.
Congress's requirements put the squeeze on the USPS in the same way, at the worst possible moment. I'm not saying everything was managed great, but the USPS was basically balancing the books until this pension requirement came along... and the vast majority of losses since have come from it.
Your voice to text is broken. You made a comment about how socialism cannot possibly be cost effective and kills people, but your autocorrect converted it to an anti-capitalist piece.
However, I'm sure there's a competing company that makes a VTT that works better. Good thing you don't live in a country with a single source of hardware.
You are absolutely correct that failing to plan ahead for inevitable social costs is one of the critical flaws of the left, and that they fight it even when their own legislation should include it, then try to blame the conservatives for their failure.
http://www.techyclick.com/amazon-postal-service/, you need to see this and i am sure that you wont be surprised after checking that article. it is all clear about amazon
The thing is, I **DO** have the balls to say it to his face. By staying anonymous he's ensured that can't possibly happen, making him the coward. BTW, haven't you ever drank a cup of coffee in a park, at the bus stop, or any other neutral location? Starbucks isn't the only place to drink coffee.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Like it or not, you're part of the community of 21st Century North Americans. The overwhelming majority of people in that group do not want to see starving widows and orphans in the street, a sight which was common before the introduction of Social Security. They want clean water and breathable air and uncontaminated food. They want their shit to disappear down the drain when they flush rather than have to crap behind the bushes, they want their garbage to be taken away rather than pile up in the street, they want bridges over the rivers, they want their streets to be lighted at night, and they want to know that the medicine they're prescribed is pure and has some likelihood of helping them. By and large, they want civilization. Civilization costs money. Money needs to be raised through taxes.
There are still plenty of places where people can go live the heroic go-it-alone mountain man existence. For the rest of us the values of community and the desire to provide a better life for ourselves, our progeny, and others in our community override the greed and self-centered myopia of the few. That's civilization, love it or leave it.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
I really like this. It's a good way to frame the discussion, and it's a discussion we really need to have as a country. I'd change it to "a good chunk of people", but yeah.
Are we, as a society, okay if a good chunk of people don't get BLANK. What are the repercussions of some people NOT having BLANK.
It's a good place to start, and I wish we'd start there instead of just throwing ideology.
I'm glad I've known enough Yupers over the years to know that you're not a typical example, because otherwise I might be embarrassed to admit that my grandmother was from Marquette. Your family hasn't been in the UP since the 1600s, the Sioux lived there then. The Hurons didn't push them out until the tail end of that century.
You're apparently younger than I am. I remember quite well when the copper smelters had left a plume of dead land several miles downwind, when many of the rivers ran weird colors when the rain ran off the mountains of mine tailings, the enormous dead zones in Lake Superior surrounding every pulp mill, and their appalling stench. Welcome to 2013, when the water is clean and the air is breathable because of the government regulations enforced with tax dollars taken from people like me to assist people like you. You're welcome.
When is the UP finally going to get around to declaring their independence from the US so that you don't have to pay taxes any more? They've been talking about it since I was a little kid in the 1960s, but every time someone points out that they'll lose their welfare checks and it quiets down. Those people in Alabama and Mississippi and Tennessee that "don't want to be robbed at gunpoint so their money can be used to support people they don't even like" really needn't fret either. They suck down far more tax dollars from those of us in the Blue states than they'd ever dream of paying, the same as the UP. Maybe some day they'll start to pull their own weight, but not in the foreseeable future.
You needn't worry about me, if the crash comes I'll be punching wells, building windmills, growing mushrooms in depths of the parking garages and tomatoes on their roof, smoking salmon, and making wine. I'll feel sorry for the rednecks condemned to drinking from the river their neighbor crapped in upriver, eating venison 200 days a year and suckers and carp the rest.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
You're from Alabama and you moved to the UP? No wonder you have an attitude. It's a wonder you survived the first winter.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Have to admit, this has been one of the more entertaining threads. I've been threatened with injury, dismemberment, and death online many times, but this is the first time that my offense was simply pointing out some of the virtues of civilization.
BTW, it doesn't matter how long you live in the UP, those people are never going to consider you a local. If you, and probably your parents, weren't born there you'll never be a real Yuper.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Thanks! I didn't know about the FTC option. Hopefully it works better than the "do not call" list.
The CB App. What's your 20?