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Trump Wants Postal Service To Charge 'Much More' For Amazon Shipments (reuters.com)
President Donald Trump said the U.S. Postal Service should charge Amazon more to deliver packages, the latest in a series of public criticisms of the online retailer and its billionaire founder. From a report: "Why is the United States Post Office, which is losing many billions of dollars a year, while charging Amazon and others so little to deliver their packages, making Amazon richer and the Post Office dumber and poorer? Should be charging MUCH MORE!" Trump wrote on Twitter. The president's tweet drew fresh attention to the fragile finances of the postal service at a time when tens of millions of parcels have been shipped all over the country for the holiday season. The U.S. Postal Service, which runs at a big loss, is an independent agency within the federal government and does not receive tax dollars for operating expenses, according to its website. The U.S. president does not determine postal rates. They are set by the Postal Regulatory Commission, an independent government agency with commissioners selected by the president from both political parties. That panel raised prices on packages by almost 2 percent in November.
While they probably should, Trump feels this way because Jeff Bozo, who owns Amazon, also owns the NYT - or as Trump says "Fake News"...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
the GOP shouldn't have forced them to pre-fund the pension plan then.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
I think he's right - the USPS is subsidized and should not hand that subsidy to megacorps like Amazon.
Let Amazon use UPS or FedEx.
i mean why does the USPS operate at a loss subsidizing/enabling one of the largest companies in the US to make more money?
(i hate agreeing with Trump)
Slashdot Editors, is there any chance that we can talk about something other than President Trump today?
There have been numerous submissions attacking him in one way or another.
The word "trump" currently appears on the front page 11 times!
How many times does the term "linux" appear? Zero!
How many times does the term "programming" appear? Only twice!
How many times does the term "math" appear? Zero!
If we were really this interested in President Trump, then we'd go visit the websites of CNN, or MSNBC, or the NYT, or one of the many other web sites covering politics.
The whole point of Slashdot is to cover news that the mainstream media doesn't focus on.
They're already very focused on President Trump. Slashdot shouldn't be. We're here to learn about things like Linux, programming, software, computing, electronics, math, and science. We're not here for politics!
Seems like that story is lacking some important context; something I just read about earlier (and not because of the tweet) is that Amazon gets about $1.46 per box in subsides due to first class mail costs.
Amazon is making a LOT of money, why does the federal government need to be giving them what amounts to a huge break on shipping? As a Prime member I'm sure that would raise my rates but I don't think everyone in the U.S. should be paying for my quicker shipping.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
postal service can stop pre-funding pensions for 75 years later.
"Why is the United States Post Office, which is losing many billions of dollars a year, while charging Amazon and others so little to deliver their packages, making Amazon richer and the Post Office dumber and poorer?
The postal service is providing a service to the public at a rate set by them. They're in direct competition with UPS and Fedex and shouldn't have HIGHER prices than their competition.
But as for those in REMOTE areas or PO Boxes that UPS and Fedex won't service affordably...... the USPS serve a useful public function. They're not subsidizing Amazon so much as they're subsidizing mail order: but for some in remote areas, mail order is the only practical way of purchasing some simple necessities that can't be had from a local Walmart, because there is no local Walmart.
...and that makes them decide to charge less?
Kinda got that backwards.
If you have financial problems, you don't charge less money for something when you're already losing money on it.
... shouldn't throw stones.
Mr Trump the President has already learned how hard it is to drive change through the morass of government bureaucracy. Hopefully *President* Trump will come to his sense.
Mr Trump the Businessman might be extraordinarily wealthy by comparison with the proverbial Joe Average. But in comparison with Jeff Bezos, one of Amazon's largest shareholders, he's barely a nickel-and-dimer. Taking cheap shots like this at a *very* successful businessman is a good way to provoke someone in to responding.
Something tells me that Mr Trump wouldn't fare so well if this escalated into a commercial conflict with Mr Bezos.
Pass the popcorn.
My, my. He does tweet a lot.
Not sure they should charge amazon more money, but USPS should not be losing money. They need to drop bulk rate discounts and stop trying to be UPS/FEDEX/DHL and just deliver the mail.
This is presumably a profitable business for the USPS, an increase in prices would just drive the business elsewhere.
What they want is the end of the USPS, with private services replacing it. Removing a profitable business from the USPS furthers this aim.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
And be allowed to charge at least cost for bulk mail advertising. Ask any postal worker about that.
The USPS realizes that they aren't the only delivery company in town. They have to compete. There are other delivery businesses that would love to have that business. They shouldn't operate at a loss for Amazon's benefit, but they have to recognize that they need to be competitive. Trump is a better businessman than president, so he has to realize this as well. The only explanation that I have for this comment from him is Amazon-hating. Put on your big boy pants there Ginger-in-chief.
Once you get past his usual "puffery", using extreme-sounding adjectives in every other sentence .... there's kernel of truth behind what he said.
Amazon doesn't really need to receive government subsidies to ship items below normal cost. This shouldn't be about charging Amazon MORE than everyone else pays to ship packages, or even a suggestion that shipping prices aren't high enough across the board. But we absolutely SHOULD ask why it makes any sense to cut Amazon a special break.
By contrast, Amazon isn't really cutting customers much of a break - considering the cost of a "Prime" membership is something like $11 per month, or $99 for a year. Sure, that gets you access to the streaming movie and music content -- but the main reason "Prime" exists is to ensure you get free 2-day shipping on whatever you order.
The whole issue about pre-funding pensions? That's a big problem for the post office too, and needs to be corrected. But all the stats I ever saw indicated that even without that pre-funding requirement in place? The USPS was in the hole by millions of dollars per year. So that, by itself, won't make it profitable.
The serious answer here, is that politics is populist by its nature. The USPS is ultimately in a position to have to pass major changes back through congressional oversight. Closing of post offices, raising of rates, changing work shifts and delivery schedules in a major way - all have had to go back to congress, where ALL have seen major push back. Change is easy to call for - people want "change" they just usually don't want the change to come at their own expense. So when the post office talks about closing THEIR OWN post office in Podunk, Nebraska, it's time to mount up and call the senator! And when a set of businesses face the prospect of losing absurdly low bulk mail or package rates, they spend hundreds of thousands or millions on their lobbyists to voice doom and gloom predictions in public, to fund "friendly" research, and to grease the skids in congress in private through staff entertainment. Seem cynical? Look for yourself. https://www.linns.com/news/pos... https://www.thenation.com/arti... https://federalnewsradio.com/m... https://federalnewsradio.com/b... Or go search it: https://www.google.com/search?...
They may technically operate in the black if they decide to screw over the entire workforce by abandoning previous pension contracts (how you can ethically separate that I really do not know),
Even given that they are still subsidizing Amazon shipments and spending more to ship them than Amazon pays them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But in some regards, it's almost the same, lol
In 298 days, President Trump has made 1,628 false and misleading claims
"I'm gonna be working for you; I'm not going to have time to go play golf. Believe me." -- Donald Trump, Aug. 8 2016, YouTube video
Someone who apparently thinks it's cool for the USPS to subsidize Amazon shipping, and also can't even get straight what media companies Bezos owns, should not be modded up. I invite everyone to head over to MetaMod, where you can rate the choices the moderators make and give these moderators a bit of a spanking.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They aren't losing money on the shipping for Amazon, it was determined months ago when this first came out (as "revealed" by a hedge fund manager with ties to FedEx) that the USPS was still making a profit from Amazon, but realistically unless you are charging high dollar amounts, delivering to Rosebud, Nebraska is not going to be profitable.
However, even then they were profitable... up until the GOP required them to pay into pension funds for employees who do not even exist yet.
It doesn't even make sense for them to be doing this. The money set aside will be worth significantly less in 75 years thanks to inflation.
The only reason the requirement exists is because of the typical right-wing strategy of Starve the Beast. Te postal service had no problem whatsoever funding their pensions before this happened.
that the Post office should charge more, but it's irresponsible for the President to call out a specific company. It would be one thing if Amazon had done something egregious. I could get behind him calling out the various military contractors in Iraq/Afghanistan, or the oil companies who are already spilling oil with the Keystone pipeline or the pharmaceuticals (who he got strangely silent about after the election). Hell, I could get behind him calling Amazon out for their anti-worker practices. But this is just petty politics.
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Why don't we just put Jeff Bezos in a room full of disgruntled postal workers?
Forget orange hed trump.
As much as I hate to say it.
Increase rates for service across the board.
Or since the govt allways has OUR MONEY. Why not charge the govt 4x the avg rate while trump is in orifice.
At first glance, the greed in me says, "NO!"
But one of the reasons it is difficult to be a small business selling online is because Amazon has a monopoly on cheap shipping. It really is anti-competitive if anything.
Yet at the same time, selling on Amazon is rather dystopian. An Amazon seller's customers are Amazon's customers. A seller on Amazon is also an Amazon customer. If you have a business and all you do is sell on Amazon, you are not self-employed. you work for Amazon with no benefits and extra paperwork. Every bad thing you cold possibly imagine with such a devil's deal is a reality there. The policies over just the past year have made the place very hostile to sellers.
I am doing okay there, but the ground is getting shaky. 2018 is the year I start making moves to not be reliant on Amazon and launch my own website. There are ways of getting cheaper shipping rates, but not as good as Amazon. Regardless, a lot of sellers are getting fed up.
The USPS has been bleeding money for a long time. Closing up sorting centers, post offices, and asking for first class stamp increases. Yet junk mail and business class like Amazon get deals because of volume sales. Why should the person sending Christmas packages themselves pay way more then a Amazon? I don't like the way the USPS does business either, but clearly they do deals to get business and if they raised rates too much to a Amazon then Amazon would just ship with another cheaper carrier. I am sure business man Trump can understand this sort of business agreement. Personally I think the government or specifically Congress should just get out of the business of controlling the USPS and let it deal internally with its financial issues.
The USPS using accounting standards no other group (corporation or government agency) meets with regard to its pension. If it calculated its pensions costs using normal methods, its profitable.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Chinese manufacturers selling stuff on Amazon can sell and ship items so inexpensively because the Chinese postal service is highly subsidized. The USPS then delivers it in the US for free since that's the arrangement between international mail carriers. US companies can't ship stuff as inexpensively in the US as Chinese companies can.
Amazon is already making strides to ramp up their own delivery capacity. If they enacted a rate hike Amazon would just accelerate this or move more packages to ups/FedEx
What the USPS needs to do it charge full 1st class rates for bulk mail. Back in the day bulk mail got preferential rates since the USPS was bypassing just about every address daily to deliver 1st class mail anyways Bulk mail rode on that with a discounted rate since they were passing the address anyways. These days most USPS mail is bulk trash and packages, So now a days bulk mail is being delivered at a break even or loss rate and there's no where near as much 1st class mail to sustain it.
Hike up the bulk rate, which will probably reduce the volume of trash coming in the mail, then reduce regular USPS mail deliveries to 2 or 3 days a week. Use the off days to operate more like FedEx/ups and just do direct package deliveries. You could probably cover average areas with package only deliveries with a fraction of the drivers
You might. National postal services are often expensive to run because they have a mandate to offer comparable service everywhere, not just on profitable runs. For example, the private courier services will not bring a package nearer than 100 km to my parents' home, but the national postal service delivers within walking distance.
Decreasing the price of to capture more of the market and fill underused capacity can improve profit.
And entities such as the state of Illinois, CalPERS, and various corporate pensions (for rank-and-file) are in serious trouble with pension underfunding despite *all* asset prices being at all-time highs.
Imagine what happens if asset prices revert to mean. Those pensions using magical accounting methods and wishful thinking future return projects are going bust.
The GOP has ruinous ideas for the general prosperity of the country as a whole but their insistence on discipline for the USPS's pension is not a bad idea. Pain now versus unbearable pain and financial catastrophe later.
No no, you don't get it. Sure you lose money on each individual unit, but you make up for it with volume! Trust me, I have an MBA.
The USPS is losing money because of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006. It required USPS pension funding to change from a "pay as you go" model to a pre-paid model. The postal pension fund is over 80% funded for future obligations - unlike the Federal workers pension fund which is $7 TRILLION dollars underfunded.
http://www.businessinsider.com...
The problem is compounded by decreasing snail mail usage.
It becomes more and more obvious.
Trump, delusionally thinking that the world revolves around him, demands "loyalty" and "praise" just like a comic-book evil dictator.
Putin found that Russia's "new" oligarchs were particularly susceptible to bullying and threats.
He bankrupted some and threw some in jail -- the rest fell in line.
Trump thinks he can do this to Bezos.
I don't think this model will work in the United States today.
NOT because of our great tradition of "democracy".
Rather, I think that America's oligarchs are more experienced -- they have always been running the show and they don't like being bullied.
Once they get what they want from Trump (giant tax cuts, repeal healthcare protections, etc, etc.) they will remove Trump and "restore democracy".
We, the people, will need to be ready for this turmoil.
One result could be revolution and true democracy.
Failure could be the dictatorship of the Trumps.
The USPS using accounting standards no other group (corporation or government agency) meets with regard to its pension. If it calculated its pensions costs using normal methods, its profitable.
Perhaps other groups *should* pre-pay their pensions. Pensions which were calculated using "normal" methods are going belly up all over the place.
Here's a small sampling the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp's big ticket writeoffs...
Delphi Autoparts ($6.1B underfunded)
United, USAir, Delta, PanAm, TWA Airlines ($7.4B+$2.8B+$1.6B+$0.8B+$0.7B underfunded)
Bethlehem, LTV Steel ($3.7B+$2.1B underfunded)
Then there's the United Mine Workers of America pension bailout that's been kicking around congress that people think will cost $600B...
And there's the Central States Pension fund insolvancy controversy.
The problem with pensions for industries that are crashing is that with "normal" accounting rules they can assume historic contribution rates in their actuarial computations even if they are in decline (like the auto, steel, coal and trucking businesses). Then the pensions need bailing out and retirees collect pennies on the dollar (most pensions are only insured at 30cents/dollar and that assumes that the underwriting remains solvent, which is the problem with the PBGC, UMWA, and Central States pension authorities). Some might think it is a *good* idea that the postal services don't use "normal" accounting rules for their pensions. Unless they only listen to talking points spit out by talking heads.
The USPS is being pillaged for funds to support other government initiatives. That's why they're "losing billions". If the government left them alone, they'd be seen for what they are: one of the most well-run, profitable businesses in the U.S.
By taking the bar so low it smashes into it.
Congress controls how much USPS can raise rates. The same Congress that sabotaged them with a 75 year pension fund is also sabotaging them with forcing them to keep their rates absurdly low.
"We need to get over this notion, that, for Apple to win... Microsoft must lose." - Steve Jobs, 1997
It shows one on its books because congress passed a law saying they had to pre-pay pensions something like 20 years out-- which is insane and completely unnecessary. It's only function is to make the post office look bad so it can be privatized.
They refuse to Run from door to door
Amazon has multiple package providers, including its own (which is admittedly not as good as UPS). They have sophisticated software that chooses the delivery mechanism for each order, based on a number of criteria including cost and estimated time to delivery.
In fact most of my packages from them have arrived through UPS rather than USPS (I live in a big city). Amazon has also rolled out their pickup "locker" service in large cities, which obviously doesn't rely on USPS.
Amazon already has their own delivery drivers in many cities. While some of my orders come via USPS, more comes via UPS, and the bulk comes from Amazon's own delivery drivers.
You KNOW Amazon already has algorithms to figure out the lowest cost way to the customer. If USPS jacks up their rates, they will simply shift to more cost-effective shippers.
Do the things UPS and FedEx do - They're not going broke... Why? Because gov't run operations don't do jack to minimize costs.
Between this and his publicly stated desires to shut down certain news organizations and an entire television network, how is it not obvious to every single person in these United States that the 'person' (using the word loosely here) we're dealing with should never have been elected POTUS in the first place? Seriously, it's like we're living in a perpetual nightmare.
The US Post Office isn't supposed to make a profit. It is a service like other government services.
That's actually the way pensions should be funded. Not as nebulous future payouts based on unrealistically optimistic projections of investment returns, which saddle future generations with debt when the actual returns fall short of those projections. It was literally Wimpy's "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today" ad infinitium. The Republicans caught a lot of flak for changing the requirement, but they correctly saw that the pension funds were being abused to shift debt from the present into the future (instead of giving the union a wage increase, you promise them a bigger pension). They changed the funding requirement to stop that abuse cold. You can no longer promise the postal union barrels of free beer in their retirement, and leave it up to future generations to figure out how to pay for it. You make the promise today, you have to pay for it today. This was crucially needed because without it, wage negotiations amounted to unions demanding the world, and managers agreeing to give it to them because they knew they'd be retired by the time anyone had to figure out how to fulfill their concessions.
Pre-funding the pension and spinning it off so the money is untouchable except by the people who are supposed to receive it prevents the possibility of pension bankruptcy. The way most pensions are set up (merely as a separate account within the company) leaves them vulnerable to abuse (embezzlement, underfunding) and bankruptcy. If the company goes bankrupt, the pensioners become merely creditors. They may not get paid until after other creditors, with the possibility of receiving only pennies on each dollar they were promised in pensions if they're far enough down the bankruptcy totem pole.
With a pre-funded pension operating independently (like a 401k or IRA), this cannot happen. The company made an obligation to pay Joe into his retirement, and they put the money to pay for it into his pension plan while he was working, thus insuring he gets paid even if the company ceases to exist. The only catch is instead of giving Joe a guaranteed fixed pension in his retirement, the pension should be defined as $x/mo being invested on his behalf while he's working, and his pension is whatever that works out to after compounding interest when he retires and begins collecting it (since his lifespan and investment growth is unpredictable).
Social Security has the same problem. The money you pay into SS is not being "saved" for your retirement. It's being used to pay current retirees (with a buffer of about a decade). Likewise, when you retire, the money you get from SS will not be money you put into it. It'll be money that the then-current generation of workers are paying into it. This happened because when SS was first enacted, the very first recipients got paid even though they'd never contributed a dime into it. (This is why SS is often accused of being a pyramid scheme, although that's slightly different.) If you want to guarantee SS solvency, you have to change it to a system that's pre-paid, like the USPS pension. Otherwise it could stay solvent or it might not, depending on inflation (cost of living), population growth, and increases in the average lifespan. Right now, there are about 2.9 workers per retiree. As that number goes down (due to decreasing birthrate and increasing lifespan), the risk of SS insolvency goes up.
I'd be happier to see trump do something about heaty discount given to countries exporting to the US... https://www.forbes.com/sites/w...
piece of garbage and his followers.
Charge based upon the weight of the vehicle and the distance traveled.
It would apply to all businesses and individuals.
It would create an additional incentive to shop locally.
USPS was a sinking ship. Amazon took advantage of the USPS, because otherwise, what would they be delivering: Credit card offers and bills that people forgot to check off as paperless? Before they made a deal with Amazon it was a foregone conclusion that the USPS was toast. I hope they raise their prices and Amazon just moves on.
The problem with the USPS is that they are required to fully-fund retirement benefits (including health benefits) for *** 75 YEARS ****. This happened in 2006.
Since then, there have been several proposals to reduce this restriction given the landscape of decreasing postal volumes. Every single one has either been shot-down by Republican congresses or not even brought to the floor. Why? Because UPS and FedEx are two massive political donors/special interests. They spent millions to lobby against such legislation.
THAT is the real problem with the USPS. If you want to fix it... then the retirement benefit funding plan needs to be changed to be commensurate with what UPS and FedEx have to do. That would fix the problem really quick.
I want Amazon to shipping a $12 USB thumbdrive in a box the size of a freaking 6 quart pot.
Seriously, somebody screwed the pooch in making a letter or small box cost $.01 for a Chinese business ( not Chinese citizen ) to send said item to America.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
He wants the postal service to ONLY charge Amazon more to send packages.
Can we say network neutrality?
Every government agency prepays the pension of their employees. The annual meeting before congress is usually held in February if you want to read the status notes.
So where did you find that lie?
It doesn't need to profit but breaking even would be nice. And if not, that's ok too but blaming Amazon is ridiculous... charge everyone the same, if it's not enough raise the price. And stop offering pensions, postal workers should get IRA or 401k or 203b like anyone else. So tired of mentally challenged administrators and politicians mismanaging people's forced savings.
If you take away Amazon's business, the postal service loses more money not less.
A real issue, how can it cost 25 cents to mail a small product from China to the USA, but 50 cents to mail the same product one door down?
Perhaps I'm atypical in my deliveries but virtually everything that I get from Amazon is via UPS or FedEx. The only stuff that arrives USPS is the insanely small stuff like button batteries or MicroSD. I have a feeling this is a lot more about the political positions of Amazons CEO than the USPS's financial situation .
Would USPS lose more money without Amazon?
Bozo the clown thinks the Post Office can save itself by pricing itself out of the market. Way to grab that logical pussy.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
What the postal service was doing, and is supposed to stop doing, is the kind of accounting that sent Enron executives to prison. If anyone but the postal service was hiding a $120 billion liability, it would be called "fraud".
What they were doing is saying to employees "work for us today, and we'll not only pay you today, we'll keep paying you after you retire, until you die." Someone can retire from USPS at the age of 56, so their retirement payments may be almost as much as their salary, or even more. Over the course of 30 years of retirement, the worker might be owed $840,000. So they had workers doing the work in say 1995, promised to pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars "later", but never set aside any money to be able to make good on those promises.
They owe about $120 billion - for work already done, and hadn't set anything aside to pay it. Most "every other business in the country" funds your 401K or other retirement by sending their contribution to a third-party investment bank every time you get a paycheck. You work this month, they pay for it this month, including the retirement part. State retirement plans work the same way, at least where I'm from in Texas - whichever agency you work for, when they pay for this year's work, they also pay whatever retirement they'll owe for this year's work. They don't have you work today and say "we'll worry about how to pay for it 20 years from now".
In 2006 they were given fifteen years to get caught up on the retirement they owed. They haven't come come close, because they are losing money. Any "profit" has to go toward funding the retirement promises they've made, but the "profit" hasn't been nearly enough and the number of letters they carry has fallen 30% over the last ten years, so it's unlikely they'll ever be able to pay for the retirement they are promising today's employees. They'll need the taxpayers to bail them out.
https://www.cnbc.com/id/450184...
https://www.govtrack.us/congre...
> that they pre-fund their retirement account fully within five years.
False. The five-year requirement is that every five years they have to calculate how far in the hole they are. (How much they owe to workers who have already worked, or are working on today, and whom they've promised decades of retirement pay to, without funding that promise.)
> If every employee retired now (even if they were just hired and thus are not eligible for retirement benefits...) the full amount of their retirement pension is covered.
Laughably false. They owe over $120 billion to workers who have already done the work and been promised retirement payments, but that the USPS has no way to pay for. In other words, they are $120 billion in the hole, to pay workers who have already done the work.
> that they pre-fund their retirement account fully within five years
The five-year requirement in the act is that every five years they have to figure out how much debt they have (retirement payments earned by workers) and compare it to how much they have set aside to make those payments. That's it - they just have to figure out how bad it is and issue report every five years.
What the postal service was doing, and is supposed to stop doing, is the kind of accounting that sent Enron executives to prison. If anyone but the postal service was hiding a $120 billion liability, it would be called "fraud".
What they were doing is saying to employees "work for us today, and we'll not only pay you today, we'll keep paying you after you retire, until you die." Someone can retire from USPS at the age of 56, so their retirement payments may be almost as much as their salary, or even more. Over the course of 30 years of retirement, the worker might be owed $840,000. So they had workers doing the work in say 1995, promised to pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars "later", but never set aside any money to be able to make good on those promises.
They owe about $120 billion - for work already done, and hadn't set anything aside to pay it. Most "every other business in the country" funds your 401K or other retirement by sending their contribution to a third-party investment bank every time you get a paycheck. You work this month, they pay for it this month, including the retirement part. State retirement plans work the same way, at least where I'm from in Texas - whichever agency you work for, when they pay for this year's work, they also pay whatever retirement they'll owe for this year's work. They don't have you work today and say "we'll worry about how to pay for it 20 years from now".
In 2006 they were given fifteen years to get caught up on the retirement they owed. They haven't come come close, because they are losing money. Any "profit" has to go toward funding the retirement promises they've made, but the "profit" hasn't been nearly enough and the number of letters they carry has fallen 30% over the last ten years, so it's unlikely they'll ever be able to pay for the retirement they are promising today's employees. They'll need the taxpayers to bail them out.
https://www.cnbc.com/id/450184...
https://www.govtrack.us/congre...
I'm not talking about prepayment of pension funds. I'm talking about how, uniquely among federal agencies, when new information changes the funds needed for prepayments such that the USPS overpayed, it neither gets a refund nor even to count those overpayments in a previous year as towards the payments required in a current/future year. The account is just permentantly overpaid. In 2012, it was to the tune of 11.2 billion
Guessing from your claim that this is a lie, I assume you're pretty conservative. There are a lot of sources, but even the Heritage Foundation has supported these claims.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
The issue that the USPS was saying that since their employees die earlier they should pay less then the rules used for all other government agencies?
First they were not not unique there were other agencies that were having the same issue. Second they were not overpaying, if you read the Heritage Foundation articles the USPS complaints were that people were dying earlier and stayed in similar jobs longer then the normal person, it is like complaining that you overpaid for car insurance because you had no accidents then others in your age group. Three, Trump administration worked with the Republican Congress and had solution for this back in March, which broke the workforce into different demographics, which went into effect in October. So why would this even be discussed?
No, that wasn't the issue at all. It was carrying forward issues from the switchover in '74 with regard to payrates and such.
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it's unconstitutional. It's against the law to write laws that single out an individual or individual group. That was expressly forbade in our constitution, and for damn good reason.
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The USPS can already impose a fat tax on companies that choose to use another carrier.
I'm kidding of course but let the USPS mine for crypto currency!
This is easy! Conservatives (aka Repubs) have to support the USPS, because that old white man Ben Franklin created the USPS!
Come on Republicans, are you really going to argue against Ben Franklin???
False. Under normal accounting standards it would be placed into receivership.
Finally something to support Trump about.
Amazon and other retailers that ship over use the system; they should part more. This what progressive taxation does. If he feels they should pay more, maybe he shouldn't have him a huge tax cut?
Fucking idiot
For example, the private courier services will not bring a package nearer than 100 km to my parents' home, but the national postal service delivers within walking distance.
I've got the exact opposite problem: ALL of the private courier services will bring packages right to my door, while the national postal service insists on dripping it off a good 20 miles away.
They also add a 24 hour hold for some reason, during which my package is in limbo, so Amazon's "2 day shipping" always turns into at least 3 days with the national carrier, whereas FedEx/UPS/Purolator all have it on NY porch within 48 hours or less.
Long story short, don't generalise. Private carriers provide better service in many areas.
Colour me surprised.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
One can only assume that Americans regarded this as from outside the USA and so insignificant to real people ;)
So it's legitimate to suggest that the Federal government stops doing a post office, just as it doesn't hand out privateer licences any more.
Actually as a Brit, I'm speaking about the experience of much of Europe, where we have massive unfunded pension liabilities in the public sector. Do your civil service employees' pension costs form a fund or are they also a black hole?
Seeing one group - recipients of federal subsidies - against another - taxpayers - is what politics is all about. Farm subsidies are another way that rural residents are benefiting against ordinary tax payers...
I can't believe nobody has yet noticed what this means.
It means the USPS charging different customers differently for the same service. It's the net neutrality point all over again. And it's a terrible idea for exactly the same reasons.
Let the Post Office set its own rates!
I stopped making sense of postage rates. Mailing next town over costs as much as mailing to the other end of the continent, and domestic mail is dirt cheap compared to most other countries. I do not know the details of the Amazon deal, but rumor has it that Amazon pays less than the expense incurred by USPS to provide the service. While stupid (can't make up loss per item through volume) it is in line with any other discounted services such as bulk mail rates and to some extend presorted standard. Especially bulk mail rate and large customer prices should be much higher. In return lower package postage and international postage. I used to send packages to Europe on a regular basis, but in the past years the postage is three to four times the value of the content and it is three to four times the postage for the other way around. If anything, mailing internationally should be much cheaper than mailing domestically because the postal service does not have to provide the most expensive part of the service:delivery. The only benefit I see is that I now get packages delivered on Sundays. I rather have lower postage prices.
Especially considering the demands from the PAEA - prefunding 75 years of future health care benefits in only 10 years. Further, in 2016 Congress forced USPS to lower stamp prices for the first time in 100 years (2 cents) because they tied increases to the rate of inflation which dropped due to the Great Recession. Unfathomable pinheadery.
The postal service's losses are due to a ridiculous stupid law, created solely to allow the government to eliminate the USPS. Congress imposed a rule that the USPS must pre-pay some 75 years of retirement pensions, something no other corporation on the planet has had to do. If they didn't have to make those payments on such a large scale, they would be in the black every year, by a significant amount.
But the Republicans in Congress want to destroy everything the federal government does, and this was their way of destroying the USPS without breaking the Constitution.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
You can make it up with increased volumes.
Deliver 1 package to my house a day for $5, lose money. Drop off 10 packages a day at my house for $40 and you can make money.
Same with your local ice cream shop, raising prices because they aren't making money isn't necessarily a way to profitability. It is entirely possible that if they dropped prices they could increase business enough to become profitable.
I think they cover that sort of stuff in an actual MBA program.
Trump's base of support is rural America and that is who the USPS is subsidizing.
They also subsidize shipping to member of the military and state department employees overseas. Shipments to an APO box are a prime example. Go to a US embassy overseas and the number of packages from Amazon and Walmart are amazing. All thanks to paying no more to ship a package via the USPS to Iraq than it costs to ship to Los Angeles.
In the1980s the US realized this was a big problem with the Civil Service Retirement Fund, so they switched to the "fully funded" Federal Employees Retirement System for people hired since 1984.
CSRF has a trust fund too, but it's not enough. One might think "1984 was a long time ago, it's okay now". But that was for people HIRED then. Some people were hired in 1980 and worked under CSRF until 2010. They'll be getting retirement payments in 2040.
Under both CSRF and FERS, each government *agency* pays in their contribution with each employee's paycheck
So for example the US RDA, FBI, and FCC don't have these unfunded liabilities; they've already paid the retirement costs into the separate fund.
The other problem with the federal trust funds, including also social security, is that the trust funds are invested in the safest investment - US government bonds. In other words, the government lent the money to themselves. In other words, they spent it. They say there is a "trust fund", but if you look inside the box there is nothing but a stack of IOUs from the government. The debt shows up as bond debt rather than as unfunded liabilities, so it's on the books, but the money has most definitely been spent.
Between CSRF, Medicare, etc the US government unfunded liabilities are around $100 trillion, or five years of GDP.
Amazon for a looooooong time now. Interesting that the president agrees with me, a liberal.
I have an tangentially related question. How is it that I can get an E-packet delivery from China for less than the cost of first-class mailing the same item within the US?
USPS should reduce normal 1st class delivery where they drive past every house to 2 days a week. There is nothing time critical coming through the mail these days. 90% of what does come in my mailbox is quite literally trash. Anything time critical is being delivered electronically or by overnight courier these days. On USPS's off days they can operate fewer trucks and do package deliveries the same way FedEx/UPS does
n/t
The postal service does not deliver post to "far off Alaskan villages".
That is done when goods and supp;ies are shipped out to them on charter flights.
The postal service does not ship everywhere. You are a liar!
If post office increase in price you will see more Amazon self deliver service. The money post office get now will disappear.
This could help slow or stop the "Retail Apocalypse" that's going on. Online orders and shipments are causing stores to close and people to lose jobs...
Why is the US government trillions in debt while charging so little in tax to corporations and the rich?
Never had this problem wiTh USPS. In fact I don't have prime shipping yet I still get my Amazon packages from the USPS in about 3-4 days. Prime cuts it down to 2. Not worth it for me.
Everyone knows colluding isn't illegal. Whoever doesn't is colluding. Who colludes with the them must be legal...or illegal. I forgot. I'm colluding I tbink.
So every other private (non-public) retirement/pension plan EXCEPT the USPS plan is fully-funded? I'd like to see proof of that!
Then the keywords for you to Google are "ERISA" and "Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation". ERISA is the federal law that says pension and other retirement programs offered by private companies must be properly funded *at the time the employee earns the benefit by doing the work*, not 30 years later, after they've already retired and payments are due. They also must be insured by PGGC, just as bank accounts are insured by the FDIC.
> The post office has the best-funded pension/retirement plan of ANY federal program
Laughably false.
In general federal employees are enrolled in the Federal Employees Retirement System, which like private plans, is 100% fully funded every time an employee earns a paycheck. They don't hope to somehow come up with funding 30 or 40 years later, like the USPS does, they fund the payments at the time they are earned and therefore become owed.
Let's look at your own quote about the USPS system carefully, where you quoted USPS making their best case that USPS isn't utterly screwed:
> 83 percent of estimated future payouts. Its pension plans are nearly completely funded and its retiree healthcare liability is 50 percent funded
According to their own estimates, which they slant toward looking good, fully half of the healthcare benefits they've promised to employees they can't actually pay for. 17% of retirement payments they've promised to make, they can't actually make. And that's *their* "things aren't that bad" estimate. If your mortgage and bills you owe for the year are $100,000 and you only make $83,000 would you say "there's no problem?" Would you still say that if you also owed another $50,000 you promised to pay for your kids healthcare?
He then goes on to say that while they are $83 billion short on making good on their retirement promises, theoretically they could sell off all the post offices and all of their equipment, which is valued at $13 billion. So if they shut down and sold off their properties they'd "only" screw their employees out of $70 billion that they owe them. No problem, right?