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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.
postal service can stop pre-funding pensions for 75 years later.
The post office operates in the black. It is the pension rules, or maybe somebody's misinterpretation of them, that fuck things up.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
When did Bezos buy the Times? I know he owns the Washington Post...
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So fuck the government employees, eh? How about the ones at the FDA that keeps poisons out of your food and drug supply. How about fucking them and see what happens to you? Maybe you'd like to fuck the NTSB people, they won't mind if your ass gets whacked in the next airline disaster because you fucked them out of job. And while you are at it, fuck the people at the SSA, Grandma would like to come and live with you. Save your pennies, her meds are expensive. And you can fuck the people at EPA, the ones who haven't already quit in disgust over that overgrown asshole in the White House. Those chemicals in your drinking water will be good for you.
Jesus, you are a stupid fuck.
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.
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They only can't compete because Congress forces them to pre-fund their employees retirement for some ridiculous number of decades - something no other business in the country does.
Additionally, the USPS's charge is to connect every person in America no matter how remote and unprofitable. The point is to have a service to connect far away Alaska villages that have no profit motive for FedEx etc. to connect. It's the same with public transit - the point isn't to make money, it's to enable and improve our lives in a worthwhile way.
Without subsidy the USPS will need to scale down massively, they can't compete in a free market environment.
The USPS is not subsidized by the US government/taxpayers. Their rates are set by the government, but they operate entirely on the funds that they generate directly.
Even then, they'll always run losses because the international treaties rapes every western postal service. If Trump wants to do something useful he should unilaterally get the US out of the treaty of Bern.
The USPS is profitable. The reported shortfall in their budget was due to congress passing a new requirement (which only applied to the USPS) that they pre-fund their retirement account fully within five years. Meaning that the full retirement package for every postal service employee is fully paid. 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.
It is not a bad thing, but it was done in such a way as to make the USPS look bad.
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