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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.
Want to live in a remote area? Well, you should be prepared to pay for it.
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?...
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.
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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considering almost every business venture that Trump has attempted has filed for bankruptcy (some multiple times) that is a sign that he's not a good businessman. well run businesses usually don't file for bankruptcy.
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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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.
First off, the President of the United States should not be referring to individual companies that should be charged more. If the postal rates are incorrect, they should be adjusted for everyone.
Second off, the postal service does serve a useful purpose for areas that are not served well by alternatives and we should preserve that, even if it costs some money. Package rates to and from those areas can and should be a bit higher to deal with reality. Subsidies if they exist should mainly be for standard first class letters, but not for junk mail and other crap.
Postal service is a fundamental piece of our infrastructure, just as roads, just as well internet is these days. If you want jobs in an area, you need all three and various other things as well. Some of the blue states have very nice infrastructure which makes it attractive for people with certain skills which then makes it attractive for companies...
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.
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.
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 overhead of accepting a single package from an individual is likely MUCH higher than accepting that package from Amazon.
Amazon correctly (well, usually) packages what they ship - they don't use materials that USPS doesn't like (like string to hold the box shut) or old broken down boxes with labels all over them -- Amazon never asks a USPS clerk at the front counter "can you give me some tape to close this box better?".
Amazon gets billed in giant increments covering thousands of packages and probably pays by some form of electronic payment. A USPS clerk never has to deal with a "declined" credit card from Amazon or print out a receipt for each package.
Amazon has no human to USPS human interaction on the "per package" basis for every package shipped. The administrative transaction cost for accepting a 53' trailer full of thousands of Amazon packages is probably just a bit more than the administrative transaction cost to accept a single package from an end consumer.
As well, when a package doesn't get delivered or is damaged, Amazon is more likely to be taking care of more of the overhead of dealing directly with the consumer. In the "individual person" shipping case, the USPS has to deal with individuals (the sender and/or the recipient) who don't understand how things work and needs to spend much more time explaining things to the shipper or recipient.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
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
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.
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.
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.
For 75 YEARS into the future? If every employer was required to do that, they would never offer pensions ever. And if such was required, no one would be opening new business. The notion is absurd
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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.
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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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