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President Trump Slams Amazon For 'Causing Tremendous Loss To the United States' (cnet.com)
President Trump escalated his attack on Amazon on Thursday, saying that the e-commerce giant does not pay enough taxes, and strongly suggested that he may try to rein in the e-commerce business. From a report: The president took aim at Amazon's tax contributions, its use of the US Postal Service and practices that put "many thousands of retailers out of business!" The accusations aren't new. The tweet was likely prompted by an Axios story on Wednesday that claimed Trump was weighing "going after" Amazon over alleged antitrust activities or violations of competition laws. The Axios story appeared to contribute to a selloff of Amazon stock Wednesday, with Amazon shares dropping 4.4 percent, even though Trump's disdain for Amazon and its CEO, Jeff Bezos, was already well-known. Bezos owns The Washington Post, whose coverage has been less than glowing about the new president, which may be a factor in Trump's attacks. Trump's tweet, in full: I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!
Isn't that, literally, why they exist?
Deliberately falsely badmouthing a company in order to drive it's stock price down is legally called "tortious interference", and is VERY actionable. I'm also pretty sure Jeff Bezos can afford some pretty could lawyers. Trump will be tied up in court until well after his death.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Probably the only thing keeping the postal service afloat right now is Amazon. And pretty sure I pay sales tax on purchases through amazon if purchased from amazon.
He uses his government position to go after personal grudges.
Putting retailers out of business? I thought we like the free market around here?
Not paying taxes? I thought not paying taxes was smart?
use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy
Isn't that, like, LITERALLY their entire job and purpose to exist?
Saying a conglomerate doesn't pay enough taxes is Republican Sacrilege. GOP needs to get the message to Fox so they can tell him to STFU on TV, like they did on gun control when he wandered off script.
Table-ized A.I.
"Sorry, I don't make jokes about the disabled"
... doesn't this make jobs for american workers and companies? Yeah, it's wear and tear on the roads/infrastructure, but one would home gas taxes cover such things.
Yeah, they're not so nice for small companies, but Walmart's trod that path for decades - is Trump going to target them as well?
I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!
So, using the company intended to deliver parcels to do Amazon deliveries is somehow destroying America.
Hot take: Trump might not be very business-savvy after all.
Hasn't Trump been the master of manipulating the tax code to his own benefit? Didn't he say during one of the debates that not paying taxes for multiple years, because of a bankruptcy filing, made him "smart"?
#DeleteChrome
Are you sure you want get into a war of words about avoiding taxes, Mr. President.
Trump is slamming Amazon for not paying enough in state and local taxes, which I assume refers to sales taxes. Of course, Amazon actually collects sales tax for products they sell though their site, although not for most third party retailers using their marketplace. Furthermore, Trump's tax plan slashed federal corporate tax rates and made those permanent, unlike the tax cuts for middle class Americans that expire. That's rich for Trump to be slamming Amazon. I also suspect there's probably an ulterior motive here, which is that Jeff Bezos owns both the Washington Post and Amazon. The Washington Post hasn't been particularly kind to Trump, and he has a tendency to lash out at those who criticize him.
Amazon has to pay for all the packages it ships; it's not as though FedEx, UPS and USPS do it for free.
The USPS is an independent agency of the US government, and receives minimal subsidies...
And I voted for the guy, too.
OK, no I didn't. I voted AGAINST the lying, corrupt harpy. No one voted FOR Trump.
they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments
Blame late-stage capitalisms race to the bottom on the state level. Without tax reform states like georgia, indiana, and missouri are basically 25-50 year shelters where companies set up shop, import H1B stem labor, churn out private profit, and leave with a superfund site to be cleaned up by taxpayers. you might get a high-rise with a name on it, or a city park/mural dedicated to the companies $important_figure or two, but none of that does anything to patch roads or fund schools.
use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.)
Blame...your own party. Republicans have been trying to deliver the killing blow to the USPS for 40 years. unable to sink it with future debt and price control, and unable to privatize it because private industries dont want the job, they've incentivised public private partnerships where companies like UPS hand-off to local carriers for last mile delivery. since every system uses barcodes and tracking exclusive to their supply chain systems, the USPS doesnt have any real tracking data to begin with and must handle these packages in a largely manual fashion. The whole end result is a package that takes 20 days to reach its destination half crushed with 40 labels and no customer savings. but hey! we "privatized" the post office!
and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!
the 90s called and they want their destructive business practices back. Wal-Mart started this trend by bankrupting suppliers into offering products with no profit margin (vlasic pickle for example.) Fast forward and theres a wal-wart on every street corner offering cut-rate oil changes and flavourless apples the size of softballs for pennies. I mean, surely you didnt snore through the 20 years it took for a single american company to bankrupt every small business in the midwest just to show up and bitch about Amazon, did you?
Good people go to bed earlier.
Does the Post Office get paid? To, you know, deliver stuff? Like, what they're supposed to do?
Unless this is being done for free, how is this a bad thing?
Or is this some idiotic assertion that the money should be going to private companies instead of the US Post Office?
Using them as your own personal delivery boy ... kinda the fucking mission statement.
Trump is not wrong on effects of Amazon and also its local tax-dodging, but his objections are tainted by his very clear political motivation. He is after Bezos as a revenge for The Washington Post coverage.
lol Trump lol
I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election.
Trump's history of criticizing Amazon is solely connected to WaPo's criticism of him. Until he announced his muslim ban, and WaPo reported on it, he had never said one bad thing about the company.
Spanky really is the most transparent president ever. Sorry Obama, Trump beats you again!
This isn't about Amazon's business practices. This is about Donald Trump attacking the Washington Post, a news outlet that reports true but unflattering things about the President.
I mean, come on. There is literally no question why Trump has chosen Amazon as one of his favorite bugbears. Trump's well-known "disdain" for Jeff Bezos and WaPo is the lede, not an aside buried under the fold.
Trump is going after an entire corporation simply because a part of it has the sheer temerity to say things about him that he doesn't like.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
pot meet kettle
The president is clearly living in the past... I often think he would have been happier back in 1900 or so when women couldn't vote, more minorities were subjugated, and more people made their living mining coal. But then again, there was no Fox network back then, so perhaps he wouldn't be able to hoodwink 40% of the population into believing that he somehow represented their interests despite having no real common interests or values.
The USPS is already rolling their vehicles so the extra wear and tear is going to be minimal, in fact it's been proven that Amazon reduces fuel used to deliver goods to consumers in almost all cases so it should be going down.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I thought Republicans don't believe in the government picking winners and losers?
There is so much wrong with this tweet, and the entire line of thought. There are thousands of mom and pop places that consider Amazon a priceless tool in keeping their own costs down. Also, they are one of USPS biggest customers, and package delivery revenues are up. The reason USPS is losing billions has nothing to do with Amazon, and everything to do with first class mail and pension legal requirements. Most (all?) people pay sales tax on Amazon purchases these days, too, so a notion of an additional Internet tax is just stupid.
It's almost like everything Trump tweets is exactly wrong. SAD!
Don't we have a President who bragged about paying little or no taxes. And his properties aggressively fight local property taxes -- which pay for things like school (who needs them?) and police (can never have too many).
Amazon may have gotten its start by avoiding sales taxes, but that was the norm at the time. Amazon collects sales tax on everything except some marketplace purchases.... And of course it does pay taxes on profits, payroll taxes and property taxes on building it owns.
1. Since when is it the personal job of a sitting POTUS to 'rein in' any legitimate U.S. based business, regardless of size?
2. Considering Donald Trump's personality, as he demonstrates it to be, I find it much more credible an idea that what he's really all upset about is the fact that Amazon/Jeff Bezos is orders of magnitude more successful a businessman than he is, and Trump is throwing one of his typical temper-tantrums over that fact.
3. Trump claims to want to 'make America great again', and bring back jobs for American citizens from overseas. However intentionally damaging Amazon, who employs at least 341,000 people, will likely cause some of those people to lose their jobs; how is that going to make us 'great again'? (It won't)
4. Meanwhile, the guy who allegedly knows 'The Art of the Deal', and claims to be such a successful businessman, can't even keep things coherent in his own Cabinet, hiring and firing people left and right at a furious pace, and appointing cronies and yes-(wo)men to top positions instead of the people who would be best for the Country as a whole; how the actual fuck can you run the government of ostensibly the most powerful Country in the free world when there is no consistency whatsoever to the people who are making it run?
Seriously, folks, all poking the Trump supporters with a stick aside: this clown has got to go, before he completely wrecks this country.
Of course even if he left office today, it'll still likely take a full decade to repair the damage done to everything -- and we'd be stuck with Mike Pence, which in significant ways would be orders of magnitude worse. Can we just all wish real hard that a meteor falls from the sky and kills them all at the same time?
because they keep getting bought up in Bain Capital style leveraged buy-outs and then saddled with debt that prevents them from adequately competing with Amazon. To cut costs they turn their stores into dirty little warehouses. This is what happened to Toys R Us. And they were one of the lucky ones. They survived 13 years before the debt crushed them.
If Trump doesn't like the post office subsidizing Amazon there's a really, really easy solution: raise the rates. Problem solved. And if he doesn't like how they treat their workers he could raise federal minimum wage and drop the work week to 30/week before overtime kicked in. The latter might require congress to act but it's popular enough that if he'd stop attacking them on Twitter and take congress to task for not doing anything for the working man he'd have it done in a week. Especially if he did it right before mid-terms.
But this is all just a distraction. And an political attack on a company run by people that don't particularly like him. It'd be funny watching to rich and powerful guys in a pissing match if their actions didn't effect me so drastically.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Gotta give credit where credit is due. Trump's honed the art of driving his detractors batshit-crazy, with every tweet of his. I look forward to every day's worth of his tweetfarts, just to read the howling and the squealing that follows.
It should be quite obvious to anyone, who still retains the ability to think rationally, that Trump's just tweetfarting. He's obviously.not going to do anything. To claim that this construes "tortious interference", like what I just read above, is an example of this very enjoyable batshit-craziness.
I recognize the obviousness of this because this reminds me of my Usenet days. Don't mean to compare myself to The Donald, but this is exactly the kind of batshit-craziness I enjoyed bringing out of all the deranged left-wing kooks, in talk.politics, in the good old days, with my own trolling.
Amazon may be putting the malls out of business, but it was the malls that put the mom-and-pop stores in downtowns out of business.
Trump has been silent about other CEOs who he agrees with more than Bezos. Take for example Eddie Lampert who has been running Sears / KMart into the ground. They have been losing money constantly while doing nothing to reward employees or even maintain their stores. Nearly every month they announce more store closures. But Lampert's golden parachute just keeps getting better and better - he's first in line to cash out from Sears when he finally pulls the plug due to the special loans he's issued to them from his own funds.
When Sears finally goes kaput the job losses will vastly outnumber the largest number of coal miners we've had in this country in the past 100 years, and they are distributed across the country. These aren't just high school and college kids working retail until they can find a steady job either; retail at Sears used to be a steady job with a career path. Now every town has lost a Sears, a KMart, or both in the past 5-10 years. All that's left of it is a real estate firm now.
Yeah, I know I'll be down-modded into oblivion on this. Go ahead. If you are too cowardly to reply to ahead and hit me with "offtopic" and "overrated".
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
If only Amazon would sell an AWS offer that is 100% powered by (ideally dirty) coal they would get back in the President's good graces.
In selecting AWS services, I could choose between regular, renewables or coal. Perhaps there could add a logo for web sites "100% powered by American coal" -- it would be perfect.
Is the Republican stable genius proposing to raise taxes and tighten tax laws on corporations? Is he going to reign in tax avoidance practices? I wonder what his party think of this?
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
Nuf Said.
'Think you mean dotard.
This is in reference to the post office subsidizing Amazon deliveries.
Short summary: Amazon pays $1.46 per package less than it actually costs to deliver. That is absolutely Amazon's gain at the expense of the post office.
If you doubt the post office is in a special relationship, what other company gets Sunday delivery for the post office? How is that fair to the workers, it's not like the post office charges Amazon more for that. They deliver the most mundane things on a Sunday, it's not even special orders...
This is why I like Trump's tweets quite a bit, as he seems to have a habit of making public things people seem to want to hide or ignore.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I usually hate corporations and everything they do, but one thing Slashdot has taught me is that corporations operate to make the most money at the least cost, period. Trumps problem is really with the way capitalism works today, and I certainly hope he decides to make wise changes in that regard.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
You're positing that the post office knowingly defrauds itself for some reason? Your own link says they make a profit delivering Amazon's stuff. The Sunday delivery guys aren't the same ones that run the route the other days, and they get to dress casual. They seem pretty happy about it, actually, when I've spoken to them.
That's because USPS couldn't compete with Fedex and UPS if they charged a higher rate. Their costs are too high due to their shitty pension deal. They chose to still take the business at a loss instead if losing it.
Trump is the party.
Ah, and there we have it ... the irrational inconsistencies of Republican economics.
Either state and local taxes are bad, in which case Amazon avoiding them is good. Or they're good, and Trump wouldn't have spent his career dodging taxes and lying about it.
What losses to the US occur when the US Postal Service is being paid to do what they exist to do ... deliver stuff for people? Are they somehow aggrieved by doing their core function? I bet they don't feel abused by the volume of business they get from Amazon.
And, again, putting retailers out of business ... isn't that ... Capitalism? Oh, right, the Republicans view Capitalism as a success when their team wins, and intervene when it loses. Because they don't believe in the free market either, they believe in propping up the commercial interests of the people who give them money.
Isn't it, according to the ideology, the natural and desirable outcome that if someone can out-compete you they can and should? Not when it's your golf buddies who are on the losing end.
Oh, wait, like corporate welfare for big business to protect them from competition, and protectionist practices to ensure that US businesses who can't compete are propped up against "unfair" competition? (Where we define "unfair" as a foreign company who can make the same or better for less money). The US can't compete in a lot of industries, and the solution is to add tariffs to compensate for your own lack of ability to compete on an open market.
This is the same kind of hubris which allowed US car manufacturers to make absolutely shitty cars and act like people would keep buying them anyway. They learned that people weren't going to buy shitty cars just because they were made in the USA ... doing so might be patriotic, but it's also idiotic.
These things are great talking points to the drooling idiots who just say "yarg, Trump is right, we're being taken advantage of" .. but at the end of the day either as a Republican he believes in a free market, or he's full of shit. Of course, believing in a free market means you're full of shit, because it's a lie.
Once again, Trump proves he has not got enough intelligence for the job he's in, doesn't know or care about the law, and has surrounded himself with so many yes men then he believes his own bullshit.
Of course, the problem is he's little more than a con-man, so he hasn't got the depth or the brains to have any actual grasp on economics, foreign policy, the Constitution, the law, or anything else which would qualify him for the job.
A Republican complaining about companies not paying state and local taxes, or out-competing other companies ... that's some serious bullshit right there.
A couple of months back:
Reducing taxes on corporates => Good for jobs
Now:
Companies paying less tax => Bad for jobs
Well, which is it?
he's using his political position (i.e. POTUS) to affect a private corporation. That can't possibly be allowed.
It sure doesn't seem like it was a problem for Obama
Since you were cool with it for eight years it seems hard to think of why it's a problem now.
In fact many seem to be saying these days the President should be some kind of moral compass. In that case I would argue it's the president's duty to attack immoral actions by companies, as Obama did. Trump is merry carrying on Obama's traditions.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So president he is smart when he avoids paying taxes and declares bankruptcy to get out of obligations, but when corporation does it - it is so very bad !?
A trickle-downer who signed a huge tax giveaway to corporations is complaining that a corporation doesn’t pay enough taxes? Haha what?
Don’t the trickle-downers always tell us that companies like Amazon, etc. paying more in taxes mean less jobs? So other than being butthurt over the Washington Post, shouldn’t Trump be glad that this “job creator” is only paying the bare minimum taxes to maximize hiring and shareholder return?
Hypocrisy. Thy name is Trump.
> Amazon has profited at our expense. They should be paying for the burden
Wrong:
https://www.vox.com/2017/12/29/16830128/amazon-trump-twitter-postal-service-feud
"But break down the losses, and the situation is a bit more nuanced. Delivering packages, it turns out, is a growth business, and it actually makes the Postal Service money: The revenue from package increased $2.1 billion, and was up 11.8 percent for fiscal year 2017. "
Furthermore, the financial crisis the USPS is currently in is entirely manufactured by the Republican congress of 2006:
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-usps-trump-20180102-story.html
"What the Postal Service's critics (including Trump) almost never mention is that the real drag on its earnings is another congressional directive. I wrote in 2012 that the USPS' fiscal crisis was "as artificial as they come" — it was the product of a 2006 congressional mandate that the service must prepay over the next 10 years all its future expected retiree healthcare benefits."
"Those payments totaled $38 billion through 2011, with further installments of between $5.6 billion and $11.1 billion a year due through 2016. At least $34 billion is still owed, according to the annual report."
***"Conservatives who maintain that the USPS should be operated profitably, like a private business, fail to explain why the service should be burdened with a prepayment mandate that its competitors don't face." ***
The Republicans have had the knives out for the USPS for decades and this is straight up right wing ops 101 as seen worldwide. Take public service, cut funding, burden it financially until it can't function, loudly scream about how public services just don't work, and then privatize it and sell the scraps off to your donors for pennies on the dollar. Move on to the next one.
They do not. That link refers to a WaPo op-ed by a guy who *gasp* is heavily invested in FedEx stock.
Amazon pays exactly what the Postal Regulatory Commission told them to, which in turn has year after year deemed Amazon's contract with the USPS to be profitable.
Wait, wut?
Trump Brags About Not Paying Taxes: "That Makes Me Smart"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBZR1-onmAo
This is the kind of brain damaged post-truth degeneracy that led to Trump.
Trump is good at misdirection and baiting the media and the public-at-large. When he says "look over here at this naughty Amazon", he's not serious; he's really trying to divert attention from some fjnork-up someplace else.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Did you actually read that article beyond just the headline? The analyst quoted in the article is an investor in the USPS' competitor, and is hardly an unbiased reporter. And in any case the article states that delivering packages is profitable for the post office, so Trump's complaints wrt the USPS are way off-base (as is typical for him).
While accurate, that's the sensationalist summary that's used to make Amazon look bad.
The fact is, EVERYONE pays $1.46 per package less than it actually costs to deliver.
It's not an Amazon thing. There's no secret sauce or back room bargaining. This isn't even a variant of the Apple Double Dutch with a touch of Irish and the Queen's pajamas taxation accounting type crap. It's a straight up, across the board, exactly the same thing.
Average cost != incremental cost.
As long as they are charging more than incremental cost, they _are_ making money. The delivery guy on the route is a sunk cost.
You should know this...it's not like your a kid.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Just look at all the ad hominem attacks against amazing President Trump here. It is sad that a president working as hard as he is to protect american values strongly and through actions you would never have seen from shillary (lock her up) is being attacked visiously here. I for one FULLY support our president in calling for Amazon.Com to pay its fare share of taxes and stop ripping off the american people!
This is in reference to the post office subsidizing Amazon deliveries.
Short summary: Amazon pays $1.46 per package less than it actually costs to deliver. That is absolutely Amazon's gain at the expense of the post office.
If you doubt the post office is in a special relationship, what other company gets Sunday delivery for the post office? How is that fair to the workers, it's not like the post office charges Amazon more for that. They deliver the most mundane things on a Sunday, it's not even special orders...
This is why I like Trump's tweets quite a bit, as he seems to have a habit of making public things people seem to want to hide or ignore.
You are apparently under the illusion that USPS is forced to give Amazon a special deal. WTF, you are a dumbass.
n/t
This is why I like Trump's tweets quite a bit, as he seems to have a habit of making public things people seem to want to hide or ignore.
*sigh*...
Then why is Amazon now evil for following the law?
MODDOWN! ; creimer karma whoring sock puppet post!
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and mod down his submissions as well. The great thing is that you don't even need mod points to mod down a submission, just click on the "minus" icon!
Yes, believe it or not, creimer owns all the above sock puppet accounts. It is a mystery why Slashdot management tolerates it!
creimer wrote:
I don't bother with mod points. I'm doing something much more sinister. It took ten story submissions ? I'll have to double check the number ? to move cdreimer's karma from neutral to excellent without ever being exposed to the capricious mods. Mmmmmwwwwahahahahahahaha!
https://slashdot.org/comments....
Danger, Will Robinson, Danger! Creimy is posting more than 2 posts a day. Hurry! mod down otherwise /. will go to hell again!
Note: you can mod down even if already at -1 to lower karma and to prevent lost /. users to accidentally mod up.
creimer wrote:
All you need to do is find a website with a permissive TOS, say, Slashdot, create a Python script to scrape your own comments, sprinkle Amazon affiliate links in various posts, and then re-post past links whenever possible. Won't be long before you start making "coffee money" each month.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
C.D. Reimer is a renowned Slashdot collaborator, as he puts it himself; "Because of the quality of my posts and my article submissions, I'm a highly rated commentator and moderator."
But does anybody ever wondered what "C.D." stands for? Well, it stands for Creimy Dumpty of course!
Creimy Dumpty sat on the wall,
Creimy Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses
And all the king's men
Couldn't put Creimy Dumpty
Together again.
Creimy's siblings video and theme song, very realistic, especially the pants, just like Creimy's:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
With "Vice President Pence Vowing US Astronauts Will Return To the Moon", we are sure they will need miracle workers up there, here is what it would look like. Note that Creimy takes care of bringing a lot of food to the moon as depicted below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Creimy's real pictures:
Before the sex change:
That is not at all what it is saying.
Fixed costs is the cost of buildings, truck depreciation, etc.
Those costs are the same whether they are delivering packages or not.
The 1.46 figure is saying that the package rates should be paying a larger portion of those fixed costs than they are as they are now making up a larger percentage of the post offices business. But even at Amazon's costs the post office makes more money delivering the packages than not.
And as the article says, this claim is by someone with an axe to grind (i.e. heavily invested in Fedex, a competitor of the USPS).
Making the post office charge more for packages would be like telling walmart they can't sell a TV at cost to get people in the door, because it isn't fair to Sears.
Now it's not apples to apples, since the USPS is a government entity. If there is any actual unfairness to your average person, it's that letter rates should be lower and some of that cost should be borne by package rates.
These giant companies are trying to virtue signal by banning right-wing things in recent months, no doubt in response to Trump. Many of them (facebook, Google, esp. YouTube) rely heavily on the First Amendment. To achieve market dominance covering everything, and then restricting it, is unsettling but not illegal (nor should, nor could it be. In the US.)
I wonder if this and their recent problems, amplified by the media, are related. At least the amplification volume and threat of regulation.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
That's not how that works. That's not how anything works.
The Post Office lowered its prices to win a contract with Amazon. That's how Capitalism works. They're still making a profit on each Amazon package, they're just making less profit per package. Because they're competing. And competition lowered prices. Otherwise Amazon would have gone with the next lowest bidder, and USPS would *actually* lose money by not having packages to deliver at all.
Is that clear to you now??????????
They took on debts that were unneeded and unwanted because they were forced to by a political party trying to prove that Government can never do anything right by intentionally causing them to fail.
If the USPS weren't required by law to fund the worlds most outrageously stupid pension fund, they would be perfectly profitable. But instead, idiots like you now get to use this intentional sabotage to pretend that government always fails. Turns out, government just fails when Republicans force it to fail to win over tards.
Did you seriously not manage to read the other five words in that sentence?
While i think that is hyperbole, if you actually read the linked article, this is not a debt, this is not payments on a loan.
This is requiring the USPS, unlike other government agencies to prepay health premiums for retirees. As in before they are billed. They must set aside money in an account well before it is due.
Trump supporters are dumber than cattle. You are oblivious.
Not true. Even for consumers, the USPS is extremely cheap. I had somebody send me a motorcycle transmission a couple months ago and the shipping on it was $13, I can't imagine either FedEx or UPS being able to deliver the package for only that much.
The more likely reason for the deal here is that since the federal government has been trying to put the USPS out of business to help the competition, they needed the extra money to fund those obligations that other businesses don't have. Amazon was able to negotiate because the extra service doesn't cost the USPS that much money. The buildings and vehicles already are owned and paid for, so adding those extra packages probably does result in increased profit even if Amazon is paying less than the going rate.
Also, neither UPS nor FedEx offer saturday delivery without extra cost, something that USPS already does. And while the sunday delivery is probably extra, the vehicles and facilities necessary to make it happen aren't that expensive. It's mostly just having additional personnel to handle it.
Your post is a perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger phenomenon. For those of you who are Trump voters, "Dunning-Kruger phenomenon" means "very think smart bigbig talk but very bad bigbig stupid".
You should know this...it's not like your a kid.
That's pretty much the entire reason everything is so screwed up and people on both sides scream incredibly stupid shit.
The average person in the US operates at the intellectual, emotional, educational, and maturity level of an 8-year-old child.
On a good day.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
... along with the attempts to punish ATT for not agreeing to exercise editorial control over CNN
Lesseee.... got both the Senate and the House of Reps under my thumb, what can I do about the DOJ, and the Forth Estate
My plan to Make America a Banana Republic is coming along just fine.
The reason the post office is losing money isn't because of delivering packages, it's because congress demands they pre-fund 100% of their pension fund (no one else does this). This means they have an annual $5billion payment that congress forces them to pay. This is what's causing the losses, not delivering.
That's not an accurate summation.
This isn't like a typical business that takes on too much debt and winds up going out of business. This is debt that was imposed by a 3rd party and where the same 3rd party is ultimately guaranteeing the debt. The USPS is ultimately run by a federal appointee for the purpose of ensuring that mail gets delivered to every resident of the country no matter where they live.
What's more, that money that they're being forced to sock away isn't even debt, it's money just sitting there. Eventually, they'll hit the point where the fund is completely funded and the profit won't be obscured by phony obligations. This is kind of like if I over-allocate my paycheck earnings to a stack of bills in my sock drawer. I'm still profitable even if that results in me having to borrow money to pay my rent. It would be a foolish decision on my part to do that, but I'd still be making money as long as I'm making enough to cover the interest payments.
Even if you and your dear leader were right, it's irrelevant. There's only one question that needs to be asked: "How does the USPS set their rates, bulk-shipping or otherwise?".
If the rates are pre-set (by statute, fixed USPS policy, to be competitive with UPS/FedEx, etc.), then the onus is on those who set those rates to assure that the USPS is profitable. And if Amazon is simply purchasing a service at the price that it is offered to anyone. Nothing to see here. It's not Amazon's responsibility to see that anyone else is profitable.
If the USPS cut a deal with Amazon for lower rates, then it's still on the USPS for signing an agreement on which they wouldn't make money. They have accountants, MBAs, and the like, just like everyone else. And they went into any negotiations knowing their fixed and variable costs, and the price at which they could offer their service profitably. If they signed a deal to sell their service at a price that would lose them money, the again, that's not on Amazon. They need to suck it up, wait for the deal to expire, and raise their rates when the contract comes up for renewal. And as before, it's not Amazon's responsibility to see that anyone else is profitable.
Imagine all the people...
I'm open to arguments.
Just like every other large company they evade taxes (by using the loopholes that YOU POLITICIANS create) and abuse our system to save money (which YOU POLITICIANS allow them to).
Hey, Trump. In case you didn't notice it yet: You can change the rules of the game. Shit or get off the pot.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It is funny how people say "Trump this" and "Trump that" when it should really be "We Americans this/that" and "Those Americans this/that". It is not about Trump. The fact is Trump is the best presentation of an individual living in the United States. We here outside the US think presidents are the best, most intelligent, best genes, best everything and the rest are just worse versions of Mr. Trump. Every citizen of the United States should pick a mirror and confess "I am mini-Trump". It is YOU wanting the 60s back.
he sees Amazon as attacking the American traditional way of life
You are PAINFULLY ignorant.
This guy kills every. single. thing. he. touches. He's not concerned with any of that. He's just projecting the rage from his equity fund buddies who are losing their shirts because they bet on shopping malls and lost.
So when Trump does it, it's "smart business practices." When Amazon does it, it's "very unfair".
As usual, this POTUS is dripping with irony and hypocrisy, and knows the definition of neither.
Short summary: Amazon pays $1.46 per package less than it actually costs to deliver.
WRONG! The analysis, by a third-party -- not the actual postal service (and in fact, an analyst with a conflict of interest because his firm is invested in Fedex) concludes that if the cost of shipping packages was calculated differently to be weighted more heavily on packages (which may or may not be a valid assessment of costs) that packages would cost, on average, $1.46 more to ship. Nothing about how that compares to the regular prices that USPS charges, or whatever discounted rate Amazon pays. Not sure if you are lying intentionally or just have bad reading comprehension.
what other company gets Sunday delivery for the post office?
Any company, or individual, who uses Priority Mail Express. For several years now.
Have you thought about trying real facts, instead of "alternative" facts?
The post office is going to be smaller than it was...email.
emalls that say "your package will be delivered by USPS"
Trump's talking about AliExpress as the competitor right? So stab your own domestic industry in favour of the competitor (AliExpress)? Right?
Or shut up. Getting on a soapbox is impotent.
There are much better examples of those who are causing the U.S. tremendous loss, starting with the loud mouth who's simply causing controversy to divert attention from his own unlawful activities (READ: PLURAL).
Fucking rodeo clown, that guy. His presidency will be remembered as the rest of his life will be - a fat, cheap, narcissistic scam artist completely out of line with the vast majority of the people he "represents".
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Not all of us can steer federal and other nations business to our properties like he does.
And then underperform the market.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Short summary: Imaginary numbers from a study of imaginary numbers.
Alternate truth lives!
mnem
"I'm sorry; we can only pay for actual losses, not imaginary ones."
You can finger wag Amazon all you want, but they wouldn't exist if not for Congress fucking up capitalism at every change they get with regulations, loopholes, and unconstitutional re-interpretation (SCOTUS partly to blame here) of interstate commerce clause.
If we would restore rule of law, much of this insanity would be fixed.
"Fixed costs" and "lower fixed rate" are two completely different and completely unrelated things. That you think they are the same show how little understanding you have of all of this.
As many, many people point out here - and has been pointed out to you specifically in the past (I have a long memory on this) - the government does not subsidize the USPS at all. Zero dollars in subsidy. No charity.
You aren't misinformed, as you have been corrected on this befire. You are intentionally lying. Why is that?
The USPS was cut loose from government funding during the Nixon administration exactly for to meet those "run it like a business" conservative demands. The only problem is that Congress gets to pass rules about how the USPS runs - what days it delivers on, how often, how much it can charge, and especially the monumentally stupid pension pre-funding mandate, for postal workers yet unborn, that no private business - or government entity - anywhere else in the world does.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
You're missing some of the point. The US Congress has mandated the USPS to completely pre-pay into its retirement fund at (a) an accelerated rate for (b) all their employees, even ones who aren't even close to retirement. The USPS would be fine financially if they could pay into the fund more reasonably, like every other corporation does (that still have pensions). This was done by Congress partly to hinder the USPS and foster a case to privatize it -- 'cause "it's losing money". Seemingly, you've drunk their Kool-Aid.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
With most businesses, you can bake the cost into your price. With the USPS, to raise rates, it literally requires an Act of Congress. Guess which side has a vested interest in showing just how much the USPS is failing so they can attempt to privatize it? Shut the fuck, moron.
You mean he has a habit of making UP things that his people want to hide or ignore his IGNORANCE of.
Resident Chump is an imbecile, and if you voted for him, knowing what we all knew about him before the election, you are too.
And I can state that with statistical certainty; the few for whom that voting for him was actually in their best interest are so few, they are statistically insignificant.
Everybody else is getting raped, whether they voted for him or not.
mnem
History will mark these years as the beginning of "The Dark Ages" of the American Empire.
You an idiot. The USPS is literally the only organization saddled with such a burden. Congress is unduly punishing them to force them to be nonprofitable and fucktards like you think the USPS is the problem. As with most everything fucked, it's caused by Congress as the root cause.
How the fuck you can figure out how to use a keyboard is beyond me.
And another dumb Trump supporter adds to the fray
What a shame you were so poorly educated. Who failed you?
Which O/S does it use?
President Trump escalated his attack on Amazon on Thursday, saying that the e-commerce giant does not pay enough taxes, and strongly suggested that he may try to rein in the e-commerce business.
In the words of Trump himself "That makes them smart".
That is an idiotic analogy. Based on that analogy, you are probably dead broke because you don't have enough cash on hand to pay for all future expenses until the day you and your children die.
You know you will need to buy food, clothing, housing, medical care, etc, but most people do not have a giant pile of cash that they pull from to pay these expenses in perpetuity. Instead, they pay for this out of ongoing income, that is why they go to work (or run a business).
Most businesses do this the same way. They do not set aside an on-hand reserve for all future expenses, they pay for on-going costs out of income.
What is unfortunate is that many businesses (and state governments) who still offer pension plans are abusing the system by claiming that the rate of return on the plan investments will be far greater than any reasonable expectation so that they can under fund them.
Depends on how you look at it. Visiting every mailbox in the US is sort of a fixed cost. Yes, it varies by a small percentage. But a 50 cent letter does not even come close to paying for a mailbox visit.
Delivering just a letter vs. a letter and a package adds up to a *smaller* loss on fixed costs even if the two together are not profitable.
I call on all my fellow Trump supporters to show solidarity with our president to smash our computers and show Fake News Jeff Bezos what real Americans think of him.
I'm sure if you do enough research you would find evidence that both Bushes and Reagan did the same.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Have gnu, will travel.
Bezos Told trump to fuck off when asked for Extortion money.
trump, like msmash is just an uninformed whinny little bitch.
While I agree no one is perfect, but please, why are we in the fucked position we are in here in the us.. Tom Styer with his commercials about impeachment. this is crazy..
mSMASh please stop with this stupid biullshit. It's okay to admit that today is a slow news day, or JUST admit you have your head STUCK FAR UP YOUR ASS, that you have nothing intelligent to say..
I think someone in a previous post may have said it best..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Please break the stereo type you have so deservedly been rewarded..
The main problem is that government employees have "defined benefit" retirements, whereas nearly all private sector employees have "defined contribution" retirements. The math just doesn't work when somebody can work for 25 or 30 years and then draw a large pension for 25 or 30 or 40 more years. States have learned this the hard way and some are switching to "defined contribution" retirement plans. We had state workers here retiring after a 25 year "career" and expecting large retirement checks for the rest of their life. It just does not work and I hate paying taxes so the state can write those checks.
The Post Office doesn't even have the fucking power to negotiate rates like you think they do. Hell, they can't even stop themselves from getting screwed by the presort bundles. That packet of ads and junk you get every week? The fact that there's an outer sheet now means that it's considered 1 piece of mail. It used to be each publication inside that single, thin sheet had to pay to be delivered to your house. Now they dump shit off at a proxy who slaps it all within a single outer sheet (which does absolutely nothing to contain the junk inside), then the post office has to take and deliver all that bulk for a fraction of the price (and a fraction of the actual cost they incur to deliver it).
And at the current rates they are losing money per Amazon delivery. Multiple sources have given actual numbers for this.
Stop being wrong.
Another factor is USPS needs the approval of Congress in order to make any financial decisions. They've asked to suspend Saturday delivery to save money, Congress did not approve. They asked for postage rate hikes, Congress did not approve. They asked to close some post offices to save money, again Congress refused. Is it any wonder they are struggling?
You want megacorps? 'Eh chummer? cause this is how you get megacorps.
Getting your government to do what you want is not done by playing partisanship but by leveraging opportunities as they arrive even when the other side is being hypocritical. Either you deal and win or take the "high road" of moral indignation and lose. That is the unfortunate truth of politics from ancient Athens to this very moment.
Instead of taking the low road and bashing Trump, ensuring he wont listen to you, why not say yes, I agree that the most wealthy corporations in existence need to pay more taxes and win what most people have wanted for decades but no president up until today was willing to agree with?
Play to win. Doing anything else is a plan to fail.
Who cares what Trump said? You can literally find Trump saying one thing one day, and something contradictory another day, on any issue. Hell, he's done that in single meetings!
It matters not what the GP would do. What matters is the President and the administration of the country.
However, while acknowledging that Trump is about as reliable as a crack whore guarding the Widows and Orphans fund, the subject is Trump's latest round of verbal diarrhea. He said that 'Amazon is causing tremendous loss to the US'.
Yet that is exactly what Trump himself, and Trump Corporation, did too. Trump caused a 'tremendous loss to the US', by 'paying little or no taxes to state and local governments'. I have stated my concerns about Trump Corporation long before the elections. Unlike others they have failed to pay thousands of workers for their work.
And I just threw up a little in my mouth, writing that.
The same party that claimed to lower tax rates, while approving one of the largest spending bills ever?
I think they lost whatever credibility they had for being fiscal conservatives a long long time ago.
So companies using legal tricks to not pay taxes hurts America? So how about those tax returns, buddy?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
To be fair, you are correct! However, to be even more fair, the vast majority of Trump supporters are victims of the culture of stupidity. Do I like that they use their stupidity as weapon against rationality? Do I like that there now appears to be a real chance that their idiocy will actually destroy our country? Of course not! But many of these people are NOT actually inherently stupid (i.e. low IQ and/or EQ), nor are many of them "terrible people." They are ignorant and uneducated fools who have fallen for the long-term republican war against education, intelligence, expertise, and science. It's terrible, but they are guilty of being conned more than anything else. The question is, how do we get them to realize that they are victims and then get them educated so that they don't continue to victimize the rest of the country (and the world, for that matter). Don't get me wrong; I still think they are also guilty of racism, sexism, etc. - the same way I think Germans who became Nazis because they fell for propaganda are guilty. But again, the only way out of it is education. (No wonder the Republitards put dear little Betsy in charge of education - keep them dumb, keep them poor, keep them under your thumb, get them to believe anything you say because you've never given them the tools to think for themselves.)
I think it is hilarious that the closest president America has ever had to a Communist (FDR and LBJ aren't even in his league), ran on the Republican ticket. And he won, by getting Republican voters to vote for him. (Imagine how impossible this would have been, 20 years ago.) For the most part, Democrats voted against Trump, thereby showing the least taste for communism. (If you don't count third parties, such as Libertarians, who are even more anti-Communist.)
Comrade Trump is now totally out of the closet (he's openly admitting it!) on being against free markets and wanting government to micromanage the economy. "Picking winners and losers."
Remember when the Republicans were the right-wing party? It really wasn't all that long ago. I understand crazy things happen, but this isn't just one guy: we're talking about tens of millions of Americans who used to identify as conservative, voted for a Communist.
Geologists say that sometimes, the Earth's magnetic poles swap -- and fast. It's an almost perfect analogy for a bizarre political phenomenon, and it happened right here in your life time, and you got to see it happen. Everyone has just totally abandoned the right wing.
Anyone running for office, here's my tip: tell people you're a pinko. All the candidates are going to fight about how pinko they are, and how right-wing their opponents are. Don't get out-liberaled!
it shouldn't take anyone with a room-temp-or-higher IQ more than a few seconds.
Sorry but IQ is measured in inverse units of temperature. Beauty is measured in temperature e.g. s/he looks "hot" and it is generally accepted that beauty and brains tend to be inversely proportional to each other. Hence IQ ~ 1/(beauty) and so has units of inverse kelvin in the SI system.
It's only smart when HE does it.
I thought he was clear on that point.
That would be a reason for the president to flame USPS, not one of their customers.
I think he's flaming Amazon for some other reason. The fact that Washington Post sometimes reports on what he gets caught doing or saying, would be the least-far-fetched hypothesis.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
This is one tweet that will live in infamy.
Only a "Stable Genius" could produce this much horseshit.
Can't wait to see how he walks it back.
I need to point something out here about "already paid for." I was recently getting my vehicle inspected - I live in one of those annoying states that does this. Apparently all vehicles get inspected - even state and federal government vehicles - because a postal worker was there getting her mail delivery truck inspected.
Apparently that truck was 29 years old, and next year will no longer require inspection because it will qualify as a classic car. Since it is government-owned and not used for "business" purposes since the USPS is not a business, it could actually use that exemption.
Clearly the USPS is not even investing in capital improvements if they are using trucks older than people old enough to graduate college and spend a few years in the workforce, and only spending money on fuel and maintenance.
It's smart when it's not done by businesses owned by people he thinks are mean to him.
IANAL, but isn't deliberately publicly attacking and lying about a company in a deliberate attempt to drive down the stock price actionable in court as "tortious interference"? I.e., can't Trump be sued for as much as he has driven the market cap down, which is far more money than he has?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I guess we should all stop mailing thank you notes and Christmas cards if it's going to damage the U.S.!
As if that money will actually be there when it's needed in 25 years.
It is part of normal business tactics to starve competition by providing a quality product at the lowest price. That is the essence of capitalism. If Toyota could build a high quality $5,000 car the entire world of automobile production would be destroyed. Suggesting that Toyota should not be allowed to do that runs contrary to all historic laws and customs in the US. We are now hearing the same nonsense about automation. Cities want high taxes on automated factories to offset the loss of jobs in the community. That nonsense can kill us with increasing trade imbalances. If China has great automation and can spit out better wrist watches at a far lower price due to their automation just how could a heavily taxed American watch maker hope to export its products? Although i view capitalism as a sick form of a horrid disease I remain aware that you can not tamper with capitalism without causing huge problems in other factors in play.
When do we get to evaluate Trump's fair share?
Holy shit. You are actually retarded.
The USPS was cut loose from government funding during the Nixon administration exactly for to meet those "run it like a business" conservative demands.
The other reason is that people would complain to their congressman whenever stamp prices went up.
That's the point. You buy a business that is worth a lot so you can get huge loans on their name. Then you pay yourself huge consultancy fees and salaries from those loans. They couldn't get the loans if the businesses were on the way to failure.
Toys R Us was doing quite well... through Baby's R Us. They were basically shifting over to a baby retailer with a small toy division until they had the rug pulled out from under them.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Maybe Trump should show his taxes before claiming some other person/entity is not paying their fair share.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
... that the usual brigade of Trump supporters (posters and modders both) have gone quiet all of a sudden?
Could this be anything to do with kicking out 60 Russian "diplomats"? Has Putin finally given up on Trump?
By 'Republican', are you talking about the Congressional Republicans, or the base in flyover country? If it's the latter, then yeah, Trump did do impressively, even though Ted Cruz held his own in several red states. But if it's the former, Trump to this day has trouble w/ them when he tries to push his own brand of non-Republican policies, be it tariffs on steel/aluminum, easing up on Russia (before the Salisbury poisoning of the Skripals) that are at odds w/ traditional GOP policies. Heck, there is no way the GOP would have dared give him an omnibus bill that gives the Dems everything they want, but deny him things like funding for the wall. If Romney-McDaniels was serious about supporting him, she would have done what Steve Bannon tried, and organized a campaign to purge the senatorial candidates of RINOs. But the fact that nothing has been done against the likes of McCain, Graham, Sass, Murkowski, Flake or Collins demonstrates that the president, unlike his GOP predecessors, has little control over his party
And aside from that, how does a Republican congress send him an omnibus bill that is filled w/ Democrat dreams, such as funding for a tunnel in NY, Planned Parenthood, a ban on using any money for the wall models that the president included?
Trump needs to purge the GOP of all the saboteurs in his party who enabled this, such as McCain, Collins, Murkowski, Graham, Flake, before he can have his agenda moving.
Came here to say this. Amazon pays exactly the rates the PRC tells them to. If they're setting the rate too low, that's their own damned fault.
On the other hand, Amazon has zero carrier loyalty. It's all whoever is cheapest on any given route for any given shipment. They have a massive shipping algorithm that runs every carrier for a route to see who comes up with the cheapest price, every single time you load a page with a product on it. That's how they come up with the "order in the next X minutes to get it by Tuesday!" text. You want the volume? You can have as much as you want, providing you can undercut everyone else in a real-time market.
Source: I'm the technical lead of one of those hundreds of carrier quote algorithms. Not the USPS one. I've seen what's inside the beast.
fuck donald trump
You went wayyy too far when you decided to fuck to with amazon. fuck you trump! Dump Trump
And at the current rates they are losing money per Amazon delivery. Multiple sources have given actual numbers for this.
I'm missing the part where the "multiple sources" explain how this is Amazon's fault.
Is there perchance a source, or even multiple ones, for that?
If Amazon is putting 1000's of retailers out of business, what are those 1000's of retailers doing wrong if a website with very little human interaction can provide a better service than they can?
> This is why I like Trump's tweets quite a bit, as he seems to have a habit of making public things people seem to want to hide or ignore.
ahem. the reason Trump often sounds original or insightful is because he doesn't usually say things other people say. the reason for this is that most people say sensible things and mostly he's just talking out of his ass.
Look above.
Lemme get this straight. Donald "I Refuse To Show My Tax Returns" Trump is attacking AMAZON for not paying taxes? Bwahahahahahahahahah What a hypocritical douchebag! What a joke. Christ... Trump is punishment sent by God for the folly of thinking a government could run on autopilot while the people responsible for choosing competent and uncorrupted politicians to make law have abdicated their responsibilities to vote, and vote in an informed fashion for decades without it doing any harm.
Trump attacks Amazon for not paying taxes... that's like Michael Vick accusing you of animal cruelty. What a JOKE!
A tweet from Trump about Amazon was prompted by a story about Trump thinking about Amazon? That doesn't follow at all. Axios figured out he might say something, and when he did it's being attributed to Axios? Does it not make more sense that Trump was going to say something regardless and Axios just figured it out beforehand?
Is that post hoc ergo propter hoc?
"saying that the e-commerce giant does not pay enough taxes..."
How much tax do the Trump businesses pay?
Greed is the root of all evil.
Ha ha, what a moron. He pushes through a bill to reduce taxes that corporations pay, then has the nerve (I would have said "balls" but he has none), to bitch about a corporation not paying enough taxes? No wonder all his businesses go bankrupt. He's the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: Stupidity
Someone bitch slap that idiot and inform him that the presidency is not a frikkin' game show.
Trump is punishing Bezos for WaPo. That is all.
Democracy takes yet another hit under the Trumpicans.
Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments
Likely because of deals w/ state and local govs previously made. Trump is jealous of this deal.
use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy
HEL-LO-O! The USPS is in the business of delivering packages! They pay them for these deliveries. It's what the USPS does!
How about we have Mr Trump pay HIS taxes?!
Man-up, Mr Trump; show us how YOU manipulated your way out of paying a fair share!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Uh, OK. So every time I mail a letter, I'm supposed to feel guilty?
They are ALWAYS temporary, part-time employees. If they aren't, whoever's supervising that day is no doubt in deep do-do... Your Regular would be getting time and a half plus another 25% (IIRC) for it being a Sunday..... (From a retired Letter Carrier)
Who pays for the year over year losses totaling in the tens of billions?
https://www.thoughtco.com/post...
Someone is paying for those losses.
https://about.usps.com/news/na...
When businesses operate at losses such as these, they go out of business (ToyRUs)
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/n...
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/stop-us-postal-service-subsidizing-shipping-rates-foreign-competitors-money-us-businesses