Would a Post Office Bankruptcy Kill E-Commerce? (cnn.com) 327
MountainLogic writes: With the U.S. Postal Service slated to run out of money this summer, a congressional bailout has become embroiled in the usual, critical and unusual political fights. Every day letter carriers deliver some of our web orders, there are many other functions the post office performs including providing an address validation API that is the core of many shipping systems. Would the collapse of this service mean a major disruption of e-commerce? What other impacts to technology would we face with the collapse of this constitutionally guaranteed service (Article I, Section 8, Clause 7).
Are there other services that the post office could perform to gain revenue? For example, the post office is where many Americans who live outside of major metro areas go to get a passport. A U.S. passport is the gold standard of ID. Could the post office become the ultimate place to go to validate ID and act as a signing authority? If you forget your password, go in to your local post office, show ID and reset your password. Seems like financial institutions would happily pay a few cents per reset to prevent billions in identity theft. Is there any other institution in America that could perform such a service on this scale. How else can the post office become more relevant and more solvent? Is profitability even a reasonable standard as we do not hold DoD to such a standard?
Are there other services that the post office could perform to gain revenue? For example, the post office is where many Americans who live outside of major metro areas go to get a passport. A U.S. passport is the gold standard of ID. Could the post office become the ultimate place to go to validate ID and act as a signing authority? If you forget your password, go in to your local post office, show ID and reset your password. Seems like financial institutions would happily pay a few cents per reset to prevent billions in identity theft. Is there any other institution in America that could perform such a service on this scale. How else can the post office become more relevant and more solvent? Is profitability even a reasonable standard as we do not hold DoD to such a standard?
Postal banking (Score:5, Interesting)
Postal banking is the obvious option. We had it until the late 60's!
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Hell, they're forced to pay for pensions for people who haven't even been born yet!
Re:Postal banking (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? Is this a constitutional requirement? I've never quite understood this necessity to make every government-run service like the post cost recovery or even profit-driven. If as a society it's deemed that this is a societal good (which seems to be the case as it's constitutionally mandated), then why not just fund it?
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But putting that aside, it's a bad idea anyway and the notion of societal good is a slippery slope to hell. There's always some yahoo that thinks any given thing is a societal good that everyone else ought to pay for and becaus
Re:Postal banking (Score:5, Informative)
> But putting that aside, it's a bad idea anyway and the notion of societal good is a slippery slope to hell.
The notion of entirely ignoring it is _much_ steeper slope to hell. We see the consequences among sociopaths with a complete lack of conscounce.
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What's worse? A whole bunch of CEOs who don't make much effort because they know they can always get a bailout?
Last I heard the post office was losing money on every parcel delivered but trying to make it up in volume.
Maybe they need to put their prices up to match reality. Right now they're losing money so that Amazon doesn't have to, and Amazon doesn't even pay taxes.
Re:Postal banking (Score:5, Insightful)
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And the issue is that the PO is required to full fund their retirement unlike all other corporations. That's why they are in the red. Something you would now if you bothered to look into.
You can fuck off now.
Re:Postal banking (Score:5, Insightful)
Are there other services that the post office could perform to gain revenue?
It's:
Are there other things that the post office could do to stop losing revenue?
The most obvious one is "get out from under Congress kneecapping them", in particular through the insane compensation and pension benefits requirements forced on them, and that's "Congress" as a whole, not "the Republicans" or "the Democrats". The USPS has been warning for at least 20 years that they're functionally bankrupt, but nothing has ever been done.
Having said that, those poor guys have been running on empty for so long, will they really collapse now?
Specifically, making a plan to pay their employees (Score:5, Informative)
For anyone unfamiliar, here is what Argle is talking about.
For private employees and state governments, when they promise to pay an employee $x for working for them in 2020, the employer pays that amount in 2020. Work done this year year is paid for this year.
So if they promise you'll be paid half now and half later by being paid for 20-30 years of retirement, they send off the retirement money to Fidelity or another third party. You can log into your Fidelity account and see the $40,000 you have for retirement, because when you did the work, the employer paid for that work, sending the retirement portion to Fidelity or whichever company they use. Every once in a while a company like Enron cheats on that accounting, not actually sending the money over like they are supposed to. Then the CEO (Ken Lay for Enron) goes to prison.
States work similarly, but often operate their own "Fidelity". For example Texas has $150 billion set aside in investments to cover the retirement payments that Texas teachers have earned.
The post office pulled an Enron and promised huge retirement payments but never put any money aside to be able to actually pay employees. Their plan was to hope their revenue kept growing faster than their debt to employees, so they could use revenue earned in 2020 to pay employees for work done in 1995. Their revenue has NOT in fact continued to increase rapidly (when I the last time you nailed a letter?) So here they are having promised these high payments, but they never put aside money to make those payments at the time the employee did the work.
Seeing the Enron-style collapse coming, Congress required USPS to write down a plan for how they are going to get out of this mess. They are supposed to figure out a plan for how to pay employees for work they did ten years ago, and plan to eventually start putting money aside to pay employees at the time the work is done, like everybody else does. Congress also required a progress report every few years, letting Congress know how USPS os doing on getting out of this hole.
That's the requirement ArgleBargle is talking about.
Re:Specifically, making a plan to pay their employ (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with the post office isn't that they weren't preparing or their worker's retirement. The problem is that congress mandated that the US Postal service had to set aside 75 years of retirement payment over a span of 10 years.
In 2006, Congress passed a law that imposed extraordinary costs on the U.S. Postal Service. The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) required the USPS to create a $72 billion fund to pay for the cost of its post-retirement health care costs, 75 years into the future. This burden applies to no other federal agency or private corporation. https://ips-dc.org/how-congres... [ips-dc.org]
This put undo pressure on the US Postal Services and without the need to prepay for those retirees they would have actually seen profits over the last few years. Recently this mandate was lifted by congress (https://defazio.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/defazio-authored-bill-to-help-us-postal-service-maintain-sustainability) but then the pandemic hit and added new burdens on the US Postal Service.
P.S. I haven't been able to find any references that your above statements that the USPS didn't have any pension fund prior to the 2006 mandate. I wasn't able to find any justification for why the 2006 mandate was implemented.
Re: Postal banking (Score:5, Insightful)
There is always some yahoo that mistakes the currency issuer with a currency user. The federal government issues the money. The question is do we have the real resources to fund a world class postal service (yes)? Does the post office perform a a vital public purpose (yes, but go argue with George Washington if you want)? Do the proposals to stabilize and expand postal service offering create unreasonable amounts of inflation or labor supply demand (no)? Is the USPS actually bankrupt (no, all congress has to do is remove the 75-year prefunding clause that the GOP put in)?
Letâ(TM)s all stop hating on the US postal service. The reality is we can have the best system in the world and it would create more jobs, create more economic prosperity, and it could be delivered with cheaper rates...if the USG and the GOP let it do so.
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Why do you want them to remove their own pension funding? Enron did that. The problem with the post office is that, unlike 1850 and because regulations and unfunded mandates, it is no longer profitable.
Remove all the regulations around the post office and let them compete with private couriers, why does every ZIP code need a post office with a postmaster and at least 3 employees? I do think that they shouldn't be able to loan against or use the funds from future pensions, just like every other private compa
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Actually, without the 2006 mandate to pre-fund their pension plan for 75 years (something no other public/private entity is force to do) the USPS would have seen profits over the last 5+ years.
Luckily the 2006 mandate has been overturned ( https://defazio.house.gov/medi... [house.gov] ) but then they were affected by the pandemic.
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"it's a bad idea anyway and the notion of societal good is a slippery slope to hell"
You mean like Defense and the defense budget? Don't you complain about that.
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If they do this, they'll hang it on the Commerce Clause. They hang EVERYTHING on that.
Why would they need to do that? The Post Office isn't funded by the US taxpayer, it was chartered by the government, but has to self-fund.
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No. But the gist of this article was about bankruptcy of the post office -- burdening it with tasks for which it is not well suited and which the worst paying customers will use will only accelerate said bankruptcy.
Re:Postal banking (Score:5, Insightful)
There is absolutely nothing wrong with pensions. The problem is that in 2006, the post office was required to pre-fund pensions and health benefits through 2056. That insanity was designed to bankrupt the USPS and make them less competitive with private delivery services.
If we can give away trillions to private businesses that don't provide essential services, I'm sure we could spare a bit for the damn Post Office!
Whatever we do, reduce the pension funding requirement to something sane or bail out the USPS, the solution is NOT to screw the workers by cutting out their pension!
The post office would be perfectly solvent if they weren't being actively screwed by Congress.
Re:Postal banking (Score:5, Interesting)
There is absolutely nothing wrong with pensions. The problem is that in 2006, the post office was required to pre-fund pensions and health benefits through 2056. That insanity was designed to bankrupt the USPS and make them less competitive with private delivery services.
The ERIASA [wikipedia.org] became law 2 September 1974 as a reaction to decades of poorly funded pensions, especially since the early 1960s, resulting in many retirees not receiving their full pensions or, in a lot of cases, not any part of it.
There is nothing irrational about pre-funded pensions, and, in fact, it is a pretty good idea, and always has been. The postal workers union now claiming it created the current mess is pretty ironic, because it was that union that was instrumental in driving this legislation through after years of their effort to get it passed.
A pre-funded and guaranteeing pension is an excellent way to attract better quality workers. Underfunded pensions is a great way to lose pensions. Even if the USPO does go bankrupt, Postal employees will still get their full pensions. Can't say that about Enron, or more pointedly, the British parcel service City Link, the British AmTrak Express Parcels, or Atlanta's BeavEx, nor any other company that went bankrupt, and it happens all the time.
IMO, the problems at USPO have to do with their not competing with other delivery services. It still only costs 35 to send a post card, or 55 to send a letter First Class from Key West FL to Nome AK, or from Lubec ME to Ka Lae HI, and it probably takes less than a week to deliver. USPO rates for parcels under two pounds are what is crazy. Those rates should increase to be just a cent less expensive than other delivery services. Then if the USPO could lower their rates for parcels over two pounds to be competitive with FedEx and other delivery services, they'd get more business, have more revenue, generate more profit. But raiding their pension fund is not remotely a rational solution to revenue problems.
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Having the USPS chase the rates offered by others isn't workable. The private competitors can and do offer all sorts of discounts to their customers and can change prices basically whenever they want. Meanwhile, the USPS has to push rate increases (and presumably, decreases) through committee sessions and make them available for public comment for months before their rate change goes into effect.
And suppose they do that and spend about 6-8 months to make one rate change to stay one penny below Fedex, and
Re:Postal banking (Score:5, Informative)
The ERIASA covers private industry pension plans, while the Post Office is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government. They were not covered by the terms of ERIASA until the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 [wikipedia.org].
The PAEA gave the USPS. 9 years, 2007-2016, to get up to required funding levels for pensions and health benefits (PHB). Under the ERIASA companies were given up to 30 - 40 years, depending on their size. That was Congressional Handicap #1, and timing couldn't be worse with Peak Mail happening in 2006.
The second came in 2013 with the passage of the stop-gap spending bill known as the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013 [wikipedia.org]. In an attempt to adjust service to be more profitable, yet still meet their mandate, on February 2013 the Postal Service announced that on Saturdays it would only deliver packages, mail-order medicines, Priority Mail, and Express Mail, effective August 10, 2013. The Appropriations Act forbade that and required full service on Saturdays.
It should be noted that there is a separate Executive Brach Agency -- the PRC [wikipedia.org] -- tasked with setting rates on different classes of mail. The USPS sends them recommendations every year for rate changes.
First Class Mail is already one of the biggest profit centers. Postcards are not considered First Class Mail, and their rate reflects the fact that they're really just hitching a ride with the other mail. They can take longer to deliver to remote locations because they go out only when something else is already going there. Adjusting their rates will do nothing. The taking on of Sunday delivery is a big factor in their 6.1% annual (2019) increase in parcel revenue. [usps.com] 2019 looked especially bad because interest by USPS is paid on the Discount Rate, which tripled from 1.0% to 3.0% before finally settling at 2.25% [stlouisfed.org] in 2019.
Rates on parcels increased in 2020 [allenpress.com] by 2.1% on average, versus 4.9% increases by FedEx and UPS. Rates were also increased in 2019 [allenpress.com], and 2018 [allenpress.com].
To sum up, the USPS tried at least once to adjust service for the markets and Congress squeezed an amendment in a "must pass to prevent a shutdown" law prohibiting it. Rate increases are requested and reviewed annually, and reflect the actual cost of service.
Without the onerous PHB costs, the USPS would be profitable. While they should be required to fund those appropriately, rate adjustments alone will not meet this goal. Extending the funding term for another 10-20 years would be a big step in the right direction. There is currently a bill sitting in the Senate [congress.gov] that addresses the PHB costs.
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Re: Postal banking (Score:3)
The USPS was never created to generate a profit, nor should it. It was created to provide a legitimate and obvious democratic purpose to unite America. It still has a vital role to play in thousands of communities across America and in some areas itâ(TM)s the most reliable public service. Institutions that operate for the public purpose are essential and need to be expanded, not eliminated.
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Then how come UPS and FedEx are more accessible and more reliable, even in rural America?
That isn't even remotely the case. It can be argued that UPS and FedEx are 'good enough' for packages (not letters), but they are not checking your door every day for outgoing mail, whether you ask them or not, and the USPS amazingly enough does. One could argue this isn't needed, but it is strange to say that UPS and FedEx are more accessible and reliable.
Partially this is argued against being the case in the second half of your own post, when you say that USPS going away would mean nearly the end of paper
Re:Postal banking (Score:4, Insightful)
What if you are poor and don't have a bank account? Why do you think predatory paycheck lending is a thing in this country?
Re:Postal banking (Score:4, Interesting)
If someone now chooses not to have a bank account, why would they choose to have a post office account?
Simple, the gov't can offer low-income individuals bank accounts with NO MINIMUM BALANCE requirement, no abusive fees, etc.
A postal bank could offer bank accounts subsidized by the federal government that allows low-income workers get their paychecks direct deposited, have a debit card, and avoid predatory check-cashing stores.
What would it be worth to not have to mail out SS payments, for instance? This would be an extension of the transition from food stamps to EBT cards.
Re: Postal banking (Score:5, Informative)
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I would like to see the postal service become a couple of things...
For one, a credit agency like Experian but answerable to the people, validating credit worthiness only for actual loan inquiries and not because an employer wants more metadata on new hires.
A federal municipal broadband that covers the entire country. Before you freak out about the CIA/NSA/Homeland etc spying on you, don't think for a minute that commercial ISP's don't already bend over backward for them as well as selling that data to any
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Just like a sensible nations, fund empty hospital beds during normal times so that you have them during an epidemoic. So you need a manual delivery service, one that can continue to operating during an emmergency, like a solar flare that would knock on all electronics on the wrong side of the planet at that time. The postal services keeps delivering with cheap little energy efficient diesel motorbikes and vans, deliver emegency supplies to every household.
Nahh fuck that, let's have the chaos of no hospital
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Section 8 of the US constitution gives Congress the authority to establish "Post Offices and Post Roads" so it's their fucking job to keep it running.
The only reason there's any bitching is the Republican donors who own FexEx and UPS would love to have no non-profit competition. The whole "fund your retirement up front for forever" bullshit was explicitly put there to bankrupt the USPS so that they have an excuse to kill it.
Re: Postal banking (Score:5, Informative)
You realize those for profit postal companies pick where they can deliver and often use the "dead weight" USPS for last mile delivery, especially in rural areas where the for profit companies have no presence
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Which magical nation funds enough empty hospital beds to deal with a global pandemic? Yep, none.
The US actually has a high "per capita" ICU bed count. Our "ordinary" per capita hospital bed count is somewhat lower, but it's adequate.
All first world countries, when faced with a disaster, create hospital beds if needed -- just not in swank buildings with community art work on the walls and a visitor cafeteria with high speed public WiFi and a coffee bar serving up $9 quad long shot grandes in a venti cup half
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Nahh fuck that, let's have the chaos of no hospital beds during epidemics
Where in America has a single patient been denied a bed in a hospital - when the pandemic struck, we identified the areas with the greatest needs and built emergency hospital beds, and so far the majority of those emergency beds have remained unused. We were able, so far, to create hospital bends Just-In-Time. We were lucky, but so far we've handled it.
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It's very unlikely that people with significant liquid assets are going to use the post office as their bank so I would expect that the median account would be something like $500.
A Postal Bank wouldn't be for people with "significant liquid assets," it would be for those with little to no liquid assets. It could drive a stake through the heart of the "check cashing business,' add to the mix debit cards and some sort of checking. Rather than stealing customers from local banks, it would expand the number of Americans with bank accounts.
It's impossible for the USPS to make money on that without charging fees for everything such as checks, ATM transactions, "teller" assisted transactions, and "paper" statements.
Offering such services wouldn't have to make money from the bank accounts per se, it could offer these banking services as a subsidized service to hel
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Heck, since you're on a roll here, why shouldn't the Post Office just buy a car for everyone who wants one, keep it full of fuel, repair it when needed, and replace it every couple years?
The Post Office delivers mail. That's what Congress is authorized to, if they see fit, establish based on the Constitution.
The Post Office is solvent (Score:5, Informative)
Were it not for Republicans in 2006 who forced the Postal Service to prefund its health benefits for 50 years, something no other business on the planet has to do, this would not be an issue. In short, the Post Office has to fully fund its health account for people who don't yet work for the Post Office and who haven't been born.
Republicans also tied the hands of the Post Office by forbidding it to raise rates like any normal business does. Nor can the Post Office add a fuel surcharge like UPS or FedEx do.
All of the above doesn't take into consideration Congress raiding the Post Office for funding which goes into the general budget of the U.S.
Re:The Post Office is solvent (Score:4, Insightful)
Republicans just flat out suck. Sorry to have to put it so plainly. But they are so obviously on the wrong side of everything that there is no denying it.
The Democrats? Don't get me started.
We are on our own, people.
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Article 1 section 8? Fuck that shit. (that's where the Post Office is, as well as Interstate Commerce Clause)
The second Amendment is good, the 3rd Amendment is, meh. The rest is just filler.
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Re:The Post Office is solvent (Score:4, Insightful)
They don't.
They want to eliminate the entire notion of separation of church from state, seize control of the government, and then abuse the mechanism of state to force their religious agenda on everyone else and punish us for not wanting to live according to their rules.
Their agenda is contrary to the first amendment; which otherwise protects the rest of us from them. So yeaaah... no. They don't like the first.
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They want to eliminate the entire notion of separation of church from state
Please elaborate? I'm curious where you find this "separation" idea in the constitution? I can only find an "establishment" clause, and a bunch of people that twisted the meaning to remove Christmas Carols from school assemblies in December, yay.
The wording "separation of church and state" was taken from a letter from Thomas Jefferson to group of Connecticut Baptists that were afraid the US Government was going to outlaw their state (of Connecticut) Baptist religion. At the time of the signing of the Consti
Re:The Post Office is solvent (Score:4, Insightful)
The idea that the Founders were secular is a modern fiction based on little more than misinterpreting Jefferson's particular views. The Enlightenment itself was non-secular. All of the leading Enlightenment thinkers were devout Christians. The concept of natural rights, a key Enlightenment ideal, is based entirely on the Christian conception of God, who is the source of those rights. You don't have to read Locke and Kant to figure that out - it's right there in the Declaration of Independence. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Personally, I remain agnostic on the matter of God; I just can't abide absurd historical revisionism. Not one of the Founders would have imagined churches as being anything other than the very center of social life. Which it was. You can read de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" if you don't believe me. He found it fascinating.
Re:The Post Office is solvent (Score:4, Insightful)
Atheists aren't. There's no war on Yuletide or Christmas, Easter of Oestre.
There's a war on Christians forbidding any expression other than their own. But that's forbidden under the Establishment Clause and thus a Constitutional war.
No atheist wants to stop you saying Merry Christmas if you so please, as long as they aren't obliged by law to.
Under God, in the Pledge and on currency, is a modern invention and deserves burning at the stake. Or on a steak. Whatever. It is a clear Constitutional violation as it breaks the Establishment Clause. It establishes a patriarchal form of Monothesim as the national religion, even if it doesn't dictate which.
America was founded by Atheists as a Secular Nation. It is NOT your religious plaything.
Re:The Post Office is solvent (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:The Post Office is solvent (Score:5, Informative)
THIS!
The Post Office is only going bankrupt on paper. The funds are there, it's just that the GOP has it tied up in crazy levels of regulation (irony factor 10!)
Roll the crazy requirements back to merely extreme and pay back the plundered funds and suddenly the PO is in fine shape.
Before anyone starts going off on a privatization dream, the other carriers universally depend on the PO for last mile delivery on less profitable routes.
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Re:The Post Office is solvent (Score:5, Insightful)
All businesses should be required to do this. If they had, GM retirees wouldn't have been at risk of losing their pensions when GM filed for bankruptcy. If an employer promises their employees future benefits today, they should be required to put away the money today to pay for those benefits, accruing more money as the employee works for them. So if you earn a pension (with health benefits), the company has to put sufficient money into a pension fund on your behalf as you work to pay for that pension. That fund should be owned and operated by an independent company, whose sole role is to manage those funds and pay them out as employees retire. If the company goes bankrupt, your pension is safe. If the company gets bought by a corporate raider, he can't drain the pension funds and sell the remaining husk of the company after he's sucked it dry, leaving pensioners holding the bag. If the company has been promising more pensions than it can deliver, making it look like it's been funding enough based on unrealistic 10% annual earnings in the stock market, it cannot use that shortfall to force retirees to accept a pension cut (because the company will go bankrupt if they don't accept the cuts, and then the pensioners will get nothing). If you force companies to pay for its promises when it makes them, rather than allow them to ignore promises in the hopes that they could pay for them in the future, it prevents all these scenarios.
The way most companies do it, and the USPS used to do it, is crazy. It leads to managers promising way more in future benefits than they can actually deliver, because they won't be the ones who have to figure out how to pay for it. Somebody else 20-40 years in the future will have to figure out how to pay for those promises made today. Liberals complain all the time about how the annual accounting cycle used in business causes companies to be short-sighted, not planning 5, 10, 20, 50 years into the future. Not considering the distant future consequences of decisions they make today. How it makes them prioritize short-term profits over long-term sustainability. The Republicans do something to fix that, and liberals complain about the fix too. There's just no pleasing you, is there?
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It is possible for Postal workers to retire on 80% of their final salary for the rest of their life. Then this salary is inflation adjusted. Plus they get extremely generous medical retirement benefits. All of this adds up to postal workers with 20 year or more in service being able to collect more in retirement benefits than they were paid while working. With the fact that many postal workers are baby boomer and they are all retiring, these gold plated retirement benefit are eating up all of the revenue. T
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I wish I had mod points to mod you up.
Many companies promise too much benefits, and when they fail to deliver they go to taxpayers for a bailout. They build models when markets are good, and never consider downturns like this one.
And companies are not alone in this endeavor. The CalPERS (California pension fund for teachers, government workers, and so on) is in constant need of bailouts.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news... [zerohedge.com] . And those in this fund are generally exempt from social security. I.e.: if this fails,
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The employer is required to pay ~10% of salary into a retirement fund every month
In the US this is called "Social Security" and both employer and employee are required to pay in (the difference in who pays makes no difference in your paycheck, but people think it does so the cost is split as a compromise).
As a fiscal conservative, I never understood this (Score:2)
I'm much more libertarian than Republican, but still? Republicans have traditionally been more likely than Democrats to make fiscally wise decisions, in my opinion. That might only be because they're so focused on and beholden to big corporations? But nonetheless, that still means they're making moves that encourage business growth and investment. And that beats a party that believes you can just tax groups as much as you like, to redistribute the money to every special interest group or those you define as
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Sorry, wrong answer (Score:2)
https://www.cnbc.com/id/450184... [cnbc.com]
LL: So bottom line, the unions claim of the postal service pre-funding pensions for future workers is false?
Chairman Issa: Absolutely false. The non-partisan Congressional Research Service recently found that pre-funding requirements match Congress’ intent when they were enacted in 2006. The intent is to ensure that the growing unfunded liability for retiree health care for current employees is covered. These employees negotiated for and earned these benefits with thei
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Much of the Constitution and federal laws were written with the basic assumption that those running the government wanted it to work. Recent events have shown one can not take that for granted.
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Nonsense. Article I, Section 8 says:
Notice they have the power to do these things, but they have no obligation to do so.
If Congress determines there's no need to borrow money on the credit of the United States, they are not required to do so by the Constitution.
If Congr
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The postal service is in the Constitution.
Lavish pensions and benefits are not.
Re:The Post Office is solvent (Score:5, Funny)
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It always takes a while for pay-go retirement benefit clusterfucks to blow up.
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Yeah, and like the vast majority of government jobs, the Post Office pays peanuts. That's always been the trade-off with government work and, to a slightly lesser degree, government contractor work. Unless you're at the level where you have the sort of influence that lobbyists want yo buy; you work for a salary that is a pittance compared to the private sector... EXCEPT for the benefits. That makes up for the laughable paycheck. And often, the situation is that one spouse works a corporate job that brin
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And why were they forced to prefund??!?? C'mon now. Why?
Because those POS assholes had been going to Congress every fucking year asking for larger and larger subsidies to keep up with the LAVISH fucking benefits they were handing out at taxpayer expense.
You've totally drank the fucking Kool-Aid on this, haven't you?
The USPS is the only agency in the entirety of the US that isn't in the yearly budget. Why? Because they're 100% self-sufficient! They never "go to Congress" and "ask for subsidies" - they don't get any, nor do they ask for any. Most years the USPS brought in a fucking surplus - they are the only Federal agency to ever actually turn a profit, and they have done so consistently for decades!
This is why the Republicans hate them so much. Every
'Profit' is indeed not the standard (Score:5, Insightful)
The United States Postal Service was one of the first services provided by the Federal gummint. It is a public good, and should be subsidized if necessary. I would not trust any private entity with first class mail, for a start. Some people still use it.
Privatizing everything is bullshit.
Must be supported (Score:5, Informative)
Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution, known as the Postal Clause or the Postal Power, empowers Congress "To establish Post Offices and Post Roads".
The US has a legal obligation to keep this service active. The only issue who pays.
This is an issue caused by republican presidents. Nixon made the Post Office Independent, and every republician president since did everything the could to bust the union in order to get their wages down to minimum wage level.
This current issue has to do with a law that moved funding of the pension for all past retirees from the federal gov to the PO, they have been struggling with that and every time they want to increase postage to pay for it, the then republican congress would not allow them. The PO then tried to reduce cost by closing many rural offices, they got a big no from congress, the then tried to eliminate Saturday deliveries, guess what congress said ?
So all measures the PO tries to put in place they get a bit NO, the only 'yes' they get is to fire people and reduce wages.
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My favorite of the Supreme Court cases involved paying ships to move mail from, for example, Savannah, SC to Boston, MA.
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Try reading the Constitution again.
It doesn't require a postal service, it merely authorizes the Federal Government to establish one and provides that rights of way can be established for the purpose of running a postal service.
incompetence (Score:2)
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Those other governments don't require their postal services to pre-fund pensions for people who have not even been hired yet.
Many other postal services don't fund (or even offer) pensions at all.
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Re:incompetence (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact it's cheaper for Amazon to roll out their own delivery service, instead of using the Post Office, speaks volumes about the costs...
Really? It's cheaper to pick and choose the areas you want to service rather than be forced to provide service to unprofitable places?
Who knew...
The USPS is losing their most profitable routes (Score:3)
The problem is the USPS is losing their most profitable routes and they have always depended on them to subsidize their less profitable routes.
UPS, FedEx, Amazon, etc... all do their own delivery on the profitable routes and then give the USPS only the unprofitable routes.
The USPS needs to fix this problem. There are really only two solutions. The first is they could make the unprofitable routes more profitable by
raising the rates, decreasing the frequency of delivery, or having residents pick up their packages from a central location.
The second solution would be to find a way to prevent Amazon, FedEx, UPS, etc.. from only taking the profitable routes. This could be
accomplished in a number of ways like requiring them to delivery to everywhere or refusing to deliver for them if they don't give them all
the deliveries.
Betteridge's law... (Score:5, Insightful)
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What in the name of fuck is wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
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Don't mistake idiot musings on the internet ( which has an abundance of idiots ) for "serious consideration". No one is seriously considering it. At best they're being used as a pawn in the endless politics of our time, but it's a far cry from that to actually shutting them down.
Won't happen.
Middle-Man I didn't want to be! (Score:2, Funny)
The postal delivery guy has made me nothing more than a middle-man between him and the landfill. I wish they'd just drive the mail straight there and cut me out of the model.
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Who knew? (Score:2)
A Better Way to Save the Post Office (Score:3, Interesting)
Really want to save the Post Office? Double the postage on 3rd class "junk" mail, and switch to alternate day delivery; half the route gets mail on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and the other half gets mail on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
Really, I can wait one more day for my junk mail.
Because, since I do most of my banking and correspondence online, junk mail is about all I ever get.
Post Office death would cement Amazon dominance (Score:2)
Here's the truth, the post office dying would shift e-commerce - but only to the extent it would absolutely put Amazon on top, since they have a nearly complete parallel delivery system in place already.
Maybe WalMart could still compete, having many distribution centers themselves...
It would hurt smaller online companies as shipping by UPS and FedEx is more expensive. But I don't think it would hurt them as much as some think, especially niche companies.
Congress hates the post office (Score:2)
Profitibility isn't the point (Score:5, Insightful)
In a sense the entire function of government is to do useful things that are not profitable or which have large externalities.
A for-profit delivery service would not bother delivering to people when that was unusually expensive, so how would those people receive and send official documents?
Look at Japanese convenience stores (Score:3)
Based on other posts the PO can get back in the black if allowed to do so. It sounds like the health ore funding is a way to fatten the goose up for it to be raided later. However there are other businesses they could get involved in, thanks to being so ubiquitous. Someone from the PO should visit a convenience store in Japan. They handle such a broad array of services it is hard to grasp. Many are based on kiosks, prepaid cards, or services built into the awesome cash registers. I think the USPO sells prepaid cards. For example:
Dry Cleaning drop off kiosk
Pay all your phone and utility bills via their barcodes
Charge and use Cashless cards like Suica which are also usable for transit and stores in train stations
Concert and event tickets (typically enter a code into a kiosk, bring the receipt to pay at the register, and they print it out and give the ticket to you in an envelope)
All kinds of Internet based purchases
Real Bank ATM with withdrawal from bank of credit card
International payments
multicopier/scanner that is. Injected to the net or you can connect via wifi or USB
And you can ship parcels to/from convenience stores too.
WTF is going on! (Score:2)
I don't get it. The demand for package deliveries is at an all time high thanks to CV, yet the Post Office is near bankruptcy. If there are Federal rules in place that keep them from delivering too many packages, REMOVE them now! Somebody in DC get off your fat duff and do your focking jub!
Two button meme (Score:2)
Leftists are sweating over:
- USPS doesn't subsidize Amazon with taxpayer money
- Amazon will die if USPS goes out of business
Which is it?
Why do you hate the troops? (Score:3)
But seriously, the post office and other federal agencies are staffed by a large percentage of veterans. Drowning the post office in the proverbial bathtub would take a lot of veterans down with it. Food for thought.
Could they charge to filter spam? (Score:2)
Like I would pay $5/month to remove 95% of my mail. I would pay more to prevent the waste from being generated to begin with.
DoD not a fair comparison (Score:3)
The purpose of government is to bail out companies (private enterprise ftw, suck it liberals) and also kill.
There is nothing in the Constitution about having a post office or at least there shouldn't be, if there is it was probably some commie fuck like Thomas Paine, I wouldn't know, I haven't read it myself kind of like the Bible because I already know what should be in it. I just know it says kill commies and ragheads, and chinks if and when Trump says to.
Ideas to save the Postal Service (Score:4, Insightful)
email and normal operations (Score:3)
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Even in urban areas, deliver First Class mail and junk mail only three days a week to residential addresses (perhaps some routes M-W-F, others Tu,Th,Sat). That's plenty. I'd probably suggest two days a week in rural areas as a starting point though.