Trump Threatens To Block Aid For US Post Office If It Does Not Raise Prices (reuters.com) 292
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: President Donald Trump on Friday threatened to block federal aid for the U.S. Postal Service unless it raises shipping rates for online companies like Amazon.com, prompting criticism that the move would hurt consumers relying more than usual on packages during the coronavirus outbreak.
The president has long accused the post office of charging too little for packages, saying that deliveries for Amazon and others cost the service money. Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post newspaper, which Trump has accused of unfair coverage of his administration. "The Postal Service is a joke. Because they're handing out packages for Amazon and other internet companies, and every time they bring a package, they lose money on it," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "The Post Office should raise the price of a package by approximately four times." The president also accused post office officials of being "very cozy" with big online merchants. With the U.S. Postal Service slated to run out of money this summer, the U.S. Congress authorized the Treasury Department to lend it up to $10 billion as part of an earlier $2.3 trillion coronavirus stimulus package. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said his team was meeting with post office officials "and actually, we are going to put certain criteria for a postal reform program as part of the loan."
Trump told Mnuchin at the event he would not support aid unless the postal service raised its rates. "If they don't do it, I'm not signing anything and ... I'm not authorizing you to do anything," Trump said. Later on Friday, Trump said: "I will never let our Post Office fail. It has been mismanaged for years, especially since the advent of the internet and modern-day technology. The people that work there are great, and we're going to keep them happy, healthy, and well!"
The president has long accused the post office of charging too little for packages, saying that deliveries for Amazon and others cost the service money. Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post newspaper, which Trump has accused of unfair coverage of his administration. "The Postal Service is a joke. Because they're handing out packages for Amazon and other internet companies, and every time they bring a package, they lose money on it," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "The Post Office should raise the price of a package by approximately four times." The president also accused post office officials of being "very cozy" with big online merchants. With the U.S. Postal Service slated to run out of money this summer, the U.S. Congress authorized the Treasury Department to lend it up to $10 billion as part of an earlier $2.3 trillion coronavirus stimulus package. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said his team was meeting with post office officials "and actually, we are going to put certain criteria for a postal reform program as part of the loan."
Trump told Mnuchin at the event he would not support aid unless the postal service raised its rates. "If they don't do it, I'm not signing anything and ... I'm not authorizing you to do anything," Trump said. Later on Friday, Trump said: "I will never let our Post Office fail. It has been mismanaged for years, especially since the advent of the internet and modern-day technology. The people that work there are great, and we're going to keep them happy, healthy, and well!"
FedEx & UPS Need this (Score:4, Insightful)
FedEx & UPS *HATE* this (Score:4, Insightful)
FedEx and UPS make tons of money shipping to rural areas. But they drop off packages at the local post offices and have them do the financially unprofitable work of teh last few miles. This would raise their costs dramatically.
Never forget that the USPS is suffering financially for several reasons, but one is that they serve *every* American with pretty damn good service.
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Parent is currently -1 offtopic. Ranting about Trump but not this article is ranked in the positive points. Moderation, please!
"Remember when this was a TECH site? Leave Donald alooooone, wah..."
The post office makes money from Amazon... (Score:2, Informative)
More Trumpster Dumpster nonesense:
https://www.politifact.com/fac... [politifact.com]
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More Trumpster Dumpster nonesense:
https://www.politifact.com/fac... [politifact.com]
And, of course, if the postal service raised prices as much as that moron suggests, that would be even more incentive for Amazon to ramp up their own delivery service, and for us to choose FedEx and UPS more often. Their volume would plummet, and they'd be forced to lay off staff and close under-performing (read rural) offices. If you want to kill off the USPS, dramatically raising parcel rates is a good way to start. It takes a real idiot to single out "internet companies" in 2020.
Re:The post office makes money from Amazon... (Score:5, Informative)
So, no, that's not how it works at all.
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Wow, a little too overkill. For comparison, an adjacent country has ~40 years as the pension buildup phase, and all employers are supposed to contribute to it.
Re: The post office makes money from Amazon... (Score:2)
Raise prices for Amazon, Walmart et al, then! (Score:2, Interesting)
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It is basically cheaper to order a product from China than from North America because China subsidizes their shipping.
Its deeper than that.
When you mail something from country C to country A, you only pay the fees of country C to deliver it. Countries have agreements similar to internet routing's "settlement free peering."
Now, even without government-funded subsidy, if more mail goes from C to A than from A to C, then C wins and A loses with regard to carrier economics.
One could argue that the people living in A benefit by getting packages that they want, and fair enough, but nobody has paid for the delivery of thos
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3) end the settlement free delivery agreements so that those that get these deliveries pay the actual cost of them.
Now why is it that #3 is never discussed?
Mainly because there is an international agreement regarding postal rates and getting that changed is a whole bureaucratic process involving committees and a vote by all involved countries
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I don't think you understand how this works.
The deal with Amazon happens when Amazon ships it from a warehouse closer to the final destination and USPS handles the last mile rather than the whole trip. That's why they get a discount.
The cheap postal rate for packages coming from China mainly benefits online Chinese retailers like Aliexpress, Bangood etc where the package is sent directly from China. It's cheap, but it could also take two months. On one hand if all you care about is price, it allows them
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Actually, as far as I know, Amazon gets an even better deal when it ships to Chicago, because it uses a cheaper courier. The deal with USPS mainly covers rural areas.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Mom and Pop already rely heavily on the P.O. (Score:3)
I suspect there's chicanery afoot here. I know the GOP wants to kill the Post Office, it's not like they make a secret of their desire to privatize it. That is more than likely what this is about.
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I'm sure Amazon with their distribution network would love to take over the job! And that would drive Trump mad.
Well, madder.
Trumps' ego knows no bounds (Score:5, Informative)
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Never waste a good crisis.
Re:Trumps' ego knows no bounds (Score:5, Interesting)
Or, more likely he knows that federal regulations prohibit the USPS from offering those sorts of deal below cost and this whole "Taxpayer subsidizes Amazon" bit, is a problem that only exists in Trump's head.
At any rate, if they raise the rates too far, Amazon will simply switch last mile carriers to one that's cheap and has barely passable service the same way they do in Canada.
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Canada Post has a motto: "If never keep profit, a good smile, honesty."
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Why does it need billions of dollars every year then, dumbass?
Postage rates are capped by the US government. Those first class packages grandma sends to the kids? The USPS loses money on all of that.
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It's called subsidization.
They target the rates lower than cost to keep the cost low enough for the broad public to use.
The irony of conversations like this is that how much the Post Office loses is directly correlated to the wealth disparity in the country.
Some many things interweaved (Score:5, Informative)
It looks like they are trying to avoid a "good crisis to go to waste". The issues are mixed, and they are actually not directly related to each other:
1. Post office loses money, on paper, because of the mandate to prefund all future retirement accounts, fully. There is no other enterprise on Earth that does remotely the same thing
2. This is actually a good thing for the long term strength of USPS. But I am not sure it was the goal when the rule was enacted.
3. Post office makes money from Amazon and bulk mailers. Because the postal worker needs to make the route, in case they need to pick up the occasional mail, and it is better to earn some money than none.
4. Post office has competitive prices, but if they raise any further they will lose business. Amazon had already started their own local deliveries, and FedEx Home is sometimes cheaper. Raising prices would backfire and *reduce* the revenue.
5. The China issue... It is complicated, but they can sell a product, including shipping for a lower cost than the domestic postage price here. It is some archaic international rule, and I agree that needs to be fixed.
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That's not the way I've observed it working. I work from home so can go out to the mailbox whenever. The mailman drives by in the morning, and I usually pick up my letter mail (and junk mail) from the mailbox around 10 am. The mailman then comes by again around 3-5 pm putting any small Amazon packages i
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The mailman then comes by again around 3-5 pm putting any small Amazon packages into my mailbox.
It must be a regional thing, because that's not what happens where I live. I also work from home (for now), and I've watched the mail truck on a daily basis. The truck comes to my house, puts the paper mail (and any small packages that will fit) into the mailbox, then carries all other packages to my door. The postal truck only comes to my street once per day. It's efficient as it can possibly be in that regard.
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Check the USPS' own statement [usps.com] about finances. It's not the pre-funding (which, by the way, is required for businesses since 1974). Their pension costs were $3.4 billion last year - but they lost $8.8 billion. Even if 100% of those pension costs were because of #talkingpoint Prefunded Pensions - they still lost more just in normal operations.
It's not the pension funding - it's structural with too low of revenue, too high of costs. Both.
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economist: average and marginal cost (Score:3)
I'm an economist, which drives what follows.
"Average Cost" is the total cost divided by the number of units.
"Marginal Cost" is the cost of one more unit than you are doing now.
"Fixed Cost" is the set of costs that you can't change in the short term.
In the long term, with one price for all comers, you either cover your average costs, or you go under. You will also generally grow until AC=MC.
Now, if you are the USPS, you probably have excess capacity--space on trucks, drivers in the field, and so forth.
If yo
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No, they don't. International treaty has us paying the origin country's shipping rate from any country in the group. Not a subsidy, per se.
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And that it's not just China. It's every single member of the International Postal Union, established under the UN.
of course (Score:3)
Trump overrates the value of his little package.
Never trust an idiot who bankrupted a Casino (Score:3)
Trump couldn't manage a paper bag.
Comment removed (Score:3)
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> Maybe inserting a light, or a disinfectant injection - that will work.
You kid, but there was a serious proposal about basically shining UV light on the trachea in the news a few days ago:
https://apnews.com/b44f4531071e6204023f7b8e16f59d4b [apnews.com]
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there was a serious proposal about basically shining UV light on the trachea in the news a few days ago
If the world gets much stupider I'm going to test out IR light, by sticking my head in the oven.
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> Sounds like they heard Trump's comments and decided to take it seriously.
The AP story is from 4 days ago, prior to the comments.
The technology is from well before that, it's just a press release about investigating using this existing method for Covid.
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We've got an article from a company saying "Hey, let's try this!" Then we've got Trump saying "Hey, let's try this!"
What we don't have is any evidence whatsoever that any of it works, but lots of anecdotal evidence saying it doesn't. We've also got a lot of proven evidence of Trump touting unproven products that ultimately prove harmful, and products that are questionable but he has stock in.
Show us that it works. Then we'll s
Re:Is Trump supporting them with tide pods? (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, that's why it should be subject to scientific inquiry before anyone actually tries to use it, but I don't see the harm in discussing what's being worked on.
Anyone doing XYZ because they saw someone on TV talking about it is probably too dumb to live anyhow.
But, then again, people have been doing stupid stuff like sticking lightbulbs up their asses for ages now, so I'd bet that you'll find someone dumb enough to do this. I'm just not sure how long they were going to survive without a brain in the first place.
Re:Is Trump supporting them with tide pods? (Score:5, Informative)
He said scientists should look into the concept (Score:2)
> ou don't see the harm of the president getting behind the presidential seal and saying that you should do something before it's scientifically verified.
He said scientists should look into the concept of using UV light and things that kill the virus. You're saying he shouldn't say that until it's been scientifically verified.
I'm curious, how exactly does something get "scientifically verified" before scientists look into the concept?
Re: He said scientists should look into the concep (Score:3)
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It's all good, Trump said he was just being sarcastic.
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Re: Is Trump supporting them with tide pods? (Score:2)
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Here's what you're carrying water for [theguardian.com], by the way.
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UV A doesn't normally damage viruses in a short period of time. If they've got something that fixes this and it can kill viruses, then what does it actually do to the soft tissue? I'm dubious at the moment, probably plenty of medical companies hoping for funding. If it does work, then great.
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Re:Is Trump supporting them with tide pods? (Score:4, Interesting)
Even Trump isn't denying he said it, he's just claiming it was "sarcasm": https://twitter.com/atrupar/st... [twitter.com]
It appears a well known quack told him drinking bleach would cure coronavirus and he tried to take credit for it. https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
He probably expected to do his usual thing, float the idea and if it works he saved the world and if it doesn't it will be quickly forgotten when he says the next dumb thing. In this case it doesn't seem to have worked for him though, people aren't going to forget.
Re:Is Trump supporting them with tide pods? (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's the exact moment in the video when he says [youtu.be]
I'd suggest watching it a couple of times from there, then again with full context to be clear that he's moved on from any questions of light. If you think this question is "rhetorical" then you are stupider than he is. If Trump is playing five dimensional chess, then he's an agent or Russia trying to ensure than the USA can never be a credible nation ever again.
Also worth watching in the context of the reaction of his expert [youtu.be].
Re:Is Trump supporting them with tide pods? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm astonished at the metal backflips people will go through in order to convince themselves that Trump hasn't said something incredibly stupid, yet again. And yet for many of these people if a Democrat said the same they would actually have shat themselves with glee.
"Is there a way we can do something like that" - You chose to ignore that important part of this rhetorical sentence, which is stupid, since it makes light of serious research.
Here's some more things which coronavirus cells quickly:
* Dunking them in concentrated strong acid
* Shooting them with a gun
* Dropping them in a volcano
* Firing them into the sun
Is there way we can do something like that?
This is not something to dismiss with a snivel - this is serious research.
You've managed to take a stupid and deeply ill-informed ramble from Trump and managed to somehow convince yourself that people pointing out the obvious foolishness of it is the same as dismissing "serious research". Keep up those mental gymnastics son.
quit whining about how concersations work (Score:3)
And what does this have to do with the Post office?
Gosh it's almost as if someone says something, then someone replies and someone replies to that and the conversation topic drifts. Wouldn't it be even more amazing if some forum software even supported this rather natural thing and had subjects for the comments.
Just another [president says something incredibly stupid] story
I quite agree. Glad you do too.
Re:Is Trump supporting them with tide pods? (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe you should watch the actual briefing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
* Minute 25: It shows disinfectant, giving Bleach and Isopropyl Alcohol.
* Minute 27: Trump blabs on about injecting disinfectant.
* 4/24/20 AT 4:22 PM EDT: MARYLAND EMERGENCY HOTLINE SEES OVER 100 CALLS ABOUT DISINFECTANTS, SAYS 'UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES' SHOULD THEY BE USED FOR CORONAVIRUS [newsweek.com]. Simply because they listened to Trump talking about injecting disinfectants.
* Friday April 24, 2020 @11:45PM: Slashdot user ArchieBunker (132337) announces that he hasn't watched the press briefing, including the bit before Trump starts coming up with ineffective ideas. In fact, I must be the only one who actually watched the relevant bits in that video.
And that's not counting that Trump claimed there's a miracle drug, that somehow increased the death rate, and made that drug harder to purchase for the ones who actually need it.
Re:Is Trump supporting them with tide pods? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Sure, he didn't say do it. But will dumb people understand that? He was clearly just trying to show off how smart he was in front of the cameras and ended up failing. Did he really think that these scientists never do anything until he suggests random ideas for them to try? Better to have the sort of discussion behind closed doors than with the camera running anyway.
Re:Is Trump supporting them with tide pods? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Is Trump supporting them with tide pods? (Score:5, Insightful)
The white house defended this by claiming Trump was just being sarcastic, though he seemed very sincere and he doesn't seem good enough an actor to pull off that type of a joke. But I it really is true, the president can say anything at all and his fans will back it up and find excuses and claim it's all fake news or taken out of context.
He did not advocate people actually inject disinfectant, but he was very clearly asking the question as if something like that might work, proving how utterly lacking in basic scientific knowledge he really is while simultaneously claiming to be really good at this stuff. But it's ok, his fans didn't elect him to be a genius, they elected him to stuff the courts and build a wall. If only they had the guts to admit that their hero is actually pretty stupid.
Re:Is Trump supporting them with tide pods? (Score:4, Funny)
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The white house defended this by claiming Trump was just being sarcastic, though he seemed very sincere and he doesn't seem good enough an actor to pull off that type of a joke
It's really normal for him to give a handful of excuses. While people are distracted addressing all his excuses, he goes off and does something else. Who even knows what he's doing right now. (It's after midnight. Are your pets indoors?).
Re: Is Trump supporting them with tide pods? (Score:2)
Well, its too dark for golf, so probably watching Fox News.
Re:Is Trump supporting them with tide pods? (Score:5, Insightful)
The white house defended this by claiming Trump was just being sarcastic
Sarcasm during a press briefing in a crisis should be grounds for dismissal from office. That is a really dumb defense.
Re:Is Trump supporting them with tide pods? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather a man who learned to ask questions as they learned that they were out of their depth, than one who would continue to bluster and fake it.
He asked a question. He admitted he needed more information. He did the only thing you might ask of a being confronted with their own ignorance.
I still think the man's a complete idiot, and I hate his guts, but I wonder that he might be coming to a reckoning with his own limits, and learning a bit of honesty (only a bit) in the process.
Asked a question? Admitted that he needed more information? Dude, even Steve Doocy instinctively blurted out that household disinfectant is poisonous ... in the middle of trying to come up with excuses for Trump. As for Trump learning honesty, that's about as likely as a tiger becoming a vegan.
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Just stop. Nobody's buying it.
Re:Is Trump supporting them with tide pods? (Score:4, Informative)
“I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?"
There is no reasonable English parsing other than "injecting disinfectant should work in one minute"
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Right so asking a question is exactly the same as prescribing a remedy and asserting it should work. Anyone who says otherwise is unreasonable.
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Re:Is Trump supporting them with tide pods? (Score:5, Insightful)
The media isn't lying. The man you're defending is a fucking moron.
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This bill is the reason the post office is in that situation right now. https://www.congress.gov/bill/... [congress.gov]
Sponsored by two republicans and one democrat and passed all the way through with bi-partisan support. Now history is rewritten as republicans broke the post office. If you ask what the purpose of this law was they can never give a straight answer.
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News for Nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
The Post Office getting bullied by the President of the United States in the Middle of a Pandemic (about the worst possible time to be letting the Post Office go to shit)? Yeah, that's stuff that matters.
It's not
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The Post Office getting bullied by the President of the United States ...
Simply because The President dislikes the owner (Bezos) of one of the companies (Amazon, The Washington Post) that ships parcels using the USPS -- a service the Postal Service says makes them a profit -- because the Post writes things he doesn't like.
The USPS is having financial issues because a previous Republican-controlled congress forced the USPS to fully pre-fund its pension / retiree health care benefits fund for 75 years out -- something no other governmental or quasi-governmental organization is
Re:News for Nerds (Score:5, Informative)
If they don't mind going to prison (Ken Lay) (Score:2)
> USPS is in the unique situation of having to fund retirement, which no one else in the entire WORLD has to do.
Private companies and most states have to fund their retirement obligations at the time the employees do the work and earn that money, not hope that maybe 50 years from now they'll figure out a way to pay for the work you did today. That's why you can log in to Fidelity or whichever company and see how much is in 401k - because your employer sends it over to Fidelity every pay day. You earn it
Re: If they don't mind going to prison (Ken Lay) (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:News for Nerds (Score:4, Insightful)
Businesses routinely raid their pension funds and get off with it. There's this procedure they use called "bankruptcy" during which this happens while simultaneously a lot of golden parachutes are deployed. So its all nice and legal, see?
BTW, I'm old enough to remember how the postal service was doing *just fine* before this 75-year BS was passed... so get off my lawn!
Re:News for Nerds (Score:4, Interesting)
Businesses routinely raid their pension funds and get off with it.
This was true 35 years ago. It is not true today.
1. It is now illegal for corporations to misuse pension funds.
2. Very few corporations even have pensions funds.
In unionized businesses, the unions control the pension fund. In non-unionized businesses, defined benefit pensions have gone the way of the dodo bird. They are now "defined contribution" funds such as 401k, and are owned and controlled by individual employees. The company has no access to it.
Re:News for Nerds (Score:5, Informative)
From your frst link:
Based on private-sector precedents, the 10 year requirement for the plan to fund its retiree liabilities was unusually harsh. In the original 1974 ERISA legislation, plans were given 40 years to fully fund plans that had previously been pay-as-you-go, and 30 years to fund plan enhancements. (You can play Armchair Actuary with this handy summary.) For plan accounting, plans are able to amortize these amounts over the "average remaining service," that is, the expected future working lifetime of employees (which might vary from 10 - 20 years for typical plans). So there's certainly some discretion to be exercised here. In addition, the retiree medical fund is required to invest exclusively in U.S. Treasuries (see the Postal Service 10-K, page 35-36), and, as a result, the discount rate used in the valuation is considerably lower than a private-sector plan would be obliged to use, in the latter case based on high-quality corporate bonds.
From your second link:
Operating expenses for the year were $79.9 billion, an increase of $5.4 billion, or 7.3 percent, compared to the prior year. This was driven by an increase in workers compensation expense of $3.5 billion, of which $3.4 billion was directly the result of changes in discount rates outside of management's control.
As planned, the Postal Service reduced its debt level during 2019 by $2.2 billion, finishing the year with $11.0 billion in debt outstanding. This reduction allows the Postal Service to continue to reduce interest costs.
...so a lot of that "loss" is them paying down debt to reduce future loss.
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Businesses only need to pre-fund actual pensions, not complete future pensions. This isn't a "talking point", it is a truly unique requirement for the USPS both in terms of the requirements itself compared to other pre-fund schemes and in terms of the duration of the requirement.
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Most companies in recent history don't offer pensions and haven't offered them for decades.
They offer the 401K and the like.
There must be a reason they don't offer pensions any longer....and with USPS situation you can kinda see the reasons.
Re:News for Nerds (Score:4, Informative)
Pensions are planned deferrals of earned compensation, not some sort of random bonus paid after the end of employment.
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Reporting on public idiocy about basic science is news for nerds. That is not partisan - it is our reality.
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Reporting on public idiocy about basic science is news for nerds.
This is not idiocy about science. It is idiocy about economics.
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No. Slashdot has had politics since before Bush.
Re:Remember when this was a TECH site? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Government Based on Petty Retribution (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do you suggest that he hates the ancient Greeks?
Why do you blatantly disregard the point to play semantics? Answer: you don't have a real answer, because the previous post was spot on and Trump is a fraud.
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If you or I go into the Post Office to ship a package, we may pay $7. For Amazon to ship that same package, they pay close to $0.
You're wrong and exaggerating. Or cite a source, any source with actual data. You won't, because you can't.
Re:4x!? (Score:4)
If you make a statement, especially an outrageous claim then it's up to you to provide the proof. It's very difficult to believe that Amazon pays close to $0.00 to ship a parcel. Unless you are saying that anything under $5 is close to $0 or something similar. Most people will tend to think close to $0.00 is under $0.25 if not under $0.10 so you need to provide evidence for your statement.
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Since this last week i've made the decision to actively avoid politics on every medium. .
Looks like you failed at that, sadly.