PILOT SPIN
Spin Zone => Spin Zone => Topic started by: EppyGA - White Christian Domestic Terrorist on December 16, 2024, 06:59:11 PM
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They are still hemorrhaging money. I saw a post on X saying Trump was considering privatizing it. I'm not sure that's feasible. There business is way down at this point, which obviously affects revenue. A problem they are faced with is, they still have to serve every house and place of business. That burden does not go away. How would an Amazon, UPS or FedEx be able to handle that?
Here are my thoughts, You drop delivery for everyone back to three days a week. You get mail on Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. This allows a significant scaling back of employees, mostly carriers. You can also scale back the current fleet of carrier vehicles. That's my starting point, what say you business magnates?
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I’m not sure what I think about it.
Edit: Well would you look at that. Get a good night’s sleep and a mug of coffee and now I know what I think about it. See caffeine fueled tome below.
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The post office is bloated with over paid workers that do little work. Start there, get rid of the bloat.
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Privatize
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A GAAP net loss of $9.5 billion on revenue of $79.5 billion in fiscal 2024 per this press release:
https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2024/1114-usps-reports-fiscal-year-2024-results.htm (https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2024/1114-usps-reports-fiscal-year-2024-results.htm)
The simple math suggests cutting costs by ~12% or increasing shipping rates by about that amount, or some mix of the two, would bring their fiscal house in order. This is doable, but there is no motivation since the loss is covered. Privatization would create the needed motivation. But the U.S. constitution has the clause "The Congress shall have Power...To establish Post Offices and post Roads." Many people interpret that rather broadly which make full privatization politically very difficult.
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Most of my mail is junk. Catalogs, advertising, organizations begging for money. Maybe once or twice a week I get something real. This time of year we get a fair amount of Christmas cards. But that's it. All our bills are by email.
The USPS is a good way to send packages, and a lot more convenient for me than UPS or FedEx. I have noticed that a lot of packages are arriving through USPS. I did ask my carrier... they HAVE to try to fit the box into the mailbox first, then they leave it on the porch. That's a pain when the box just barely fits and it's hard to get out.
Scaling back to no Saturday delivery would not hurt, and would go a long way to fix their issues.
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Privatize
Easy to say, explain how that would work.
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Most of my mail is junk. Catalogs, advertising, organizations begging for money. Maybe once or twice a week I get something real. This time of year we get a fair amount of Christmas cards. But that's it. All our bills are by email.
The USPS is a good way to send packages, and a lot more convenient for me than UPS or FedEx. I have noticed that a lot of packages are arriving through USPS. I did ask my carrier... they HAVE to try to fit the box into the mailbox first, then they leave it on the porch. That's a pain when the box just barely fits and it's hard to get out.
Scaling back to no Saturday delivery would not hurt, and would go a long way to fix their issues.
I think it must be demoralizing to have to deliver a ton of junk mail knowing more than 99% of it is just going to be trashed without being looked at. For example, only one piece of junk mail in I don’t know how long actually got me to buy something from a new company I’d never heard of. It was https://www.tienda.com/ if you’re interested. I sent that stuff to people for Christmas and sent some to myself. It’s great, I love Iberico ham. And the tin of Barcelona cookies is a great gift and are delicious.
Anyhow, the problem is there is still a significant number of people who rely on paper bills and documents and a significant amount of important things you only get by mail. The decline of dependability is very concerning, like for example, your yearly car tag. You get jury summons and if you don’t respond to it because the little card was stuck in the pages of some catalog and got thrown out, you could potentially get in trouble. The IRS will never call or text you but sends you important stuff by mail. Your credit cards come by mail.
There’s just still too much hard copy stuff that we need an absolutely reliable service that reaches every single resident in the country on the regular. If we privatize the USPS then it will have to sink or swim like any other delivery company and could just go under or you could have services being cut, or it would still need to be heavily subsidized by government. For example, are you going to regulate it? Like mandate that it still serve every resident? Or are you going to allow it to say, decide rural routes are too expensive and just drop service to people out in the countryside?
If you mandate they continue service to everyone, that’s not really privatized in the true free market sense. So you have to subsidize them, and how is that any different from what we have now? I thought the USPS was already actually a separate private company, just funded by government.
Dropping delivery to three days a week would be horrendous. You would still get all the same junk mail and the carrier would have to double the volume of crap in his vehicle and your mailbox would be stuffed full with twice as much each time. It would cut cost but it would be a massive downgrade in quality of service.
I still don’t know what the answer is. But I’m not automatically going with Trump’s suggestion to “privatize” it. I love Trump but he says a lot of stuff off the wall that I don’t agree with, or I think he hasn’t thought through. Remember when he was saying we should ban TicToc? And then we did… but it turns out that was a Trojan horse to allow government to ban any platform it doesn’t like, and Trump seems to have changed his mind; he made a TicToc account.
Back in 2015 he praised civil asset forfeiture. Which is of course totally unconstitutional. I haven’t heard him say anything about it since but I hope he educated himself and changed his mind in the meantime.
So I take a lot of statements he throws out with a grain of salt. The real world is more complicated and nuanced than he makes it sound sometimes. But he’s mostly not wrong. Yes, we need to mass deport the illegals. In reality it won’t be all that “mass”, but verbalizing the intent alone is effective (as a deterrent and getting some to self deport).
Raising the postage rates means losing business. Ban junk mail? First Amendment issues and that junk mail is their income. But raising rates incentivizes everyone to switch to digital.
Maybe mail just needs to be considered one of the few crucial services the federal government should provide, like military defense of the country. Just fund it, don’t expect it to pay for itself. Cut out all the other crap like stop funding universities. All they do is brainwash our kids. Cut out foreign aid to shithole countries that hate us. We could easily pay for the USPS if we did just those two things.
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You make some great points. I agree. Like defense, just fund it. It's one of the VERY few things the Constitution says are a government function. Don't expect it to make a profit or even break even. The federal government should stop doing all the things that are not explicitly required of it by the Constitution. Everything else reverts to the states or to private enterprise if they can do it better and cheaper.
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Easy to say, explain how that would work.
I’m sure some brilliant entrepreneur (like a Musk,Bezo etc) would make it more efficient. It’d have to be an overlapped takeover I would think.
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You make some great points. I agree. Like defense, just fund it. It's one of the VERY few things the Constitution says are a government function. Don't expect it to make a profit or even break even. The federal government should stop doing all the things that are not explicitly required of it by the Constitution. Everything else reverts to the states or to private enterprise if they can do it better and cheaper.
Exactly. But there are issues even with that.
It was way more justifiable as a needed infrastructure when most of the mail was legitimate personal communication or official business. That’s gone way down with paperless billing and email instead of handwritten letters. And it’s been made up with bulk mail advertising which is essentially private businesses taking advantage of low rates and universal reach. So in a way the government is subsidizing private businesses. Normally we don’t like that, however in this case it’s non-specific and non-discriminatory. You can argue that one of the government’s constitutional jobs is to ease commerce. So I suppose we can accept the junk mail being sent over the postal infrastructure. It just feels kinda ick.
But if even one in a hundred junk mail flyers gets business, perhaps it’s worth it to the company and hence to the economy as a whole. It must be, otherwise the businesses wouldn’t be doing so much of it, and what’s good for private companies is good for Wall Street is good for my investments is good for the country.
In any case the need to deliver physical mail of whatever sort is unlikely to ever go away no matter how digital our world gets. And it remains necessary to have all residents served. A literal free market would have varying rates with the most isolated having to pay much more, and they are usually the least able to afford it. Think hillbillies in backwoods mountains. A purist libertarian would argue that a true 100% private system would solve that problem via competition and the hillbillies would be served somehow. Color me skeptical. Hence why I’m not a pure, anarchist libertarian. I don’t have a problem with government providing certain basic services. It’s all the rest of the non-basic stuff I have big problems with.
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I’m sure some brilliant entrepreneur (like a Musk,Bezo etc) would make it more efficient. It’d have to be an overlapped takeover I would think.
Well there ya go! Elon will have drones dropping the mail to the isolated hillbillies in the mountains.
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But if even one in a hundred junk mail flyers gets business, perhaps it’s worth it to the company and hence to the economy as a whole. It must be, otherwise the businesses wouldn’t be doing so much of it, ...
The amount of marketing/advertising is more an indication of the success of the people selling the marketing/advertising rather than it providing a good ROI.
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The amount of marketing/advertising is more an indication of the success of the people selling the marketing/advertising rather than it providing a good ROI.
Oh. Like the consultants who sell their employee education bullshit programs to corporations that provide if anything reverse ROI. I understand some are DEI mandates but there are others that are just bullshit. Like test your personality and hire people with compatibility personality traits. I don’t mean hire “competent” people, I mean pair an introvert with an extrovert to enhance each other. Where is the evidence such schemes actually improve productivity?
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I would like to see all first class (residential) mail delivered to the local post office where people rent a box and pick it up there.
End of 85% of the cost.
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I would like to see all first class (residential) mail delivered to the local post office where people rent a box and pick it up there.
End of 85% of the cost.
That’s a great idea. Didn’t it used to be that way for much of the country? I think there would be a lot of pushback though. Driving all the way to the post office every day or two is easier said than done, especially for the aging population. But you could at least put banks of locked boxes at neighborhood entrances and avoid the individual house to house delivery. They do that in lots of places in Texas, our old street south of San Antonio had that and our kid’s neighborhood outside of Dallas had it.
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I would like to see all first class (residential) mail delivered to the local post office where people rent a box and pick it up there.
End of 85% of the cost.
Are you saying everyone has to rent a box? or if someone rents a box, then their mail is delivered to the box?
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All residential mail delivered to the closest post office where every resident has their own Bo and picks up their own mail.
No more mail theft from residential streets and an 85% decrease in expense.
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How about we raise the rates on the junk mail instead of giving them cut rates. BTW, personally, I would not suffer a stuffed box with just three days of delivery.
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All residential mail delivered to the closest post office where every resident has their own Bo and picks up their own mail.
No more mail theft from residential streets and an 85% decrease in expense.
several considerations (if not problems) come to mind
What about rural areas where people might live 20+ miles from the closest post office?
What about people who have limited mobility?
What about people who would have to take public transportation to the post office? (especially just to find the box full of junk mail)
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So how about this... if you forward your mail the Post Office only forwards first class. Forward to yourself. Everything else gets discarded. Done!
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How about we raise the rates on the junk mail instead of giving them cut rates. BTW, personally, I would not suffer a stuffed box with just three days of delivery.
There is a supply/demand curve interception. A company concerned with maximizing profit will raise the price just to before the point where business would begin to drop off and total revenue begin to drop. I don’t know how bulk mail is priced but I doubt it is that way. Trump understands this and this is probably what he means by privatizing: You need to run it like a company trying to make profit.
I have no problem doing it that way for junk mail. Regular mail postage shouldn’t be a burdensome cost to the average citizen and has traditionally been equalized across the country. One first class stamp will take your letter (up to a certain weight or size) across the street or to any U.S. state or territory including Alaska and Hawaii. But if you live right across the border from Canada and want to send a letter that short distance it will cost more because now it’s international. I have no problem with this system. Again, it is basic infrastructure lubricating communication between citizens and residents of our own country for our collective benefit.
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several considerations (if not problems) come to mind
What about rural areas where people might live 20+ miles from the closest post office?
What about people who have limited mobility?
What about people who would have to take public transportation to the post office? (especially just to find the box full of junk mail)
I agree, people will not accept this. It is going backwards with progress. But if we can’t afford the current standard it may come to that. But I think the powers that be will not have the courage to impose that and face the outrage, and they will instead allow us to collapse into total bankruptcy.
This is the problem with running a chronic deficit for generations. People become accustomed to a certain lifestyle and it’s much, much harder to dial it back down later. This is why all civilizations who do this (overspend) collapse entirely - they don’t fix themselves. It’s almost impossible.
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several considerations (if not problems) come to mind
What about rural areas where people might live 20+ miles from the closest post office?
What about people who have limited mobility?
What about people who would have to take public transportation to the post office? (especially just to find the box full of junk mail)
Every time a fix is suggested the same group of people whine out their asses about some small demographic and how terrible it is that people have to figure out their own solution.
The reality is the post office is losing money faster than the department of defense. Taxpayers need relief from obscene expenditures and waste caused by this obsession with v
Catering to the lowest possible denominator at the expense of everyone else.
It’s like voting. It is YOUR duty to show up and vote. Just because there is a group of entitlement whores who think black voters are too stupid, too poor, too lazy to do it for themselves, vote fraud is suddenly acceptable.
Bullshit.
You go get your own mail, or arrange with a family member, or neighbor to get it for you. End of story.
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gotta love the people that are so in love with their "brillance" that they can't fathom or tolerate how anyone could have anything contrary to say.
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gotta love the people that are so in love with their "brillance" that they can't fathom or tolerate how anyone could have anything contrary to say.
When the truth is obvious lefties HAVE to switch to attacking the messenger because the truth is going to remain true.
I guess what the government should do is spend on stupid things until bankruptcy ends the country and the. Lefty entitlement whores will have the rest ofthrir useless lives to blame everyone else.
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You go get your own mail, or arrange with a family member, or neighbor to get it for you. End of story.
The post office in our town serves 31,000 people. Maybe half again in the served outlying rural areas. It has six parking spots. One for disabled people. The building is old and has maybe 50 PO Boxes. I'm not sure how it would work to have all the mail stop there.
But I like the neighbor idea. Let the neighbors buy a van and pay a driver to go and pick up all the mail for the neighborhood. The driver can put the mail in boxes outside each house or something.
The post office loses money. It can be run more efficiently. But like road repair, it's a function of the government to deliver the mail. If you don't like the post office, use UPS, FedEx, DHL, or something else.
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The savings off of home delivery would fund all the needed infrastructure improvements in one year with a surplus to put against the disgusting overspending over the last 72 years.
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How about making people pay a small monthly fee to have their mail delivered to their home.
Also charge an even smaller fee to have the mail put in a PO Box that you are required to go get yourself. I'd probably visit my PO Box about once a week.
Other than that, I like the alternating delivery days. Even addresses get mail delivered on M, W & F. Odd addresses get it on T, Th & S.
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I would like to see all first class (residential) mail delivered to the local post office where people rent a box and pick it up there.
End of 85% of the cost.
What about people that don't have a car, or can't drive? Uber ain't cheap, or sometimes isn't available.
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How about making people pay a small monthly fee to have their mail delivered to their home.
Also charge an even smaller fee to have the mail put in a PO Box that you are required to go get yourself. I'd probably visit my PO Box about once a week.
Other than that, I like the alternating delivery days. Even addresses get mail delivered on M, W & F. Odd addresses get it on T, Th & S.
The savings off of home delivery would fund all the needed infrastructure improvements in one year with a surplus to put against the disgusting overspending over the last 72 years.
Or, how about cut out all the fat out of the government like trans awareness programs for Afghanistan, billions to Zelensky, food to poor nations which just kills their own nascent crop production, delete the FBI and let states do their own law enforcement, cut the NSA and CIA by 90%, eliminate the dept of education, FDA and EPA! stop subsidizing “green” energy, eliminate a couple hundred other agencies, freeze Congressional salaries! stop subsidizing corn because corn syrup is literally killing us, I could go on for days. Then fund the fucking mail like the crucial communication need that it is.
You could do all that without even running a budget deficit AND have enough to keep the strategic oil reserves full and make sure our military stays top notch. That’s it, that’s ALL I want the fucking federal government to do.
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Or, how about cut out all the fat out of the government like trans awareness programs for Afghanistan, billions to Zelensky, food to poor nations which just kills their own nascent crop production, delete the FBI and let states do their own law enforcement, cut the NSA and CIA by 90%, eliminate the dept of education, FDA and EPA! stop subsidizing “green” energy, eliminate a couple hundred other agencies, freeze Congressional salaries! stop subsidizing corn because corn syrup is literally killing us, I could go on for days. Then fund the fucking mail like the crucial communication need that it is.
You could do all that without even running a budget deficit AND have enough to keep the strategic oil reserves full and make sure our military stays top notch. That’s it, that’s ALL I want the fucking federal government to do.
All that and more.
The Post Office is run like any other government organization, LOUSY. Way too top heavy in management, with lots of management positions that do little more than attend Zoom meetings to discuss what they will discuss for their next meeting.
Employees that do the minimum as they know it's nearly impossible to fire them.
Let a private firm look at their operation and make recommendations to fix the PO and run it like a business.
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And along these same lines, the "continuing resolution" for the budget that includes tons of pork including pay raises for congress-critters. The democrats are bleating that a government shutdown will cost $4 billion. $3.7 in "back pay" which would have been paid out anyway, and $300m of lost sales from gift shops. Sheesh. How about that $4 billion for a new football stadium in DC that's included in the bill?
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And along these same lines, the "continuing resolution" for the budget that includes tons of pork including pay raises for congress-critters. The democrats are bleating that a government shutdown will cost $4 billion. $3.7 in "back pay" which would have been paid out anyway, and $300m of lost sales from gift shops. Sheesh. How about that $4 billion for a new football stadium in DC that's included in the bill?
I want to keep the Feral Swine Eradication program though. Those pigs are a huge problem. In these parts we are encouraged to hunt them but there aren’t enough hunters to address the problem, they are an invasive species with no natural predators and cause lots of damage to crops, natural landscape, protective levees and even archaeological sites. They are also dangerous. We had a neighbor who had his ankle crushed by a feral boar.
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Agreed. They are a HUGE problem. My sister works for the USDA in Hawaii. Many times she's been chased by one. They trample crops and native plants, contaminate water supplies, and are a general danger. She brings three or four very large Hawaiian natives along with her to deal with the pigs. And to let farmers know that she's after native plant surveys and not spying on their "recreational crops".
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And along these same lines, the "continuing resolution" for the budget that includes tons of pork including pay raises for congress-critters. The democrats are bleating that a government shutdown will cost $4 billion. $3.7 in "back pay" which would have been paid out anyway, and $300m of lost sales from gift shops. Sheesh. How about that $4 billion for a new football stadium in DC that's included in the bill?
Congress (both republicans and democrats) hate the citizens. They show their contempt constantly. They really do not want the citizen to interfere in their decisions as they act like royalty.
The republicans under Mike Johnson are despicable. They were ready to shove yet another pork laden CR through. They've had since Sept to craft a true CR that would have been pork free, but they used the same old tired tactic (last minute, 1500 page bill) to ram through a bill.
Johnson needs to go. He's nothing more than Pence Light.
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Also charge an even smaller fee to have the mail put in a PO Box that you are required to go get yourself. I'd probably visit my PO Box about once a week.
Bought a house in a new neighborhood 2 years ago. Postal rules now have these required from what I was told. There’s 2 of them in the ‘hood. Each has around 25-30 boxes mounted on a free-standing unit. At least I don’t have to go to the actual PO I guess. And don’t have to pay a fee….yet!
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Bought a house in a new neighborhood 2 years ago. Postal rules now have these required from what I was told. There’s 2 of them in the ‘hood. Each has around 25-30 boxes mounted on a free-standing unit. At least I don’t have to go to the actual PO I guess. And don’t have to pay a fee….yet!
When we had that it wasn’t a problem. You get used to it. I’d use the walk to the mailboxes as an excuse to get out in the fresh air and get a little exercise. Just had to remember to bring the key. Or hubby would pick it up on the way home from work. For that matter it was less inconvenient than when we lived in the mountains and our mailbox was down in the valley on the side of the highway and we had to walk or drive halfway down the mountain to get it, and that was just a regular mailbox, not locked.
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I remember when we had one of those community mailbox stands. I didn't mind the walk or picking it up when driving out or in. But expecting something and walking down to get it only to find an empty mailbox was a drag. Worse, getting there before the mail is delivered.
We now have something called "USPS Informed Delivery". They take a picture of all the inbound mail and I get an email every morning showing what's going to be there. Very nice to see if it's worth walking to the end of the driveway.
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What about people that don't have a car, or can't drive? Uber ain't cheap, or sometimes isn't available.
I know…
People having to do something for themselves is so racist… and think of the children!
Hoe do all these people survive with grocery shopping, Christmas buying, church going, voting, and having to get driver licenses and/
Or state ID’s???
Well, I just have a hard time caring when these same people can do everything else in their lives, so why not pick up, or arrange pick up of their own mail???
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I remember when we had one of those community mailbox stands. I didn't mind the walk or picking it up when driving out or in. But expecting something and walking down to get it only to find an empty mailbox was a drag. Worse, getting there before the mail is delivered.
We now have something called "USPS Informed Delivery". They take a picture of all the inbound mail and I get an email every morning showing what's going to be there. Very nice to see if it's worth walking to the end of the driveway.
Yes it works well when the mail is delivered very regularly and reliably at the same time every day. That was the case just about everywhere we lived until we moved here in 2019. Even then it wasn’t too bad at first. I think covid is what really tanked the service. Great increase in package deliveries and then all those mail in ballots in 2020. They got swamped and don’t seem to have recovered.
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apropos
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I remember when we had one of those community mailbox stands. I didn't mind the walk or picking it up when driving out or in. But expecting something and walking down to get it only to find an empty mailbox was a drag. Worse, getting there before the mail is delivered.
We now have something called "USPS Informed Delivery". They take a picture of all the inbound mail and I get an email every morning showing what's going to be there. Very nice to see if it's worth walking to the end of the driveway.
I only have to walk about a block to check mail. “Informed Delivery” I actually like because if it’s just junk mail being delivered there’s no urgency picking it up.