Post Office a bad business or being made into a bad business?

[lektrode]

Re: Post Office a bad business or being made into a bad business?

mr aaron, appreciate the comeback...

Perhaps the post office can deliver to major towns/small cities. The final leg of the journey can be auctioned off just like FEDEX does. Then, you can pay to have your mail delivered once a week if you do not want to drive and get it. If they were good about it, they could restrict applicants to local companies only. Then the money would stay local.

i/we already _do_ pay for mail delivery: 44cents a piece = quite a bargain, all things considered... its the junkmailers, it seems to me, that are getting subsidized

in my case, as one of those exurban dwellers out in the sticks (not that far out actually, only 20mins from an 'international' airport), where RFD isnt an option, we _must_ go to the PO to pick up our mail - vs having it conveniently deposited into our frontdoor mailslot or box down the hall/driveway - so maybe since us country folk have to do the work of pickup, that its the urban or at least the suburban dwellers that are the ones being 'subsidized' ?

like i said - i dont think daily mail service is necessary for most individuals and biz's can/do typically utilize PO boxes and/or should perhaps pay add'l for delivery


comment about cheap import labor aside... you must be yankin my chain on this, right?:

... We have no good reason, in times of limited resources, to pay for people to live out in the country. This includes the #@$(#&$&@# fees I have to pay on my phone bill to erect cell towers to service 3 people.

first off - no sub/urban dweller has to "pay for people to live out in the country"
we already pay for it with limited income-opportunity/gov services, somewhat backward cultural/social aspects (i'm just kinda-redneck ;) and the need to burn more fuel simply to go to town - what, you think we all ought to be stuffed into tenaments/ghettos to save some gov entity some money? - am assuming you reside in a nice leafy suburb?

and my verizon wireless statement shows appx 8% for their various add-ons over the base service charges = cheap price to pay to have cel service outside major metro areas - never mind just about everywhere along thousands of miles of desolate highways - what, you never leave town with yer kids on safari out into the sticks? what would you do if something happened and you couldnt call for help/AAA/cops - never mind home to tell yer S/O that yer gonna be late, not to worry? - dunno if you've noticed that payphones have just about disappeared?

come on now mr a - i know yer just yankin my chain here - but its ok - aint got much better to do tonite anyway... ;)

And, what do you really need to get in paper form now? If something legal or important needs to be delivered in paper format, that is already done by Fedex, NOT by regular postal mail.

maybe some biz's get all their mail via fedx, but most that arent lawfirms most certainly get it the ole fashioned way - and i do (still manage) to get a few checks, once in a while anyway, and NO i dont want to pay 3-4% to paypal to have em 'lektronically deposited "3-5 biz days" later than it already takes, when some client cant seem to deal with the concept of 'payment expected at time of service'

Massively prefunding the retirement is suspicious and seems like just a way to tax them. It was probably justified because they get government support. I suspect FedEx and UPS both had their lobbyist working on that one!

yeah - that does seem like there's an ulterior motive by some vested interest to push the postal service "out of the way" - but then again, if they hadnt got so fat in the first place, this likely wouldnt be happening?

Actually, I am convinced. The whole operation should just be phased out over the next 10 years. It is a waste of scarce resources. (Most mail I bet is the junk mail you do not want anyway).

you might be onto something, tho i dont see that as realistic, not in the short term anyway - but certainly some cutbacks in service, esp in the subsidies implied by bulk discounted JUNKmail _are_ in order

see? even an 'ole school NH kinda-rightwinger' like me can be reasonable ;)

[aaron]

Re: Post Office a bad business or being made into a bad business?

Yes, Virginia, there is a vast right-wing conspiracy to take away the USPS, so you have to either use pricey Fed Ex or do all written personal communication online, where Big Brothers and Sisters can read EVERYTHING and you pay for the privilege with humongous broadband service costs.
In the late '90s, I wrote one of the first stories on online bill paying.
Yesterday I put a total of five stamps (totaling 44 cents) on a bill that I could have paid online.
Stop using online bill payment. Paying the freaking 44 cents. Or pay a much bigger price, very soon.

Do people still write hand-written letters? We should subsidize ad delivery because people do not want to type an email?

Yeah, there is a vast conspiracy (right wing even) to make us use less paper/gas/resources/time & money.

[aaron]

Re: Post Office a bad business or being made into a bad business?

It is way off topic...
But, in a scarce world... where we must make real decisions with real capital... Yes, I think we leave the country folk to their own. Cities subsidize rural life. It was done in the past, I assume, because country folk grew the food. We do not have that anymore.

The cell phone towers that are profitable, or that customers demand, will still be there.
The interstates still have real payphones. Gas stations will turn theirs back on if they become profitable.

How many payphone installers/operators/service workers did we put out of business with our subsidies?

[aaron]

Re: Post Office a bad business or being made into a bad business?

I did forget about checks. Those can be wired and ACH'd. That trend is starting and will continue.
But, yes... I like to get checks too (or I used to remember liking it). OK. Keep the post office.

I forget that there are people who like to open their mailbox and look inside. Sometimes it is not just bills and lawyers and FIRE ads.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Post Office a bad business or being made into a bad business?

When I live in the states, I live in a rural area...40 miles to the nearest box store, six miles to the nearest gas station. The first service to go was the phone lines. Yes, you can still get a landline, but if it goes out in a storm, you typically wait 7 -10 days. I disconnected 2 years ago. High speed internet never got there. You can take your laptop to the local library and tons of people do, sitting in their cars, never entering the building. The cell phone monopoly is stronger every year, higher prices, tighter restrictions. The towers also provide the only new access to the internet through a wireless modem…60 dollars a month with a two-year contract. If you buy the modem outright to obtain a month-to-month, pay-as-you go setup, the modem costs 260 dollars, but if you’re on to them, you can buy a modem on ebay for 20. It ain't fast. There are about forty houses on our road. Any given Thursday, I could lie down in the street and take a nap if it weren’t for the UPS truck and the mailman. Both are doing a circuitous route using a ton gas for not much delivery. There are post offices everywhere. They could close half and no one would be severely inconvenienced. When I get to the crossroads out by the gas station, I have already passed a small rural post office. I could go straight, left, or right to bump into another one within five miles. The USPS doesn’t need the radical surgery being proposed, just a modest pruning. It’s a great service, and who knows…there may be a reverse migration city-country in the wings. Every day a bald eagle sits high in the pine tree in our yard waiting to steal a croaker from an egret. When the dolphins headed up river this year some people estimated there were 60. Mouth of the Potomac in the Northern Neck.

[c1ue]

Re: Post Office a bad business or being made into a bad business?

Honestly a lot of the attacks on the Post Office are really silly.

Ultimately it all boils down to this: is the availability of low cost physical mail an infrastructure good or not?

Can the Post Office be more efficient? Certainly. And it has nothing to do with privatization.

One way would simply for Post Offices to start offering tiered services as follows:

1) A first class rate for the physical pickup and delivery of letters/packages
2) A second class rate for the physical pickup of letters with electronic delivery
3) A different second class rate for the physical delivery of letter received via electronic pickup

But the efficiency of the Post Office isn't really the point - even though there can be improvement as noted above. Let's not forget: at the end of the day, Fedex and UPS don't deliver squat for $0.44

Fedex and UPS stand only to gain if the USPS disappears; they already have enormous economies of scale and can continue to pick off the higher value traffic via their pricing policies. But they're never going to deliver mail for a low price. Even Fedex/UPS ground based package delivery arguably is lower price due to the presence of the USPS.

Even if you argue that the infrastructure good of physical mail delivery and pickup is unnecessary, on the other hand there are entire demographic sections of America don't use email: the segments above age 50 and increasing with age.

Should we then force all these people to go cold turkey or pay Fedex/UPS?

Lastly I'll note that the point of the original article was that the USPS was being unfairly penalized in terms of its financial obligations as compared to any other private, public, or public-private entity. That this unfair financial setup, if true, is clearly a hatchet job.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Post Office a bad business or being made into a bad business?

being a fedx ground driver seems like a perty good deal/bet if one puts in the effort

I think the only question is whether or not it is legal. It turns out that it varies state-by-state. Nobody is arguing that delivery drivers cannot or should not be owner-operators.

FedEx, by stipulating drug tests, background checks, uniforms, assigning (and changing arbitrarily) routes, mandating the truck one buys and whom one hires to paint it, and 'firing' independent contractors who do not comply is treating owner-operators like employees.

In some states, courts have ruled that they are employees. In others, they have not. There's ongoing law suits and court cases on the matter. The result will be - in states that rule against FedEx - that FedEx can either hire the drivers as employees or have less control over the owner-operators.

Nobody is saying they cannot either hire employees or bring on contractors - just that if someone is an 'independent' contractor, they should have some modicum of independence.

[lektrode]

Re: Post Office a bad business or being made into a bad business?

I think the only question is whether or not it is legal. It turns out that it varies state-by-state. ....Nobody is saying they cannot either hire employees or bring on contractors - just that if someone is an 'independent' contractor, they should have some modicum of independence.

wasnt aware of that issue affecting fxG - and yeah, theres not much sense in being an independent operator with all that crap to deal with, i certainly wouldnt be interested - questionable how with only one customer, fx, they get away with this - but maybe the 'customer' isnt fx, its the recipient of the freight?

my brother is an independent operator, basically in same sitch, owns the tractor, but hauls cans (containers) owned by others on a flat rate deal - methinks the freight co followed the lead of fx on this gig, as they get to transfer/shift the overhead and BS, delays etc at the waterfront to the owner-ops and only sometimes does it work better for him - tho its better than no 'job' at all, seeing as was a 99'er and got sick of doin nuthin, so drewdown some 401k, bought a truck - the real problem however is at the docks, where the ILWU controls the game - talk about yer 'monopolies'

[lektrode]

Re: Post Office a bad business or being made into a bad business?

When I live in the states, I live in a rural area...40 miles to the nearest box store, six miles to the nearest gas station. ...already passed a small rural post office. I could go straight, left, or right to bump into another one within five miles. The USPS doesn’t need the radical surgery being proposed, just a modest pruning. It’s a great service, and who knows…there may be a reverse migration city-country in the wings. Every day a bald eagle sits high in the pine tree in our yard waiting to steal a croaker from an egret. When the dolphins headed up river this year some people estimated there were 60. Mouth of the Potomac in the Northern Neck.

+1
w/o the uspo, as a small biz type, i certainly would be forced to pay more than nec for deliveries of all sorts - multiplied thruout the economy, methinks this would become a not so insignificant drag on GDP - it also would cede very expensive public infrastructure to private interests with no commensurate payback to We The People - so yes, we should keep the postal service in public hands - just strip off the unnec facilities(and headcount) and if a private sector entity is interested in buying it, sell it to em - this already seems to work out ok, as my in-town po facility is run by a private contractor

and yer place sounds like a lil slice of paradise to me TN - i take it you spend the summer there?

[lektrode]

Re: Post Office a bad business or being made into a bad business?

as usual mr c1ue, your excellent summary brings us to a logical conclusion: yes, the po maybe too fat, but is still an integral piece of the whole picture, in terms of commerce and communications - doubt it will be going away any time soon

and i agree, its smells like FIRE is weaseling its way in there somehow...

Honestly a lot of the attacks on the Post Office are really silly.

Ultimately it all boils down to this: is the availability of low cost physical mail an infrastructure good or not?

Can the Post Office be more efficient? Certainly. And it has nothing to do with privatization.

One way would simply for Post Offices to start offering tiered services as follows:

1) A first class rate for the physical pickup and delivery of letters/packages
2) A second class rate for the physical pickup of letters with electronic delivery
3) A different second class rate for the physical delivery of letter received via electronic pickup

But the efficiency of the Post Office isn't really the point - even though there can be improvement as noted above. Let's not forget: at the end of the day, Fedex and UPS don't deliver squat for $0.44

Fedex and UPS stand only to gain if the USPS disappears; they already have enormous economies of scale and can continue to pick off the higher value traffic via their pricing policies. But they're never going to deliver mail for a low price. Even Fedex/UPS ground based package delivery arguably is lower price due to the presence of the USPS.

Even if you argue that the infrastructure good of physical mail delivery and pickup is unnecessary, on the other hand there are entire demographic sections of America don't use email: the segments above age 50 and increasing with age.

Should we then force all these people to go cold turkey or pay Fedex/UPS?

Lastly I'll note that the point of the original article was that the USPS was being unfairly penalized in terms of its financial obligations as compared to any other private, public, or public-private entity. That this unfair financial setup, if true, is clearly a hatchet job.

[Sutter Cane]

Re: Post Office a bad business or being made into a bad business?

Personal anecdote, so take it for what you will:

In college, I worked in the shipping warehouse at a hub for RPS, which we joked was "Like UPS, but without the sense of urgency." It was pretty mindless and monotonous, pushing boxes on a conveyor belt, but decent pocket money for a kid.

The RPS drivers were supposedly "independent contractors" but had to buy and insure their own delivery vans as specified by the company. The vans were expensive, and for example when the company changed their logo they all had to pay to get them repainted with the new design, had to provide their own uniforms, fuel (no small expense, that) etc. Independent, my ass. Of course they had to provide their own health insurance, they were certainly independent in that regard. Drivers would go into debt for their truck, then get paid a few cents for each package delivered. It sure looked like modern sharecropping to me.

The work was grueling - 10-12 hour days of hard physical labor, hot in the summer, freezing in the winter. No a/c, and when it's cold you can't close the door because it slows you down between stops. If a driver wanted to take a day off, or god forbid, go on vacation, he had to train a driver to run his route in his absence. I trained to run some of the routes to earn a little extra cash when a driver wanted a day off. Brutal job.

The drivers who had a route in town where the stops were close together could do okay, but if you had to drive out in the suburbs or the country to make too many deliveries it cut into your profits significantly. The drivers who had the most urban routes tended to be the ones who had been with the company longest, while those with the peripheral routes turned over frequently. There was always somebody trying to get out and sell his truck to a new sucker.

One driver I worked for was a hard-core right winger and listened to Rush Limbaugh the entire day when he was training me on his route. Of course, he thought the other drivers with more rural deliveries did worse financially because they were lazy, not as hard-working as he was, or not good businessmen. The fact that he had already snagged (and fought hard to maintain) the most profitable series of stops had nothing to do with it. The other drivers had different views. Seeing how the whole operation worked was an eye-opener for me. Quite the capitalist microcosm.

FedEx merged with RPS shortly after I left, don't know how things changed after that.

[flintlock]

Re: Post Office a bad business or being made into a bad business?

As far as theft goes, they all do it. I got a new Fedex driver and packages confirmed as delivered kept dissapearing off my front porch. Especially ones with electronics firms return addresses. After numerous complaints and claims filed I noticed a new driver. No more missing packages since.

Frankly i don't trust any of them anymore. Packages that are supposed to be signed for are routinely left on the porch! I'm talking firearms! They really heap the work on them at times. They do a decent job considering.

[flintlock]

Re: Post Office a bad business or being made into a bad business?

The USPS isn't without worth. But let's examine some of your points.

Highly secure? Google the terms "check washing", "identity theft", etc. 1st class mail can be sent w/o the shipper knowing who sent it. It is easily stolen. Insuring it requires an inconvenient process. If you think postal employees would be more honest that a private company's, google "postal employee theft" for a few examples. Overall, it's probably not any more secure than the competition.

Yes, if you live in a remote location in Idaho it comes in handy. But I can send an email or fax to a remote location in Idaho for almost no cost. If it's a valuable document it shouldn't be sent 1st class anyway. That's part of the USPS's problem. Outdated product. Why should 99% of the population pay to subsidize those who live in remote areas that a private enterprise would never service? There isn't a grocery store near them either. Should we have state-sponsored money shopping centers for them? What about garbage collection? They will come pick up your 50 lbs of trash every week in some very remote areas for about $5-$7. You're telling me nobody would be willing to fill the gap to deliver mail that was essential if they could get a market price for it?

Go order some high value small item shipped to you. For about $15 or less they'll send it via UPS or Fedex and an employee will hand it to you and require your signature. It's also insured. Then insist on having it sent via USPS registered mail to get the same protections. It's several times more costly. And the last time I did this, my stellar union postal carrier decided that even though it was wrapped in security tape and marked "signature required" all over it in green, that it was good enough to just leave it in my mailbox.

Go online and ask the USPS to ship you hundreds of priority mail boxes. They will send you about as many as you order, for almost nothing. Some business model there. Give away hundreds of glossy expensive boxes for free, hoping to overcharge on the postage to make up for it. Meanwhile if I walk in with a recycled old cardboard box to ship instead, they charge me the same price. Goofy ideas like that are why they lose money.

Thats funny as hell about the flat rate boxes. I noticed the same thing."what do you mean free?" I asked. I couldn't believe it. I have about 50 sitting in my office. They just don't make sense for me. You'd have to be shipping lead bars to make that deal pay off!

[Guest]

Re: Post Office a bad business or being made into a bad business?

Oh, I agree wages are low and wealth distribution has gotten out of whack. The cause of that is where I think you go wrong. It's probably not mainstream business. The players (businesses) are playing by the rules established (and enforced or not) by government. The word exploit can have positive or negative connotations. When used negatively, I think it's unfair to people who are trying to please their fellow many by providing goods and services at a reasonable profit.

One major reason for wage disparity increases is adding TENS OF MILLIONS of unskilled immigrants to the US workforce. Many have language barriers to ever aquiring proper skills to become highly productive(and therefore high tax paying and lowgovn't resource using). This includes many millions who are here illegally or who were amnestied-in and who are compensated in a massive corrupt scheme that allows them to receive cash payments from employers while also qualifying for various social benefits from government. We in effect subsidize the cost of labor for law-breaking employers and think it's cute and something to be sloughed off as unimportant. But his combination destroys the wage structure for "working class" Americans. Blame government, politicians, apathy of the CONSUMER, and corrupt employers who break the law with impunity for this. But companies like UPS/FEDEX etc don't hire illegally.

I'd say that over 30 years of smirking or holier-than-thou attitudes towards immigration law enforcement and politically correct immigration policy might just have a little bit to do with the wage disparity. More supply = lower cost. Econ 101. A virtually endless supply of labor equals a prevailing wage of a small premium over whatever exists in their home country. (which may be zero). Toss in a welfare state that ecourages the birth of millions of low IQ uneducated unwanted semi-socialized barely employable entitlement-mentality citizens and there is your wage disparity.

Your typical poor guy today isn't Henry Fonda from "The grapes of wrath". It's a chick who has never held a job, but had time to have 3 kids and who also money for tats on her hands and fake nails standing in line to get free healthcare who wouldn't work or learn if her life depended on it. Because it doesn't. I know this because I'm watching the news and she's on TV right now.

There's a line between callousness and being a sucker. I donate a lot of money to help the real poor. The blind, the mentally challenged, disabled, the starving in Africa, etc. But I'm not a sucker. I know human nature and I know what happens when you reward willful stupidity and laziness.

The true exploiters are multi-fold
1. Businesses who want cheap immigrant labor. (large corporations and farms)
2. Businesses who want the even cheaper illegal immigrant labor paid off the books or using fake social security numbers.
3. Others who feel they personally benefit from mass immigration for racial reasons ("more of my kind is better"), financial reasons("an immigrant will never take my high tech sales or economist job, so why should I care? I just want my house painted cheap") and political reasons ("these guys are gonna be great constituents! 80% of them vote for my party!")
4. The financial industry that uses government monetary policy to its advantage via a corrupt system which destroys the productive economy.
5. The consumer who knows he's hiring a company where nobody seems to speak any English, and the price is ridiculously low, but it's "not my problem" so he doesn't even ask to see proof they're legally here, or any workers comp documents.

Republicans form some of the above, Democrats the other, so nothing will likely be done till a collapse in the economy forces it. Even then, it may be violent.

Here's an example of the silly game with play with poverty. We destroy the incentive to learn and work and try hard to improve one's skills. Why go from $22K to $40K at your job, that just means you lose your benefits. That kind of thing tends to cause wage disparity.

In Entitlement America, The Head Of A Household Of Four Making Minimum Wage Has More Disposable Income Than A Family Making $60,000 A Year

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/ent...ome-family-mak

[aaron]

Re: Post Office a bad business or being made into a bad business?

Toss in a welfare state that encourages the birth of millions of low IQ uneducated unwanted semi-socialized barely employable entitlement-mentality citizens and there is your wage disparity.

I talked to a buddy of mine about this. His background would give him a keen understanding of this. I was expecting him to be a bit leftish and sympathetic. He was not and basically confirmed all that you wrote. I was very curious about the babies... he thinks it is because

a) the women do not have the money to see a doctor and get birth control pills
b) they get money for each kid they have.