Two different areas… each end of the spectrum:
We pay 42 cents to get a letter delivered pretty much six days a week. How do other countries compare in terms of cost and capabilities?
Executive Compensation… do other countries limit executive pay either directly or thru their tax laws?
Regarding your first question, the UK is fairly similar, in that you pay (currently) 32p to send a letter that should get to its destination the next day, six days a week.
On your second question, our tax laws specify a higher rate of tax above a certain threshold of annual earnings (currently about £40,000). I understand there are proposals to add another threshold at around £150,000, after which income tax would be 45%, but I think that’s more to try to plug the gap in the government’s budget than limit executive pay.
Executive pay at the banks currently controlled by the government is now going to be more tightly regulated, I think, but in general there are no laws governing this.
Postage is generally cheaper in the U.S. than in other countries. Here’s Cecil’s article on the subject from 1993. The specific numbers are obviously out of date, but I believe that the comparison is still true:
This is the only thing I’ve been able to find in a quick search on international comparisons of how much more CEO’s make than the average worker:
The point here is that the difference between the pay of a CEO in a company and the average worker in that company is much higher in the U.S. than in any other country.
Postage comparisons are usually absolute and do not take into account that in the US, $.42 has the potential to send a letter 3,000 miles (4,827 km), even longer if going to Alaska or Hawaii, plus service is guaranteed to every US address no matter how remote. I imagine that EU countries have one price for any EU destination, but that is still roughly half the span of the continental US.
So Americans get a pretty good deal.
Not quite- it’s about 1900 miles from Lisbon to Ankara, and the population of the EU is significantly larger than that of the US- a little under 500 million souls.
5000 miles from Hawaii to New York.
My bolding.
LA to NY ~2,500 mi
1900 > 1/2 of 2500
My bolding.
Neither LA nor NYC is the furthest point in either direction, just two of the larger cities either way.
But the US Mail carriers also deliver to Hawaii, Alaska, (American Samoa?) all for the same price.
And EU post is delivered to the French Overseas Territories for the same price. So what?
I don’t think we can measure quality of service by looking at the distance a letter is carried. I really don’t care whether my post office will carry a letter to someone 12,000 miles away for the standard price; The ability to send letters to, say, Mongolia at advantageous rates is of no interest to me unless I have someone in Mongolia that I want to write to.
I care about whether the post office will carry a letter to the person I want to write to for the standard price, and whether they will do so quickly. Hence the number of potential correspondents within the standard rate area is a more relevant measure than how far away they are - the larger that group, the more likely it is to include my regular correspondents. Also, the standard rate area should include the regions and territories which have the strongest social and economic links with where I live, since my correspondents will tend to be concentrates in those areas.
Paraphrasing George Carlin: 42 cents to send a letter from New York to L.A.? That’s just a penny a day!
With the current cheap Krona, the Swedish postage of 6 SEK for a letter is something like 73 cents, but then it will be delivered the next day with about 98% certainty.
There is an EU directive that letters shall be picked up and delivered 5 days a week in all EU countries.
Generally in the US mail is picked up and delivered 6 days a week.
NY to LA is 2,791 (driving distance, not great circle), according to Google Maps. Miami to Seattle is 3,357. I started at Lisbon, but didn’t go all the way to Ankara. It’s in Turkey, not the EU.
I agree, but I’m talking about value for the price, not just quality.
Population density should drive costs down. If EU is delivering to 500M inhabitants within a smaller area than the US, then it should be extremely efficient and have rates lower than the US. But it doesn’t. Germany(the first one I looked at) charges €.55 for domestic, €.70 within EU (about US$.75 and US$.95). So, twice as much to send to a smaller geographic area with a higher population density. Why?
As far as economic and social ties, they are strong throughout the US. Over thousands of miles people speak one language and the population is very mobile. People have friends and family strewn all over the country. I’ve lived in Maryland, Michigan, Indiana, Florida and Virginia. To cover that distance in Europe I would have been in at least three countries and as many as seven or eight. So I find great value in being able to send mail everywhere in the US at one rate.
I routinely send mail from Virginia to L.A. that gets there in three days, to Florida in two. That’s pretty good service for $.42.
Turkey is part of the EU.
This is news to us in the EU.
Turkey is a candidate country.
I’m guessing, but part of the reason may be inefficiencies due to having 27 different national post offices instead of just one. So, for example, there is no uniform postcode/zipcode system, and parts of the EU have no postcode/zipcode system at all, which must make sorting and dispatch a considerably more difficult exercise. Also, sorting will tend to be done closer to the delivery point, rather than early on, or in the cheapest place.
There are also issues like universality of service obligations. In most (all?) EU countries, every house, or virtually every house, is entitled to to-the-front-door delivery. The high cost of providing this service in sparsely populated areas obviously pushes up the average cost of handling letters. It may be – again, I’m guessing - that the US has significant areas where postal deliver standards are poor – as in, people have to travel to collect their post, which obviously represents a saving to the post office.
And there could be other quality-related factors. My – admittedly limited – experience suggests that the network of full-service post offices is sparser in the US than in at least those parts of the EU that I have lived in, and the same is true for letterboxes.
Then there are historic cultural factors. My impression is that the volume of business-to-consumer mail in the US is typically much higher than in the EU – simply staggering (to my mind) amounts of junk mail, direct marketing, magazine subscriptions, etc, compared with what is usual in Europe. The volume of commercial mail, which comes pre-sorted, is clearly addressed and often barcoded, and is relatively easy to handle, may help to drive down average costs.
A further factor could be labour costs. My guess is that post offices tend to employ quite a lot of relatively low-skilled labour. Are low-end employment costs – not just wage rates, but social insurance, etc – higher in the EU than in the US? If so, it would impact operations like post offices particularly strongly.