Ok - If I want to send a letter (let’s just focus on first-class letter-sized main) it costs me $0.33.
So, one can assume that it costs something less than $0.33 for the Post Office to process and deliver it.
BUT (and that’s a big but! ), the USPS is a government agency and must be funded by tax dollars.
Ergo, they operate “at a loss,” relying on funding from taxes because my $0.33 doesn’t cover their costs.
Well, which is it?
PS - This is one of those great GQMB questions because:
[list=1]
[li]the chances of anyone actually knowing the answer are slim, and[/li][*]even if we do find out the answer, it doesn’t really matter!
The USPS is not funded by Federal tax dollars. It used to be, then it was spun into a government-run corporation which is supposed to be self-sustaining. for awhile it was being subsidized by the Federal government, until Congress told it to pay its own way. That’s when the postal rate hikes started coming.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the USPS only barely break even or actually lose money on first-class mail, with the real profits coming in from 3rd-class and bulk mail?
I understand all the words, they just don’t make sense together like that.
USPS funding, oddly enough, directly from the USPS website.
I fixed the links to make the page stop scrolling. Folks, feel free to email me on this kind of stuff. I have a 17 inch monitor and read small text, so I don’t always catch these.
Actually, the USPS is not a government agency anymore (note that its website is now a .com, not a .gov, though usps.gov will redirect you); it became independent in 1970. They currently get all their operating expenses from the sale of stamps and other postage fees.
“What we have here is failure to communicate.” – Strother Martin, anticipating the Internet.
This is not a correction, because I really don’t know - but I always thought it was the other way around and that we’re covering part of the costs of all that bulk/junk mail with our first-class postage.
When you consider that collectors buy (and never use) about half of all stamps printed, we’re making a killing off the mails at the expense of the philatelists.
I have to ask where the information that 1/2 the stamps a held by collectors. That seems basically wrong. I use about 10 stamps a month. I only know one person who is a real stamp so it seems to me that each collector will have to buy up hundreds if not thousands of stamps a month. Maby I use a lot of stamps or perhaps I move in the wrong circles.
So the consensus seems to be that the USPS is a self-sustaining organization? OK - I’ll believe that.
If so, why could Clinton shut it down?
If so, why do they get to close on all those crazy government holidays?
If so, why haven’t competitors sprung up? (And before you jump down my throat, I know about FedEx. But they won’t deliver a letter for $0.33. Nobody will but the good old USPS.)
Is it because the USPS was originally funded by Uncle Sam and that allowed it to get systems in place that would be too expensive for a competitor to build?
By law the USPS (and the old Post Office department) has a monopoly on first-class mail. Second-class mail (magazines and newspapers) are delivered a lot faster than third-class and a lot cheaper than first-class because one of the original goals was to have a system to spread information.
FedEx and the rest can compete in the area of “package delivery.” Now it’s purely coincidental that many of those packages include only a few pages with writing on them, but they aren’t letters. Do we all understand the difference? Good.
Would Congress consider lifting the monopoly for the USPS? Would the commercial services agree to “universal service” at the same rate for everyone, and full interchange with postal services of other countries? So far that’s been the sticking point.
I understand all the words, they just don’t make sense together like that.
Considering that the USPS is so unreliable and that they’ve lost so many letters I’ve written, I have been shelling out the extra bucks and using UPS for letters for years. A little pricey, but at least the important letters are actually delivered.
Congress does not have the authority (by itself) to lift the USPS monopoly. It is guarranteed by the US Constitution. An amendment to said document would be required (congress plus state ratification).
FedEx, UPS, and others compete for package delivery. Electronic communication seems more of a threat. A fax is a letter not sent. An e-zine is a magazine the post office doesn’t get to mangle.
Thanks Otto for mentioning the Consistution. I was afraid people had forgotten their high school civics lessons.
I should be sorry if I only entertained them. I sought to make them better. G. F. Handel
The USPS is an independent government agency. In other words, it gets to walk that fine line where it doesn’t get any of the govt’s money, but gets all the fun holidays.
Sala, can’t you count?!? I said NO camels! That’s FIVE camels!
The Constitution says that Congress has the power to create a post office. It doesn’t, to the best of my knowledge, say that no one else can, or even that Congress has to. I know of nothing in the Constitution that says that the government has a monopoly on delivering first class mail. Maybe I’m missing that part. Please provide quotes.
I would suggest using USPS certified mail, which is probably cheaper. How many letters of yours have been lost? The USPS success rate in delivery is very close to 100%, with a very low cost, lower than any other western industrialized nation. Example: It’s the same price for me to send a letter from the USA to Switzerland than it is for me to send a letter from an address in Switzerland to an address in Switzerland.
It’s slightly off the topic, but I’d just like point out an interesting semantic question. Under my definition of the terms, the U.S. Postal Service is a 100% public, 100% state, 100% government organization. Whether it collects taxes or makes a profit is totally irrelevant.
Obviously, there are other definitions of those terms. I’m not trying to invalidate them, I’m just observing the phenomenon that there are wildly different defintions. For example
which implies a very fiscal definition of “government agency”.
My father once told me that the Federal Reserve Board is private, because the President can’t fire them! (I guess this makes the Army private as well.) Really, I’m not trying to deal with the “Is the Fed public or private question”, which has been dealt with elsewhere on this site; I’m talking exclusively about the Board of Governors. The point is, it’s amusing to me that someone could take a group of seven people appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate, and call it “private”.
The larger point is, ain’t it funky how many definitions of “public” vs. “private” that there are. And this doesn’t even get into the British usage. Americans typically define government as “that which takes your tax dollars”, so of course they’re going to consider the Post Office private, despite the fact that it has no stockholders, no competitors, and pays no dividends.
), the USPS is a government agency and must be funded by tax dollars.