So, sell Alaska to Russia, Hawaii to China.
Problem solved, and at a profit!
/s
That’s funny, I sent correspondence and letters to my friends just the other day. I clicked “send”, and had nothing to do with the post office.
I had some documents that I had to send to my CPA. I scanned them, and sent them. I reconnected with an old high school buddy, and have sent letters back and forth.
They can be sent First Class through USPS, and until relatively recently, had to be. Now there are other options.
That’s the whole point.
I’m still not sure what the controversy is here.
Need to figure out how to ship to Greenland though.
Not sure how much email replaced postal letters as opposed to phone calls. Letter writing was pretty dead before email.
Okay catalogues.
Some PDF files. Magazines.
Long-distance phone calls used to be expensive. I think what more likely killed letter-writing was when long-distance calls became inexpensive.
You know, I’m not sure how much DeJoy’s slowdowns will actually affect mail-in ballots. Usually, those are sent from - and returned to - an election office in the same county. I ordered some stamps through the Postal Service and they got stuck in a distribution center for 2 days before moving on, but they were delivered on time after that. It seems likely that the slowdowns will affect interstate mail more than in-state mail.
Here is a good article about the myths being thrown around about the post office.
In order for it to be a regular agency again, it will need billions of subsidies. It is unsurprising that either paying more or getting less are unpopular but it is inevitable. Making it a taxpayer supported agency would hide the increased prices in taxes and mean less efficiency.
We don’t say that taxpayers subsidise other agencies that provide essential services, though. It would be an agency with a budget, like other agencies. The kinds of cuts to services or price hikes necessary to preserve services are both unacceptable, because it is necessary service. Congress has “bailed them out” in the past for that reason. Why not stop pretending that it really is an independent agency that doesn’t need to be in the budget?
Oh, and I’m baffled why you linked that article. What myth do you think I in particular have fallen prey to?
Everyone here who thinks the removal of “letter sorting machines” is a “dire threat to Democracy” is flat out wrong, and the machines never being replaced isn’t a problem at all. When you just lost 50% of your mail volume removing just 10% of your machines doesn’t matter at all.
My AAA membership renewed August 1st. The new card is sent by first class mail. It has yet to arrive. Anecdotal, but it’s a datapoint.
Something has slowed down the mail. Maybe it’s not the sorting machines. Maybe it’s the overtime rules and the rules about driving away without loading the trucks. But my husband had a package sit in a sorting center for a week. My local farm lost half a shipment of chicks. There are an awful lot of stories like this. I’m pretty sure that’s all caused by something real.
this is false. It only needs that much money as a GOP congress sabotaged it and made it pay it’s retirement funds early.
Yes, it needs a little shot in the arm, but not a lot.
If the postal service serves a necessary function with the tax payers paying for another governmental agency, would all the postal services then be free?
Why would it be free? If you get a mortgage backed by GNMA, it’s not interest free. Medicare and medicaid have co-pays. The army dispensary makes you pay for things. When the US Mail was completely part of the US Government, postage wasn’t zero.
I am not arguing as to whether there is some gotcha in the word free or anything other than me trying to wrap my head around costs. What would it cost? If some of the services are covered by fees they charge, that is fine, but give me some ball park numbers?
And I guess I am trying to determine that nebulous word “essential” or “necessary” , could the free market cover this essential service?
Not with universal service. To make it profitable, you’d want to raise prices and cut service on those inefficient rural and out of the way routes. But this may not be the thread for this discussion.
Sure. The price of a first class stamp will rise from $0.55 to $0.57. The federal subsidy for the first year will be $7,532,891,566.83. No, wait, that’s …84. I know this because I’m actually a former postmaster general and a current congressional member of the USPS committee, and I’m just pretending to be some random idiot on the internet.
I mean, what kind of silly question is that? The cost and the subsidy will be something that the market will bear and whatever is negotiated in congress, no doubt with the usual subsidies from the richer, more densely populated blue states to the poorer, more sparsely populated red states. Assuming there’s a competent postmaster general soon and a congress made up of two parties that will debate in good faith as to the purpose of government services when needed, there will be some reasonable compromise. The USPS will still have to compete with FedEx, etc., and with email, etc., so they can’t start charging $1 billion for a postcard. They won’t charge zero, because it makes no sense not to charge something for a federal service, even if it’s subsidized (for example, GNMA and federally-subsidized student loans). So, a postcard will be between $0.01 and $1,000,000,000. I can say that with confidence.
It would cost about what it does now.
I do think that the postal service should strive to be revenue neutral, but should also be able to rely on taxpayers to make up for unexpected shortfalls or expenses.
Instead, the government has only been adding to its burden, without giving it any assistance.
The problem with the free market is that it only does what is profitable, and there are some routes and activities that are not.
Take away the USPS, and try to get a letter delivered to Fillmore, ND, and see how much that costs. And of course, the person in Fillmore is going to have to drive 40 miles to a location with enough population to make it profitable enough to have a pickup location if he wants to send something.
The thing that I find most interesting about this battle is that, while I think that the post office is a necessary thing for all of us, I see it as far more necessary for people in rural and out of the way areas (all of Hawaii and Alaska).
Plus, there is the simple convenience of being able to just buy a stamp, and as long as your letter is of reasonable size and weight, and is going to a place in the US, you don’t need to worry any further. If you have to pay different rates based on where it is going, as you would have to with a private entity, then you can’t just send all your Christmas cards out to your friends and family all over the country, you have to have each one of them individually metered and processed.
The former United States Post Office Department was a Cabinet level department, just like any other - and postal services weren’t free then. The National Parks Service is not an independent agency and it still charges fees for some areas. Just because an agency charges fees doesn’t mean it’s an independent agency that is expected to be financially self-sufficient.
Ball park numbers, added to the current government expenditures shouldn’t be that much of an ask. If we take puddleglum at his word, the USPS has or is losing roughly billions per year. $.02 stamp increase doesn’t seem likely to balance that out?
Also they are currently allotting 5 billion a year towards the pensions that they offered employees, would this expenditure continue or wane?
I think id rather take that money (or ten years of that money or more) and move everyone out of the stone age and get wifi nationwide , replace snail mail with email, and let the Fedex’s and the UPS’s of the world continue with package delivery. Is it really essential to have postal service provided by the government at this point in time?
What potential problems do you foresee?