He will only bail out the post office if they increase rates for Amazon.
I heard that and thought… wouldn’t it just hurt rural Amazon customers? Amazon delivery in big cities is increasingly handled by Amazon itself. No USPS involved. More rural customers depend on USPS for last mile delivery more often than not.
I suppose Amazon could send an email to its rural customers that the Trump Tax will increase their order prices by $10 (or whatever). What does Amazon have to lose?
A local rural P.O. gained notoriety by having pallet-loads of Amazon packages stolen when delivered on Sundays (P.O. unstaffed) so now the premises are enclosed by chain-link fencing not topped with razor-sharp concertina coils. What’s to stop another heist? Donny’s moves support the CT that he’s secretly working to destroy the GOP base. Nice job, Donny! If you can’t slaughter your supporters then impoverish and isolate them.
Trump isn’t known for thoughtful planning. He’s not capable. His jealousy of Bezos is childish. I’m feeling obvious today.
Or FedEx or UPS will get the business. I assume the USPS made a rational decision about what to charge Amazon for delivering packages, and they decided that it was profitable for them, or at the very least not a money loser. He should not interfere.
FedEx and UPS already use the USPS for last mile delivery because it’s just not economical for them to send a truck out to the boonies. People don’t understand it–FedEx would charge you about fifteen bucks to get a delivery that the USPS charges 55 cents for, and if you live out in bumfuck Egypt the USPS will STILL be the ones that give you that FedEX package you paid through the nose to send.
In other dumbshit ideas…
It’ll just cost the USPS in lost revenue when Amazon switches fully to their own delivery system and the US government when Amazon engages in a protracted legal battle. It’s dumbassery of the highest sort that’ll cost the US much more than it costs Jeff Bezos.
Aren’t the Republican party all about capitalism and free markets without government interference?
Trump has as much understanding on logistics as he does on covid, or not
This is one of those things that makes me wonder if Trump has a point on this one, like he sometimes winds up getting something a little bit right in his flailing. How can it be so non-economical for UPS and FedEx, but economical for USPS? Seems like if UPS and FedEx lose money on these deliveries, USPS probably does too.
Isn’t Trump demanding that the USPS abrogate a legal contract? How’s that supposed to work?
FedEx/UPS likely wouldn’t be making deliveries to every house along a remote route while the USPS likely would be.
The Postal Service already is required to deliver things to those remote rural locations. Even if they don’t have letters, there’s still various advertisements. Since they’re already going there, it doesn’t cost as much to add small packages. So it actually may make it profitable for them to go where it was a loser before.
For new houses the USPS requires cluster mailboxes where the box has slots for 10 or so houses. I see those a lot around here since we have a lot of new construction.
A while back our power company did a test where they delivered bills on their own but it did not save any money.
No. That is just bullshit they mouth like “Compassionate Conservatism” out of the glossary created for them by Newt Gingrich. Republicans like actual competition in business about as much as Mitch McConnell likes universal voter registration.
Stranger
Just like state’s rights does not apply to things like abortion, drugs, elections, and so on.
Let Trump try. I’d love to see what happens after Congress passes a $2 trillion relief bill and Trump vetoes it because he hates Amazon.
Amazon Prime has 105 million users. They would form an army and march on the White House.
IOW, please, Donald, please.
This is basically it–USPS has had a good long time to set up routes and they go to every damned address in the US every day. Every address. Every day. Six days a week. Economics of scale–they have to go there anyway so they just charge what they need to to make it worthwhile to take up space for whatever the package is and to cover any delivery time commitments. And for fifty five cents you can send a letter anywhere in the US and it will get there within a couple days. Try THAT with FedEx or UPS! The post office is a national treasure and anyone trying to privatize it is going to have the usual outcome of privatization–shitty service for a fuckload o’money. Nature of the beast.
Not a big deal but here in NC when we get some snows they don’t deliver the mail. Usually it has to be around 5 inches or so for them to not deliver. Local governments are much better now at clearing snow so it’s rare that we don’t get mail for more than 1 day. 20 years ago we got 20 inches of snow and it stayed cold and it took a while to clear roads . I think we missed 3 days of mail. I assume in areas that get a lot of snow every year the post office is better at delivering in snow.
Not only that, but we could actually be using the post office for much more including coordinating the decadal census and providing basic banking and currency exchange services for a small fee rather than forcing people who can’t afford to keep enough money to maintain a personal checking account from having to use predatory check cashing services.
Stranger
Some time after posting this I realized that, by all reports, this is Trump’s standard business modus operandi. He’s so used to breaking contracts that he doesn’t even think about the consequences.