# What's with the hatred some have for the US Postal Service? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 13, 2012, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-hatred-some-have-for-the-us-postal-service/631391 "2012-08-13T17:48:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![al27052](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/41988e/32.png) [@al27052](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/al27052)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-hatred-some-have-for-the-us-postal-service/631391/201 "2012-08-17T04:25:09Z")
> [@treis](#): > > All of this talk about worker value and unions misses the point. The salient point here is that the Post Office ran an annualized deficit of 20 billion dollars the last quarter. That’s a hefty chunk of change, and the situation appears to be getting worse. The Post Office has seen its market change drastically in the last decade and it seems woefully incapable of adapting. Something drastic needs to change for them to return to even a break even state, and I don’t see that happening while it is controlled by the government. Or we just subsidize rural postal service, just like we subsidize rural phone and internet service. It’s real simple. Do you hate rural elderly people, or not? The hilarious, ironic part is that it’s these exact elderly, rural people who are the ones electing these Randians. Poor, ignorant rural elderly people. They are voting for the _exact_ people who would take away their postal service, their Social Security, and their Medicare. They’re voting for their social values, and against their own self-interest. If they were better-informed, and thought this shit through, they might not vote that way, but that’s not how it is. I wonder how much dismantling of Social Security and Medicare it will take before they wake up. For a long time I thought the conservatives merely TALKED a good game about dismantling those social programs…but some of the freshman Tea Party congressmen are actually stupid enough to commit political suicide and actually try to DO it. LOL ---
**Author:** ![LavenderBlue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e95f7d/32.png) [@LavenderBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LavenderBlue)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-hatred-some-have-for-the-us-postal-service/631391/202 "2012-08-17T04:26:56Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Current thinking on [future directions on technology and commerce](http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-08-05/future-retail-tech/56880626/1) doesn’t seem to back you up there: > > If more and more acquisition of actual physical goods is going to be handled by home delivery rather than by individuals making shopping trips to local stores,\* then postal services will become **more** relevant to modern life, not less. > > Sure, private delivery services like UPS and FedEx will absorb some of this upswing in merchandise home delivery, but as other posters have pointed out, USPS does a lot of things they don’t do and also partly subsidizes them. So I’m highly skeptical of the claim that “the entire concept of the Post Office is outdated”. > Or, putting it another way, he was routinely entrusted with large numbers of important documents and parcels (and, of course, even larger numbers of unimportant ones) that had to be correctly identified and delivered to the proper addresses, often in fairly hazardous circumstances. I don’t see why somebody with several decades of experience in reliably carrying out that important task shouldn’t be entitled to a decent middle-class salary and benefits. > > Personally, I _like_ the fact that in this country you can send a letter with a $50 bill in it or a small parcel with expensive goods in it for a low delivery cost, and the delivery employee is sufficiently well-paid and well-treated that he has little motivation to steal it and pretend it got lost. > > I’ve lived for months at a time in poorer countries where the postal services are run more or less as **Debaser** seems to prefer: with wages more appropriate for unskilled workers hauling around sacks of paper than for trusted employees reliably getting important despatches to their destinations. And the consequences are just what you might expect: postal workers routinely scrutinize the contents of the letters and parcels they’re delivering, and steal them if they’re valuable. > > I have never understood why anti-union blue-collar-busting conservatives are so slow to recognize the advantages of making service-sector jobs as comfortable and desirable as economically possible, so that they’ll attract reliable, trustworthy, stable workers. > > Nope; it’s all _“Postal service workers are grossly overpaid for just hauling sacks of paper around!”_ (Um, excuse me? There in that “sack of paper” is MY MAIL, and I want it responsibly handled by somebody who values his job!) > > _“Hotel employees unionizing? It’s ridiculous that somebody should get decent pay and benefits just for scrubbing toilets and changing sheets!”_ (In MY ROOM where I’ve left my jewelry and my clothes and my laptop? Fuck NO I don’t want that to be a shit-wage, high-turnover job where crackheads are willing to work dirt cheap for a few days until they get the chance to steal a hotel guest’s iPhone or a pair of high-end high heels that they can flog to pay for their next fix!) > > _“Why the hell should grocery store clerks get middle-class wages and paid sick days when a trained chimpanzee could do most of their jobs?”_ (Uh, because I don’t want the people who are handling MY FOOD to drag themselves to work when they’re seriously ill because they can’t afford to lose a day’s pay, and cough and sneeze all over the vegetables I’m taking home to eat?) > > Honestly, **what the fuck is wrong with the people who just can’t stand the thought that service-sector workers whose work is intimately connected with our happiness, convenience and health are able to afford a decently satisfying and secure lifestyle?** Is it sheer class envy that some of these “proletarians” have better job security and benefits than a lot of us college-educated white-collar “knowledge workers”? Screw that: if we want better job security and benefits then let’s us organize and fight for them, the way the blue-collar workers did and are still doing. > > (And by the way, just because a top salary for a postal service mail carrier was $70K twelve years ago and that $70K is equivalent to about $93K in today’s dollars doesn’t mean that top-level mail carriers are actually making $93K today. 90th percentile salary nowadays for [mail carriers](http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes435052.htm) is about $57K as of 2011.) > > - The plural of anecdote is not data, but this is certainly how my personal experience as a consumer is trending. For every time I buy something other than groceries or other basic household supplies at a local store, there are three or four occasions that I order it online and get it in the mail, most often via USPS. Bra-vo! > [@treis](#): > > All of this talk about worker value and unions misses the point. The salient point here is that the Post Office ran an annualized deficit of 20 billion dollars the last quarter. That’s a hefty chunk of change, and the situation appears to be getting worse. The Post Office has seen its market change drastically in the last decade and it seems woefully incapable of adapting. Something drastic needs to change for them to return to even a break even state, and I don’t see that happening while it is controlled by the government. Part of that problem stems from unreasonable demands being placed on the post office. Another part of it stems from the fact that many Bumfuck, North Dakotas need delivery service. The Bumfuck, North Dakotas of this country are only going to get essential mail services because the government mandates it. The private sector sure as hell isn’t going to step in and make sure that happens because they can’t make a profit from doing so. What many Reps really want to have happen is for the Fed-Exes of the world to be able to siphon off the profitable sector of the market and leave the feds to do the unprofitable stuff. Why should Americans subsidize their profits? ---
**Author:** ![al27052](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/41988e/32.png) [@al27052](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/al27052)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-hatred-some-have-for-the-us-postal-service/631391/203 "2012-08-17T04:27:32Z")
duplicate ---
**Author:** ![al27052](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/41988e/32.png) [@al27052](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/al27052)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-hatred-some-have-for-the-us-postal-service/631391/204 "2012-08-17T04:30:01Z")
> [@LavenderBlue](#): > > What many Reps really want to have happen is for the Fed-Exes of the world to be able to siphon off the profitable sector of the market and leave the feds to do the unprofitable stuff. **Why should Americans subsidize their profits?** Because, because…oh, just pay up already! ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-hatred-some-have-for-the-us-postal-service/631391/205 "2012-08-17T04:32:10Z")
> [@treis](#): > > The Post Office has seen its market change drastically in the last decade and it seems woefully incapable of adapting. And, not all of that is directly the Postal Service’s fault. Due to the control over it by Congress, any changes in its business model has to be approved by that committee, and recently proposed changes (even beyond the pension-funding issue) have been torpedoed by the committee. The USPS has had rate hikes turned down, as well as proposals to eliminate a day per week of mail delivery, and to close / consolidate the smallest local post offices. USPS’s management knows that it needs to adapt; its steering committee won’t allow it to do so. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-hatred-some-have-for-the-us-postal-service/631391/206 "2012-08-17T04:42:19Z")
> [@al27052](#): > > Or we just subsidize rural postal service, just like we subsidize rural phone and internet service. Actually, we don’t even have to do that. If USPS weren’t saddled with these uniquely draconian requirements for hugely overfunding its pension plan decades in advance, it would be running a surplus right now. In short, the excess revenue that the Postal Service generates in urban areas could be, and always has been, used to cover its revenue deficits in rural areas. Agree with you about Tea Party voters sabotaging their own best interests, though. It’s a longstanding American political pattern: a demographic minority of wealthy private-sector business interests finds it politically and financially convenient to weaken the public sector, so they set out to persuade citizens that the public sector is their enemy or at least the hapless source of all their problems. \*"Just look at those fatcat government employees making MORE THAN FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS A YEAR just for hauling sacks of paper around! And they do that day in, day out, decade after decade and DON’T GET LAID OFF! And then they get PENSIONS and BENEFITS so they can sit around in their small middle-class houses and spend their old age COMFORTABLY! Doesn’t it just make you sick to see it? What did **they** do to deserve that kind of humane and respectful treatment from their employer, when **you** have to put up with so much crap and abuse and insecurity? It’s not fair! GET THEM!! MAKE THEM SUFFER!! SERVE THEM RIGHT!!"\* > [@kenobi 65](#): > > Due to the control over it by Congress, any changes in its business model has to be approved by that committee, and recently proposed changes (even beyond the pension-funding issue) have been torpedoed by the committee. The USPS has had rate hikes turned down, as well as proposals to eliminate a day per week of mail delivery, and to close / consolidate the smallest local post offices. USPS’s management knows that it needs to adapt; its steering committee won’t allow it to do so. To the government-haters, though, that just goes to show why the public sector is intrinsically bad. Anti-government conservatives want government not to work, and if it does something that **does** work, by golly, they’ll make it **not** work by irresponsibly sabotaging its management. We’re paying them large salaries to deliberately wreck our institutions in order to prove for the convenience of their political masters that our institutions don’t work. ---
**Author:** ![LavenderBlue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e95f7d/32.png) [@LavenderBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LavenderBlue)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-hatred-some-have-for-the-us-postal-service/631391/207 "2012-08-17T04:43:03Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > And, not all of that is directly the Postal Service’s fault. > > Due to the control over it by Congress, any changes in its business model has to be approved by that committee, and recently proposed changes (even beyond the pension-funding issue) have been torpedoed by the committee. The USPS has had rate hikes turned down, as well as proposals to eliminate a day per week of mail delivery, and to close / consolidate the smallest local post offices. USPS’s management knows that it needs to adapt; its steering committee won’t allow it to do so. Conservatives would rather whine that my dad’s salary was too generous and his pension too high. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-hatred-some-have-for-the-us-postal-service/631391/208 "2012-08-17T05:56:59Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > You seem to be missing the point that several earlier posters have made: namely, that the USPS’s financial woes are largely caused by deliberate political sabotage by anti-government conservatives. > > The core of the problem is not that the USPS can’t run its business successfully or isn’t adapting to market changes. It’s that Congressional Republicans want to intentionally undermine it to embarrass their political opponents and highlight their ideological animosity toward all non-military government enterprises. Even more ironically, perhaps, is that _they have to use government regulatory measures to achieve this_. The USPS is government-owned and yet successful and profitable, and so fails to conform to their ideology. So they use the very mechanism that they assert causes all the ills of society, government over-regulation, to force the USPS to \*appear \*to be as inefficient as their beliefs tell them it ought to be. IOW to relieve their cognitive dissonance they have to make reality conform to their beliefs. The parallels with international communism (which, when the worker’s revolution failed to arrive on schedule, had to then try to make happen the very thing they claimed was going to happen of its own accord) are .. well, somewhere between amusing and deeply saddening. ---
**Author:** ![treis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc79bd/32.png) [@treis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/treis)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-hatred-some-have-for-the-us-postal-service/631391/209 "2012-08-17T12:50:08Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > You seem to be missing the point that several earlier posters have made: namely, that the USPS’s financial woes are largely caused by deliberate political sabotage by anti-government conservatives. > > The core of the problem is not that the USPS can’t run its business successfully or isn’t adapting to market changes. It’s that Congressional Republicans want to intentionally undermine it to embarrass their political opponents and highlight their ideological animosity toward all non-military government enterprises. No, the post office’s woes are caused by the 20%+ drop in mail over the last 5 years. Generally speaking, the problem comes from people who think reforming the post office demonstrates hatred of rural elderly or persecution of unions. ---
**Author:** ![treis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc79bd/32.png) [@treis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/treis)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-hatred-some-have-for-the-us-postal-service/631391/210 "2012-08-17T12:53:11Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Actually, we don’t even have to do that. If USPS weren’t saddled with these uniquely draconian requirements for hugely overfunding its pension plan decades in advance, it would be running a surplus This is false. The prefixing requirement makes up only 1/4 of the annual loss based on the last quarter. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-hatred-some-have-for-the-us-postal-service/631391/211 "2012-08-17T13:22:16Z")
> [@LavenderBlue](#): > > The private sector is filled with many useless, greedy, shitty fucking assholes who do nothing but try to pay workers as little money as possible and ask them be grateful for chance at being fucked. We should be watching the private sector like hawks, not emulating their greed. They aren’t spending my money. As long as everyone is a willing participant and isn’t being coerced, I don’t care what private sector employees get paid or don’t get paid. It’s when you are taxing me to pay for it that I have an interest. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-hatred-some-have-for-the-us-postal-service/631391/212 "2012-08-17T13:32:47Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Current thinking on [future directions on technology and commerce](http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-08-05/future-retail-tech/56880626/1) doesn’t seem to back you up there: So you have an article in USA today. Great. I have the reality that postal revenues are down. That’s what’s actually happening. Until something else starts to happen, why don’t we focus on what’s actually occurring in the real world instead of what USA today thinks might happen. The post office is losing money because revenue is down and the workers have pensions that we can’t afford. That might not align with your ideology, but it is the reality as all the cites in this thread have shown. > [@](#): > > …with several decades of experience in reliably carrying out that important task … Are you seriously telling me that someone who has been delivering mail for 35 years is better at it then someone who has been delivering it for a shorter amount of time? How many years, exactly, does it take to master this skill? How long does it take a new worker to become just as efficient as one with decades of experience in this field? > [@](#): > > Personally, I _like_ the fact that in this country you can send a letter with a $50 bill in it or a small parcel with expensive goods in it for a low delivery cost, and the delivery employee is sufficiently well-paid and well-treated that he has little motivation to steal it and pretend it got lost. So if we cut their overly generous compensation they are going to start stealing from us? This is great argument to get rid of them all. Way to walk right into the pinky ring wearing union thug stereotype. > [@](#): > > Hotel employees unionizing? > [@](#): > > grocery store clerks I have no problem with public sector unions. Since they are negotiating with management that has an incentive to strike a reasonable bargain they tend not to result in the excesses that public sector unions do. If grocery stores were government run I have no doubt that store clerks would make $93,000 a year and would get retirement benefits that would cause my grocery bill to triple. > [@](#): > > Screw that: if we [knowledge workers] want better job security and benefits then let’s us organize and fight for them, the way the blue-collar workers did and are still doing. Good luck with that. Most knowledge workers would sooner quit their company then join a union. They rightly recognize that unions would remove the individual incentive to achieve and be compensated based on performance. If this was a good idea it would be put into place. The reason that no knowledge workers are in unions is that they don’t want to be. And they’re right. > [@](#): > > And by the way, just because a top salary for a postal service mail carrier was $70K twelve years ago and that $70K is equivalent to about $93K in today’s dollars doesn’t mean that top-level mail carriers are actually making $93K today. I know. I was responding to the one anecdote. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-hatred-some-have-for-the-us-postal-service/631391/213 "2012-08-17T13:56:58Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > What’s his pension? Assuming 25 years of service and a salary that topped out at $70,000 twelve years ago, my quickie calculations indicate that he’s probably getting somewhere around $34,000 annually from the Civil Service Retirement System. He would not be eligible for Social Security benefits, because as a postal employee he would not have paid into the system – his retirement payments and checks into and from the CSRS system, in effect, were his Social Security payments/benefits. Do you think $34 grand is an unreasonable size of a pension? > [@](#): > > They aren’t spending my money. As long as everyone is a willing participant and isn’t being coerced, I don’t care what private sector employees get paid or don’t get paid. It’s when you are taxing me to pay for it that I have an interest. Let’s be clear again: nobody is taxing you for postal retiree benefits. Not even your payroll taxes are funding their retirements, since the vast majority of postal retirees would not receive Social Security benefits (unless they also had some other job for which they paid into the Social Security system). ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-hatred-some-have-for-the-us-postal-service/631391/214 "2012-08-17T15:39:24Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > I have the reality that postal revenues are down. That’s what’s actually happening. Until something else starts to happen, why don’t we focus on what’s actually occurring in the real world instead of what USA today thinks might happen. As a matter of fact, one of the things that’s actually occurring in the real world is that [USPS revenues from the shipping and packaging part of their business **are** going up.](http://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2012/pr12_055.htm) Just like the article in _USA Today_ predicted. (Actually, it was the technology industry analyst for the well-known technology research firm Gartner whom the _USA Today_ article quoted as predicting this development, so it’s hardly surprising. But hey, why should you pay any attention to the merits of the cite’s actual sources, when you can just automatically sneer at it merely for carrying the _USA Today_ label?) > [@](#): > > Postal Service actions to increase revenue continue to pay off in the shipping and package service lines of its business. Revenues related to shipping and packages totaled $3.5 billion, an increase of over 13 percent compared to the same period in the previous year, as volume increased 74 million pieces, or 9 percent. > [@Debaser](#): > > The post office is losing money because revenue is down and the workers have pensions that we can’t afford. That might not align with your ideology, but it is the reality as all the cites in this thread have shown. Nope, the reality is that the “pensions we can’t afford” [_who’s “we”, anyway? as has been pointed out to you several times already, the USPS funds pensions and all other overheads from its revenues, not from tax dollars_] are actually “draconian pension overfunding requirements imposed on the USPS by anti-government conservatives trying to sabotage it”. Without the excessive pension overfunding demands made by PAEA, the USPS would be running a surplus, and would be able to afford worker pensions just fine. That might not align with your ideology, but it is the reality. > [@Debaser](#): > > Are you seriously telling me that someone who has been delivering mail for 35 years is better at it then someone who has been delivering it for a shorter amount of time? How many years, exactly, does it take to master this skill? How long does it take a new worker to become just as efficient as one with decades of experience in this field? Gosh, you mean that you think workers shouldn’t get any salary raises once they’ve mastered the basics of their first job task? People who’ve been reliable and increasingly responsible employees for several decades should stay at the same wage they were making a few years in? No wonder your firm has so much trouble finding good employees. You sound like a real peach to work for. > [@Debaser](#): > > So if we cut their overly generous compensation they are going to start stealing from us? This is great argument to get rid of them all. Wow, another impressively reality-conscious debating position from the famously hardheaded and practical anti-government conservative movement: :eek: \*"OMG it can’t be troooo that poverty-wage workers with low job security are more likely than secure middle-class-wage workers to steal from their employers!!! :eek: :eek: :eek: **NOOOOO!!!** :eek: :eek: :mad: :mad: "Why, I absolutely REFUSE to accept that entirely unremarkable and commonplace economic fact!!! If you try to make me, then I’ll just get rid of ALL the workers altogether! :mad: :mad: “After all, isn’t it preferable to completely demolish a valuable and self-supporting major institution of our society’s infrastructure than to tolerate the notion that it might be efficient and productive to pay some blue-collar workers a middle-class wage? Yes, that certainly is self-evident. Whew. I feel better now.”\* 🙂🙂 > [@Debaser](#): > > If grocery stores were government run I have no doubt that store clerks would make $93,000 a year and would get retirement benefits that would cause my grocery bill to triple. It’s fascinating how you can go on doggedly spouting the standard anti-government rhetoric even when the particular government institution you’re trying to draw an analogy with completely fails to support the comparison. USPS mail clerks do not make $93K per year. USPS services do not cost triple what private-sector delivery services charge. For all your reiteration that you’re focusing on “reality”, you seem profoundly unconcerned with actual facts. > [@Debaser](#): > > Good luck with that. Most knowledge workers would sooner quit their company then join a union. They rightly recognize that unions would remove the individual incentive to achieve and be compensated based on performance. If this was a good idea it would be put into place. Wrong again. As it happens, [white-collar/professional union membership is currently **increasing** at unprecedented rates:](http://www.laprogressive.com/professionals-moving-to-organized-labor/) > [@](#): > > Although labor union membership has declined significantly in the United States over the last 50 years, there is a segment of the labor market that is showing remarkable signs of increased union activity. Contrary to conventional wisdom, professionals and white-collar workers are joining labor unions in record numbers. […] > > […] [T]he economic downturn is also forcing more professional, technical and administrative support workers to look for new ways to build power. > > In a study conducted by the AFL-CIO Department for Professional Employees (DPE) it was determined that white-collar union recruits is outpacing all other occupational groups, including the building and construction, hospitality and service sectors. > > Explaining this surge in professional membership, the DPE reported: > “The movement is no longer just an economic safe haven for the blue collar and service workers that once dominated the institution. It is, more and more, the destination of choice for professional workers seeking fairness, equity and a voice on the job.” Sorry to intrude on your recitation of well-worn anti-government shibboleths with actual contemporary facts, but this is more of that stuff called reality. You know, the thing that you profess to have so much respect for but seem to know so little about. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-hatred-some-have-for-the-us-postal-service/631391/215 "2012-08-17T17:33:28Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > As a matter of fact, one of the things that’s actually occurring in the real world is that USPS revenues from the shipping and packaging part of their business **are** going up. Just like the article in _USA Today_ predicted. Are you suggesting this has gone up because of the reasons put forth in the USA Today article? Do you have any evidence of this claim? The USPS release you cited credits “Postal Service actions to increase revenue” which is about as vague of a reason as I’ve ever seen. Do you have some proof of your claims as to the reason? Even if this bump in the shipping and packaging part of the business does indicate the beginning of a longer term trend, it won’t save the Postal Service. > [@USPS press relese](#): > > Revenue from Mailing Services, excluding Market Dominant packages, totaled $12.8 billion, a 3 percent decrease compared to the same period last year, on a volume decrease of 1.8 billion pieces. [USPS press release](http://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2012/pr12_055.htm) The losses in other areas dwarf this one shred of good news that you found. > [@](#): > > Without the excessive pension overfunding demands made by PAEA, the USPS would be running a surplus, and would be able to afford worker pensions just fine. That might not align with your ideology, but it is the reality. Your own cite proves this is false. Again, according to the USPS on their own [press release](http://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2012/pr12_055.htm): > [@USPS Press Release](#): > > Without the impact of the non-controllable costs related to mandated retiree health benefit pre-funding payments and accounting for non-cash adjustments for worker’s compensation, the non-GAAP loss for the quarter was $486 million compared to $469 million for the same period last year as shown in Table I below. Even when you don’t count the pension benefits that congress is insisting they actually provide funding for the numbers are still in the red. > [@Kimstu](#): > > :eek: \*"OMG it can’t be troooo that poverty-wage workers with low job security are more likely than secure middle-class-wage workers to steal from their employers!!! :eek: :eek: :eek: **NOOOOO!!!** :eek: :eek: > > :mad: :mad: "Why, I absolutely REFUSE to accept that entirely unremarkable and commonplace economic fact!!! If you try to make me, then I’ll just get rid of ALL the workers altogether! :mad: :mad: > > “After all, isn’t it preferable to completely demolish a valuable and self-supporting major institution of our society’s infrastructure than to tolerate the notion that it might be efficient and productive to pay some blue-collar workers a middle-class wage? Yes, that certainly is self-evident. Whew. I feel better now.”\* 🙂🙂 You can post 1,000 smiley faces of mockery, but the fact remains that the UPS and FedEx workers aren’t stealing from their employers as you suggest the USPS workers would if we cut their precious union perks. Nor are any other number of workers who aren’t protected by public sector union perks and salaries. These kind of thug-like threats really make unions and their supporters look classy. “Nice mail service you have here. Be a shame if something happened to it.” > [@](#): > > Wrong again. As it happens, [white-collar/professional union membership is currently **increasing** at unprecedented rates:](http://www.laprogressive.com/professionals-moving-to-organized-labor/) First of all: “Dick and Sharon’s LA Progressive”? Nice source you got there. It’s complete with broken links all over it when you start clicking on their cites and fact sheets. There’s a lot of fluff on that page. Statements like this one: “But the economic downturn is also forcing more professional, technical and administrative support workers to look for new ways to build power” Just translate to them thinking happy thoughts since they aren’t backed up with any facts. Even the AFL-CIO admits that any trend is basically just demographics because we’ve lost so many blue collar jobs: “The AFL-CIO is attributing this growth in recruits from the professional ranks primarily to the reduction of the manufacturing sector in the United States.” So when they state this: “white-collar union recruits is outpacing all other occupational groups, including the building and construction, hospitality and service sectors.” This isn’t the result of desire on the part of workers, but simply the result of the decimation of the construction, hospitality and service sectors. The end result might be a slight uptick in white collar union members, but that hardly indicates that knowledge workers are going to start all turning union any time soon. I for one feel sorry for someone who has a white collar job but got stuck at a union shop. That must be miserable. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-hatred-some-have-for-the-us-postal-service/631391/216 "2012-08-17T17:46:06Z")
> [@MsWhatsit](#): > > This thread isn’t going the way you thought it would, is it? It’s going exactly the way I expect on the SDMB. 20 to 1 odds. Personal attacks. Posters combing through my posts searching for one sentence they can pull out of context to mock me with. I’m a unashamed conservative. It’s par for the course here. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-hatred-some-have-for-the-us-postal-service/631391/217 "2012-08-17T17:47:20Z")
> [@suranyi](#): > > San Fran Bay Area Amazing how I was able to predict that. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-hatred-some-have-for-the-us-postal-service/631391/218 "2012-08-17T17:48:31Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > No wonder your firm has so much trouble finding good employees. You sound like a real peach to work for. […] > Sorry to intrude on your recitation of well-worn anti-government shibboleths with actual contemporary facts, but this is more of that stuff called reality. You know, the thing that you profess to have so much respect for but seem to know so little about. > [@al27052](#): > > No, you’re a partisan…well, I won’t say the word, but we’re all thinking it. Keep the personal commentary out of this forum, please. **al27052** , I belive you’ve been told about this rule several times recently. ---
**Author:** ![MsWhatsit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eb8c5e/32.png) [@MsWhatsit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsWhatsit)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-hatred-some-have-for-the-us-postal-service/631391/219 "2012-08-17T21:07:19Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > It’s going exactly the way I expect on the SDMB. Mm-hm. Well, you just keep shining on, you crazy diamond. ---
**Author:** ![just\_some\_guy5](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@just\_some\_guy5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/just_some_guy5)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-hatred-some-have-for-the-us-postal-service/631391/220 "2012-08-17T21:22:16Z")
Have seen some back and forth on the issue, but just to be clear - the USPS’s financial position has certainly been hindered from the prefunding pension requirement; however, excluding any pension costs, the USPS lost $2.2 billion in 2011 and is projected to lose $3.0 billion in 2012. And I disagree with the point that USPS subsidizes UPS and FedEx by offering last mile delivery services. Given that USPS already provides door-to-door first class mail delivery, their incremental cost to deliver packages (of the sort handled by UPS and FedEx) is presumably very negligible, which is why they offer the service to UPS and FedEx in the first place (besides, they could always charge more for last-mile package delivery if they wanted to, since Congress doesn’t control their pricing on this service). While the cost of providing door-to-door first class mail delivery is quite high, the idea (in the days when mail was much more popular) was that USPS would be appropriately compensated for this service via its legal monopoly status (of course, that status is far less valuable today than it was 20+ years ago). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-hatred-some-have-for-the-us-postal-service/631391.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-the-hatred-some-have-for-the-us-postal-service/631391.md?page=12)