Business and government: Myths and Misconceptions

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

I started this as a general topic because there is so much discussion on it. This allows it to be discussed without the pesky limitations of emails or other sites/engines.

I wanted to start by addressing things such as government's role in business with the robber barons.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

In regards to mononpolies and competition. My problem is that government monopolies (the only real monopolies that exist) restrict and ban competition which leads to no competition and higher prices with worse service. As opposed to a business being very successful in a competitive market. This is evident anywhere the government takes over like education, health care, and the postal service

Here is something on the robber baron myth:

[magicattack]

I agree that there is a lot of misconceptions concerning the USPS.

Do you feel that if the post office were to lose it's monopoly that the price of a first class letter would be less than the .49 it is now?

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Hey what do you have planned today?

The cost of the post office definitely exceeds the benefit of the "cheaper" mail we get because its not being run efficiently and is broke. I have no problem with a business becoming top if it is run effectively and keeps its costs down. I don't think the government should interfere there. However when the government provides an automatic monopoly the costs go up.

The lack of efficiency is a cost. The post office has the worst service compared to other deliverers. I know people who work there and even they admit they are slow and many times I come and things aren't even delivered to my post office box until noon or so, when it used to be 8:30 am on the same day. The boxes used to cost $20 for six months not even 4 years ago, and now they are almost $30, so that's a 50% increase in price there. Not to mention in the past the Post Office delivered 2x a day and on weekends, and now they only deliver once a day and they've pretty much cut weekends out almost entirely.

You also have the huge taxes and inflation that goes to subsidize the post office. They are a victim of their own monopoly since they can't raise their rates higher than inflation costs and since the government keeps lying about inflation they have to deal with the higher rates. Also the staff are way overpaid overall compared to the private sector since they are essentially unionized government workers. Something over 70% if I'm not mistaken of the post office costs are for labor (workers) contrast that to the private sector where most businesses don't spend more than about 30% on workers, where the rest goes to land, equipment, regulations, taxes, etc. If a private business had a 70% labor cost they'd go under immediately.



The reason for the post office was so that everyone could have "mail at the same rate", no matter where they lived. This is silly since people don't have the same costs of life all over, why should postage be the same. With the internet and other competition we'd have lower prices and more efficiency and not higher prices.

It seems they have $100B in unfunded liabilities; this only happens in government:

www.cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/postal-service-faces-100b-debts-and-unfunded-benefits

Nonetheless I hope you are well and Happy Thanksgiving.

[magicattack]

Nov 27, 2014 17:45:36 GMT -5 The Big Daddy C-Master said:

Hey what do you have planned today?

We went over to a friends house and ate dinner with their family. How about you? What did you do today?

The cost of the post office definitely exceeds the benefit of the "cheaper" mail we get because its not being run efficiently and is broke. I have no problem with a business becoming top if it is run effectively and keeps its costs down. I don't think the government should interfere there. However when the government provides an automatic monopoly the costs go up.

While it is true that there could be more efficiency, that is mostly on the top heavy corporate structure that has been rapidly introduced into the Post Office over the last 30 years. The Postmaster Generel doesn't make nearly as much as his counterparts in Fed-Ex or UPS, there are WAY more VP in the Post Office. The common joke is that there is 1 VP of the USA, but 100 for the Postal Service.

The lack of efficiency is a cost. The post office has the worst service compared to other deliverers. I know people who work there and even they admit they are slow and many times I come and things aren't even delivered to my post office box until noon or so, when it used to be 8:30 am on the same day. The boxes used to cost $20 for six months not even 4 years ago, and now they are almost $30, so that's a 50% increase in price there. Not to mention in the past the Post Office delivered 2x a day and on weekends, and now they only deliver once a day and they've pretty much cut weekends out almost entirely.

I have to disagree with the worst service. Take last X-Mas season for instance. Fed-Ex and UPS failed to deliver quite a few last minute items people had ordered online. So much so that Amazon had to offer refunds on shipping, as well as vouchers for future items. USPS had a stellar year, while delivering their own timely deliveries they also delivered a substantial number for both of its competitors.

The up time for the mail falls on managements shoulders. If there aren't enough people to sort the mail, and put it in the PO boxes in a timely manner then more should be hired. Management has also been closing distribution centers all over the US. So while your Post Office probably got all their mail by 7 AM in the past, because the distribution center was 30 minutes away, they probably get it much later now because the trucks have to drive much further while stopping at more offices along their routes.

The Post Office box rate is set by using their own formula. The price of our boxes also went up, and they are a lot more than $30 for 6 months.

The Post Office hasn't delivered 2x a day for quite a while, automation basically did away with that. Most of the letter mail comes already in delivery sequence, so that takes away a lot of the sorting time in the morning. The last few years they have even started sorting the magazines in delivery order, but mostly for the larger offices.

A lot of these things that management comes up with is to try to save/make money, ie consolidation, raising prices and attrition. More on that in a bit.

You also have the huge taxes and inflation that goes to subsidize the post office. They are a victim of their own monopoly since they can't raise their rates higher than inflation costs and since the government keeps lying about inflation they have to deal with the higher rates. Also the staff are way overpaid overall compared to the private sector since they are essentially unionized government workers. Something over 70% if I'm not mistaken of the post office costs are for labor (workers) contrast that to the private sector where most businesses don't spend more than about 30% on workers, where the rest goes to land, equipment, regulations, taxes, etc. If a private business had a 70% labor cost they'd go under immediately.

The USPS hasn't been funded by the government since 1971. They do receive money from Congress for their franking privileges, matter for the blind and for military overseas. Although Congress doesn't pay their fair share for the services they receive they still do pay something.

Also the Post Office isn't allowed to raise rates to reflect changes. Fed-Ex and UPS charged a "gas surcharge" when gas was over $4.50 a gallon a few years ago, the USPS didn't. Fed-Ex and UPS are going to be raising their rates based on the size and shape of packages sent in January. The USPS isn't.

Congress is the main culprit in the problem with postage rates. Congress and the big mailers like Val-Pak. Val-Pak, and other companies, spend big money on campaign contributions to Congress so that the cost of their mailings stay at a relatively low rate. If the USPS charged those companies the actual cost to deliver their mailings there would be no one talking about the Post Office's money troubles. So the USPS is forced to supplement the cost of the cheaper mail with the cost of first class mail. First Class is .49 to send a letter, but look at the price of some of the mail you probably throw out. Usually it is .09, sometimes higher and sometimes lower. .09 is what I see for the majority.

The Postal Workers actually are paid less than UPS workers. Fed-Ex are different and Fed-Ex has a few law suits that might end up hurting them based on the way that they were paying their employees. Also I have never seen neither UPS nor Fed-Ex trek over 10 miles in thigh high deep snow. They are usually driving around in their 1 ton trucks. UPS has a union, and Fed-Ex is currently voting locally on whether they want to unionize. The unions aren't there to make everyone rich, they are there to try and protect the employees. Starting wages for USPS also decreased by about $6 across the board.

The Post Office does spend 70% of its costs on employees. Things like salary, health insurance, retirement. The Post Office has to jump through hurdles to raise prices, because of congress, so as wages go up it is tough to keep up. But much of the monetary problems are no more than management and congress cooking the books. More on that later.

The reason for the post office was so that everyone could have "mail at the same rate", no matter where they lived. This is silly since people don't have the same costs of life all over, why should postage be the same. With the internet and other competition we'd have lower prices and more efficiency and not higher prices.

You are exactly right with your first sentence. The Post Office provides a service, and should be ran like one. Running the USPS like a business is counter-productive. They serve everyone in the USA, from Alaska to Florida, from Hawaii to Puerto Rico. There is no way to do that profitably and for a low price.

I can tell you what would happen if the Post Office were shut down. First UPS and Fed-Ex would grab up the local delivery for BIG cities. LA,NY, cities with millions of people. Because it would be profitable for them to serve those areas. The price to mail a letter would cost more of course, easily $1.00. Someone that lives in a rural area would be in sad shape, they might not even receive delivery but 1 time a week because it wouldn't be profitable to deliver to him. The prices definitely wouldn't go down, as it hasn't with the two of them competing with USPS for market share of package delivery. The Postal Service is generally the least expensive way to ship an item, unless it is a company that ships a tremendous amount. 


People that do receive mail would not receive it by the door. Everyone would have a cluster box at a corner street, where people would have to possibly drive to go get. Unless the person lives with the cluster boxes in their front yard, then they have an eye sore. The companies would surely make more, and if a person lives in a large city the service might not deteriorate much. But a person that lives in a rural location would certainly see the change.

It seems they have $100B in unfunded liabilities; this only happens in government:

www.cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/postal-service-faces-100b-debts-and-unfunded-benefits

Nonetheless I hope you are well and Happy Thanksgiving.

This ties it all together nicely. There was a law passed in 2006, PAEA Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, that forced the PO to pre-fund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years in a ten-year time span. So the Post Office has to fully fund retirements for people not even born yet, to the tune of $5.5 billion a year. No private corporation is forced to do this, nor do they do it on their own.

The Post Office was doing ok, until the Great Recession hit in 2007. The Post Office lost a lot of first class mail, about 25%. Over the next few years the Post Office did all those things I listed before- consolidation, raising prices and attrition. But it wasn't enough to offset the $5.5 billion payment every year, so the Post Office had to stop making those payment every year. Now on paper it shows that they lost money every year, almost all of it due to the $5.5 billion pre payment.

Previous to the pre-funding, the Post Office was on a "pay as you go plan", similar to most corporations and most of the other federal agencies. But OPM, Office of Personnel Management, has stated that the Post Office had already over-paid its obligations to the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) by an estimated $50 billion. As well as over-funding the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) by approximately $6.9 billion. That money is still in the retirement system and with what has already been paid it would basically cover the Post Offices pre-funding responsibility.

The reason that the Post Office is faced with this and other hurdles is all on Congress. They saw the Post Office as a cash cow in the early 2000's, and had to figure out a way to keep the money coming in. So they enacted PAEA to give themselves a 5.5 billion dollar check to cover some of their programs. Darryl Issa (R-CA) has made it his personal mission to see the Post Office dismantled. He has had his hand in stopping every bill to try and help the Post Office before they even left committee. His attempts at legislation have been less than ideal. For instance he wanted to end Saturday delivery to save money. But he didn't want to use the savings to help the Postal Service, he wanted it to offset military retiree benefits.

Unfortunately the people that want to see the Post Office dismantled are spreading many untruths, and it is sad. The Postal Service could easily be self sustaining again, even profitable. But those people, that are spreading lies, have their own agendas, which I am sure is a 1 followed by quite a few 0's.

Happy Thanksgiving to you too, my friend. 

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Hey, just curious. What background are you using?

Nov 27, 2014 23:32:16 GMT -5 magicattack said:

We went over to a friends house and ate dinner with their family. How about you? What did you do today?

I chilled out and cooked some food. Had a nice quiet day.

Nov 27, 2014 23:32:16 GMT -5 magicattack said:

While it is true that there could be more efficiency, that is mostly on the top heavy corporate structure that has been rapidly introduced into the Post Office over the last 30 years. The Postmaster Generel doesn't make nearly as much as his counterparts in Fed-Ex or UPS, there are WAY more VP in the Post Office. The common joke is that there is 1 VP of the USA, but 100 for the Postal Service.

It's the fact that it's government controlled that makes it so inefficient. Not to mention the attitude and service are far worse. I know people who work there and they're hardly motivated compared to when I go to FedEx and UPS.
People don't have to care when they know they have a government backstop.

Nov 27, 2014 23:32:16 GMT -5 magicattack said:

I have to disagree with the worst service. Take last X-Mas season for instance. Fed-Ex and UPS failed to deliver quite a few last minute items people had ordered online. So much so that Amazon had to offer refunds on shipping, as well as vouchers for future items. USPS had a stellar year, while delivering their own timely deliveries they also delivered a substantial number for both of its competitors.

The post office is definitely the worst service overall; that's why it's doing so badly. Last year was a big fiasco in regards to delivery of items and people had issues delivering mail all around. Of course people are going to look at that example as a way to smash other businesses. They fumbled and they need to get their act together this year. Holidays have spikes in mail, and their demand was 37% higher than expected. The good thing about the private sector is competition. Other online retailers have been looking at other alternatives, such as delivering the mail with their own companies.
You are right that the USPS delivers mail with the other companies as well. Quite a few items go to the post office and then to the houses that were from UPS and Fedex. The USPS is not doing stellar at all, it's in tremendous debt due to the typical problem: Government management. It often takes me much longer to get mail from them than UPS or Fedex. I like simply having the UPS facility hold my package so I'll pick it up at 9:00 am. The USPS is becoming much slower and much less efficient.

Nov 27, 2014 23:32:16 GMT -5 magicattack said:

The up time for the mail falls on managements shoulders. If there aren't enough people to sort the mail, and put it in the PO boxes in a timely manner then more should be hired. Management has also been closing distribution centers all over the US. So while your Post Office probably got all their mail by 7 AM in the past, because the distribution center was 30 minutes away, they probably get it much later now because the trucks have to drive much further while stopping at more offices along their routes.

The USPS has been cutting back because it's doing so poorly. The mail definitely comes there. I pay very close attention. It'll be in Atlanta the night before and depart at 2am or so. It'll arrive in my area around 5-7am. Delivery has gotten slower and slower and they always have an excuse when I see the trucks there and they say they have the mail. When I even call and ask if they've delivered before I drive there they act like *I'm* inconveniencing them. That's the attitude there.

Nov 27, 2014 23:32:16 GMT -5 magicattack said:

The Post Office box rate is set by using their own formula. The price of our boxes also went up, and they are a lot more than $30 for 6 months.

I travel all around and I use a PO box in a more rural area, so it isn't as high as it probably is in New York. The inflation costs as well as their failing business is why they have such a high spike in prices. 50% in a short time is a lot.

Nov 27, 2014 23:32:16 GMT -5 magicattack said:

The Post Office hasn't delivered 2x a day for quite a while, automation basically did away with that. Most of the letter mail comes already in delivery sequence, so that takes away a lot of the sorting time in the morning. The last few years they have even started sorting the magazines in delivery order, but mostly for the larger offices.

They had to cut back on deliveries and hours of operation because they were less efficient. Many other areas of government have done this as well like the library. It used to be open 12 hours a day and 6 on Sunday to now being open 5 days a week for varying hours. Mail that I could get later has to now be put on the next day because they can't afford to do it more often. Much of the mail is spam nowadays anyways because more and more people are using online, which just lessens the need for them.

Nov 27, 2014 23:32:16 GMT -5 magicattack said:

A lot of these things that management comes up with is to try to save/make money, ie consolidation, raising prices and attrition. More on that in a bit.

They have to with their lack of efficiency plus their high labor costs and benefits.

Nov 27, 2014 23:32:16 GMT -5 magicattack said:

The USPS hasn't been funded by the government since 1971. They do receive money from Congress for their franking privileges, matter for the blind and for military overseas. Although Congress doesn't pay their fair share for the services they receive they still do pay something.

Yea they're not as directly funded by the government as before, but they're still government run and they have a government monopoly-so they are a government entity. The higher costs and less efficiency that's pushed on us *is* a cost. Things would be more efficient with competition and they don't allow that. Not that the Post office or any area wants to have competition when they have government.

Nov 27, 2014 23:32:16 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Also the Post Office isn't allowed to raise rates to reflect changes. Fed-Ex and UPS charged a "gas surcharge" when gas was over $4.50 a gallon a few years ago, the USPS didn't. Fed-Ex and UPS are going to be raising their rates based on the size and shape of packages sent in January. The USPS isn't.

I agree, they have to go by the CPI to raise their prices which makes them a victim of their own monopoly. Since the government lies about inflation all of the time they have to find other ways to make more money. Like selling forever stamps and then delivering at a loss.
Business have to pass higher costs of running business onto customers; they can't raise them too high because of competition, but with the inflation you're going to see higher and higher costs all across the board. Gas spikes make business more expensive so they have to charge more.
Heavier packages cost more to ship and manage as well so that also makes sense, they also take more effort and more space so you can't ship as many things. It's better to do it honestly than to say it's free and then screw the taxpayer over.

Nov 27, 2014 23:32:16 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Congress is the main culprit in the problem with postage rates. Congress and the big mailers like Val-Pak. Val-Pak, and other companies, spend big money on campaign contributions to Congress so that the cost of their mailings stay at a relatively low rate. If the USPS charged those companies the actual cost to deliver their mailings there would be no one talking about the Post Office's money troubles. So the USPS is forced to supplement the cost of the cheaper mail with the cost of first class mail. First Class is .49 to send a letter, but look at the price of some of the mail you probably throw out. Usually it is .09, sometimes higher and sometimes lower. .09 is what I see for the majority.

Which is why there should just be free competition; no weird regulations and monopolies. The USPS would have to compete on an even field.

Nov 27, 2014 23:32:16 GMT -5 magicattack said:

The Postal Workers actually are paid less than UPS workers. Fed-Ex are different and Fed-Ex has a few law suits that might end up hurting them based on the way that they were paying their employees. Also I have never seen neither UPS nor Fed-Ex trek over 10 miles in thigh high deep snow. They are usually driving around in their 1 ton trucks. UPS has a union, and Fed-Ex is currently voting locally on whether they want to unionize. The unions aren't there to make everyone rich, they are there to try and protect the employees. Starting wages for USPS also decreased by about $6 across the board.

Yea but you have to consider the ridiculous costs of all of their benefits the way you do with other government and unionized workers. It's why their expenses are so high to begin with. Politicians come in and promise things they can't deliver on and will be out of office to satisfy so the taxpayers have to be fleeced to pay for it while we're losing our jobs and many just don't want to work. Why should I have to pay for all of these pensions and other things for people I didn't elect and for others who are doing a bad job?
UPS and Fedex people have to deliver large and heavy packages as well. Unionizing in these bad times will just make them sink even faster. Oh well, a new company will emerge and take their business if FedEx is dumb enough to do that.

Nov 27, 2014 23:32:16 GMT -5 magicattack said:

The Post Office does spend 70% of its costs on employees. Things like salary, health insurance, retirement. The Post Office has to jump through hurdles to raise prices, because of congress, so as wages go up it is tough to keep up. But much of the monetary problems are no more than management and congress cooking the books. More on that later.

Which is why things like this should cease. They should pay their workers what they can afford and not based on phony promises. Should be the same all across the board.

Nov 27, 2014 23:32:16 GMT -5 magicattack said:

You are exactly right with your first sentence. The Post Office provides a service, and should be ran like one. Running the USPS like a business is counter-productive. They serve everyone in the USA, from Alaska to Florida, from Hawaii to Puerto Rico. There is no way to do that profitably and for a low price.

Then if they can't do something profitably they'll have to raise prices or find another line of business. It makes no sense to provide services and lose money in the process, because the money has to come from somewhere else anyways and it leads to corruption. In this age of electronics it's largely unnecessary especially with all of the junk mail people are getting. You can pay your bills online, do taxes online, communicate online. I never get first class mail that I actually needed outside of a few instances and that's when they refuse to do it online.
Profits are good because it's a market indicator of resources being used efficiently. If an entrepreneur is losing money doing something it's the market's way of telling him to stop or do it in a more efficient way or else he'll go broke. When the government loses money they just throw more at it and then say it's "affordable" like health care and education.

Nov 27, 2014 23:32:16 GMT -5 magicattack said:

I can tell you what would happen if the Post Office were shut down. First UPS and Fed-Ex would grab up the local delivery for BIG cities. LA,NY, cities with millions of people. Because it would be profitable for them to serve those areas. The price to mail a letter would cost more of course, easily $1.00. Someone that lives in a rural area would be in sad shape, they might not even receive delivery but 1 time a week because it wouldn't be profitable to deliver to him. The prices definitely wouldn't go down, as it hasn't with the two of them competing with USPS for market share of package delivery. The Postal Service is generally the least expensive way to ship an item, unless it is a company that ships a tremendous amount. 

It's cheap in the way that public school is "free", it's free on the service until you look at the cost of the bad education and the costs that are subsidized at the taxpayers at around 300 billion dollars a year. Every entity that has a backstop from government from farmers to banks, schools to the Post Office always thinks theirs is different and they should have it even with the problems being apparent.
The post office doesn't need to shut down; it just needs to be competitive. Businesses have to compete for the lowest cost and the best service so it will definitely be better overall and in the long run. I don't see how anybody can look at the current state of the post office and think that it's better to have it this way. It should be like electronics. Going down in price every year with more products.

Nov 27, 2014 23:32:16 GMT -5 magicattack said:

People that do receive mail would not receive it by the door. Everyone would have a cluster box at a corner street, where people would have to possibly drive to go get. Unless the person lives with the cluster boxes in their front yard, then they have an eye sore. The companies would surely make more, and if a person lives in a large city the service might not deteriorate much. But a person that lives in a rural location would certainly see the change.

I get mail at the door now. First class mail can still be delivered by the box without the added junkmail, and you'd have better and more options than you currently do. Competition leads to better quality and prices not worse. Why would it be thrown all about. What makes the Post Office so competent compared to other entities when they don't run together efficiently.

Nov 27, 2014 23:32:16 GMT -5 magicattack said:

This ties it all together nicely. There was a law passed in 2006, PAEA Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, that forced the PO to pre-fund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years in a ten-year time span. So the Post Office has to fully fund retirements for people not even born yet, to the tune of $5.5 billion a year. No private corporation is forced to do this, nor do they do it on their own.

More sign of government inefficienty.

Nov 27, 2014 23:32:16 GMT -5 magicattack said:

The Post Office was doing ok, until the Great Recession hit in 2007. The Post Office lost a lot of first class mail, about 25%. Over the next few years the Post Office did all those things I listed before- consolidation, raising prices and attrition. But it wasn't enough to offset the $5.5 billion payment every year, so the Post Office had to stop making those payment every year. Now on paper it shows that they lost money every year, almost all of it due to the $5.5 billion pre payment.

It's been declining for quite a while but the economy was finally hit by the phony bubbles we had been blowing at the weaknesses started to show. Modern electronics and other advances make it less necessary as well.

Nov 27, 2014 23:32:16 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Previous to the pre-funding, the Post Office was on a "pay as you go plan", similar to most corporations and most of the other federal agencies. But OPM, Office of Personnel Management, has stated that the Post Office had already over-paid its obligations to the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) by an estimated $50 billion. As well as over-funding the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) by approximately $6.9 billion. That money is still in the retirement system and with what has already been paid it would basically cover the Post Offices pre-funding responsibility.

That and the whole structure of the post office and the way its run can't last. How long it will in our socialist welfare state is beyond me.

Nov 27, 2014 23:32:16 GMT -5 magicattack said:

The reason that the Post Office is faced with this and other hurdles is all on Congress. They saw the Post Office as a cash cow in the early 2000's, and had to figure out a way to keep the money coming in. So they enacted PAEA to give themselves a 5.5 billion dollar check to cover some of their programs. Darryl Issa (R-CA) has made it his personal mission to see the Post Office dismantled. He has had his hand in stopping every bill to try and help the Post Office before they even left committee. His attempts at legislation have been less than ideal. For instance he wanted to end Saturday delivery to save money. But he didn't want to use the savings to help the Postal Service, he wanted it to offset military retiree benefits.

This is why I don't want the government involved with business; it's just bad and politicians will always take advantage of it.

Nov 27, 2014 23:32:16 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Unfortunately the people that want to see the Post Office dismantled are spreading many untruths, and it is sad. The Postal Service could easily be self sustaining again, even profitable. But those people, that are spreading lies, have their own agendas, which I am sure is a 1 followed by quite a few 0's.

Nothing wrong with making money if you're providing goods and valuable services. Just not through special perks.

Nov 27, 2014 23:32:16 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Happy Thanksgiving to you too, my friend. 

When are we heading to Europe? I'm thinking Sweden, Latvia, Denmark, or something similar.

[magicattack]

Nov 28, 2014 8:01:48 GMT -5 The Big Daddy C-Master said:

Hey, just curious. What background are you using?
I chilled out and cooked some food. Had a nice quiet day.

Cool. I am using SF girls at the moment.

It's the fact that it's government controlled that makes it so inefficient. Not to mention the attitude and service are far worse. I know people who work there and they're hardly motivated compared to when I go to FedEx and UPS.
People don't have to care when they know they have a government backstop.

Not knowing the whole situation I can't comment on what is going on in those Post Offices. But it isn't really fair to label an entire organization as having a bad attitude because of a few random people.

The post office is definitely the worst service overall; that's why it's doing so badly.

I have to disagree. If 3 companies are paid to accomplish a job by a set date, and only one company gets it done (all the while helping out the 2 that failed); I don't see how the company that succeeded would be labeled as having the worst service.

Last year was a big fiasco in regards to delivery of items and people had issues delivering mail all around. Of course people are going to look at that example as a way to smash other businesses.

Of course people will use that as an example, the 2 companies that compete with the USPS really only deal in package delivery. There is nothing else to use as an example. The holidays are the bread and butter for package delivery.

They fumbled and they need to get their act together this year. Holidays have spikes in mail, and their demand was 37% higher than expected. The good thing about the private sector is competition. Other online retailers have been looking at other alternatives, such as delivering the mail with their own companies.

Yes, Amazon has begun trying it out in the UK. I don't see how that would work here, possibly in urban areas. But not across the US as a whole.

You are right that the USPS delivers mail with the other companies as well. Quite a few items go to the post office and then to the houses that were from UPS and Fedex.

ok

The USPS is not doing stellar at all, it's in tremendous debt due to the typical problem: Government management. It often takes me much longer to get mail from them than UPS or Fedex. I like simply having the UPS facility hold my package so I'll pick it up at 9:00 am. The USPS is becoming much slower and much less efficient.

Financially, all of that is due to Congress. Rather than fix the problem of the pre-funding Congress is doing what it does best, nothing.

Receiving your packages slower can be quite a few things, but I can say that it is not across the whole US. There is a huge push for package delivery. The USPS has gone to 7 day delivery till after Christmas in some areas. I don't know if your area is one of them, but that is something that Fed-Ex and UPS has refused to do.

The USPS has been cutting back because it's doing so poorly. The mail definitely comes there. I pay very close attention. It'll be in Atlanta the night before and depart at 2am or so. It'll arrive in my area around 5-7am. Delivery has gotten slower and slower and they always have an excuse when I see the trucks there and they say they have the mail. When I even call and ask if they've delivered before I drive there they act like *I'm* inconveniencing them. That's the attitude there.

Then more people need to be hired.

I travel all around and I use a PO box in a more rural area, so it isn't as high as it probably is in New York. The inflation costs as well as their failing business is why they have such a high spike in prices. 50% in a short time is a lot.

What is the price of a box at UPS or Fed-Ex?

They had to cut back on deliveries and hours of operation because they were less efficient. Many other areas of government have done this as well like the library. It used to be open 12 hours a day and 6 on Sunday to now being open 5 days a week for varying hours. Mail that I could get later has to now be put on the next day because they can't afford to do it more often. Much of the mail is spam nowadays anyways because more and more people are using online, which just lessens the need for them.

The cutback in deliveries was during the 50's or 60's, so it isn't really relevant to the discussion at hand. The cutback in hours hurts service, which is what the Post Office should focus on.

They have to with their lack of efficiency plus their high labor costs and benefits.

No, they have to because the USPS is losing money because Congress is imposing a $5.5 billion dollar retirement tax on them.

Yea they're not as directly funded by the government as before, but they're still government run and they have a government monopoly-so they are a government entity.

true

The higher costs and less efficiency that's pushed on us *is* a cost.

I see this is where we are not agreeing. I don't know where you see a higher cost, so I will ask again. What would the price of a first class stamp be with competition?

Things would be more efficient with competition and they don't allow that. Not that the Post office or any area wants to have competition when they have government.

There is competition for package delivery, and I already outlined how the USPS has to help the other 2 companies deliver their packages. There is no competition for letters because no other company would want to have to provide universal coverage for the whole US. The same thing happening in the UK would happen here, any new company would cherry pick the highly desirable urban areas while foregoing the less desirable rural areas.

I agree, they have to go by the CPI to raise their prices which makes them a victim of their own monopoly. Since the government lies about inflation all of the time they have to find other ways to make more money. Like selling forever stamps and then delivering at a loss.

Congress dictated the CPI for raising prices in order to keep prices artificially low to help out their friends like the Koch Brothers.

First Class letters are not losing money for the Post Office, unless you mean the supplement for the people in Alaska that live in remote villages. But that comes out to a pittance compared to the cost of Congress.

Business have to pass higher costs of running business onto customers; they can't raise them too high because of competition, but with the inflation you're going to see higher and higher costs all across the board.

Agreed.

Gas spikes make business more expensive so they have to charge more.

Agreed. Now that gas is under 3 bucks will the companies pass along the savings to it's customers?

Heavier packages cost more to ship and manage as well so that also makes sense, they also take more effort and more space so you can't ship as many things. It's better to do it honestly than to say it's free and then screw the taxpayer over.

The companies already charge by weight. I am saying that they are charging by size or volume.

Again, the taxpayers aren't getting screwed over. The USPS doesn't get any taxpayer money. If they want to pay more based on the size of their package they can go right to UPS or Fed-Ex.

Which is why there should just be free competition; no weird regulations and monopolies. The USPS would have to compete on an even field.

I would point to the UK again. Royal Mail, after the privatization, was still not allowed to compete on an even field. They are still forced to provide universal coverage to all of the UK, while the competition is allowed to cherry pick the highly densely populated areas. If Royal Mail is allowed to fail, then the rural areas might be left with no postal service.

Yea but you have to consider the ridiculous costs of all of their benefits the way you do with other government and unionized workers. It's why their expenses are so high to begin with.

What ridiculous costs? Providing a livable wage is ridiculous? What do you think would be the appropriate wage?

How much does Congress or the President pay for their Health Care? What about retirement? Congress "works" for about a quarter of the year and gets nothing accomplished.

Politicians come in and promise things they can't deliver on and will be out of office to satisfy so the taxpayers have to be fleeced to pay for it while we're losing our jobs and many just don't want to work. Why should I have to pay for all of these pensions and other things for people I didn't elect and for others who are doing a bad job?

Because the people in power make the rules, and when things go wrong they point the fingers at everyone else. They gave themselves some pretty good benefits that can't be taken away.

UPS and Fedex people have to deliver large and heavy packages as well. Unionizing in these bad times will just make them sink even faster. Oh well, a new company will emerge and take their business if FedEx is dumb enough to do that.

I am not so sure unionizing is a bad thing. What makes it so bad? People are banding together to try and make things better for themselves.

Which is why things like this should cease. They should pay their workers what they can afford and not based on phony promises. Should be the same all across the board.

I am not sure what you mean. What isn't the same? Take away Congress 2006 law and the USPS can pay its workers what was promised.

Then if they can't do something profitably they'll have to raise prices or find another line of business. It makes no sense to provide services and lose money in the process, because the money has to come from somewhere else anyways and it leads to corruption.

Agreed. But this all stems from Congress doing. Why penalize the Post Office for something that Congress has caused?

In this age of electronics it's largely unnecessary especially with all of the junk mail people are getting. You can pay your bills online, do taxes online, communicate online. I never get first class mail that I actually needed outside of a few instances and that's when they refuse to do it online.
Profits are good because it's a market indicator of resources being used efficiently. If an entrepreneur is losing money doing something it's the market's way of telling him to stop or do it in a more efficient way or else he'll go broke. When the government loses money they just throw more at it and then say it's "affordable" like health care and education.

Agreed. But this all stems from Congress doing. Why penalize the Post Office for something that Congress has caused? Prior to 2006, the Post Office was operating fine.

It's cheap in the way that public school is "free", it's free on the service until you look at the cost of the bad education and the costs that are subsidized at the taxpayers at around 300 billion dollars a year. Every entity that has a backstop from government from farmers to banks, schools to the Post Office always thinks theirs is different and they should have it even with the problems being apparent.

The Post Office doesn't receive tax payer money. So I don't know why you are attempting to paint a picture of the Post Office being a financial drain on tax payers money. Schools, yes. Farms, yes. Banks that took tax payer money, yes. Post Office, no.

The post office doesn't need to shut down; it just needs to be competitive.

Just look at the UK. The Post Office is already operating with one hand tied behind its back. If there were competition then the Post Office would just close down, which would eliminate delivery to rural areas.

Businesses have to compete for the lowest cost and the best service so it will definitely be better overall and in the long run.

Yes they do, and I hope that both Fed-Ex and UPS learned from their mistakes last year. Amazon signed a few contracts with the USPS, I think, because of their blunders.

I don't see how anybody can look at the current state of the post office and think that it's better to have it this way. It should be like electronics. Going down in price every year with more products.

No one thinks that the Post Office should be this way.

1. Congress needs to remove the $5.5 Billion burden.
2. The USPS needs to adjust it's pricing on the "junk mail"

Those two items right there solve everything. Do only one and things would be manageable.

I get mail at the door now. First class mail can still be delivered by the box without the added junkmail, and you'd have better and more options than you currently do.

If you live in an urban area, then you could keep things as they are. Rural areas would be stuck with just the Post Office. To cut costs the Post Office would have to have centralized delivery. So while you would be able to get your junk mail delivered to you, some little old lady, way out west, would have to drive to get her medicine that used to be delivered to her door.

Competition leads to better quality and prices not worse. Why would it be thrown all about. What makes the Post Office so competent compared to other entities when they don't run together efficiently.

First, no other company wants to do what the Post Office does. Not to the scale that they do it anyways.

The USPS was already found to be the most efficient postal delivery system in 2012. There is already a network in place of over 450k people. A letter can go from NY to Hawaii for .49, and would be able to show a profit if it weren't for Congress. I will ask again, what would the price of that same letter be with the other companies?

More sign of government inefficienty.

I agree with the thought, but not the amount that they were forced to do.

It's been declining for quite a while but the economy was finally hit by the phony bubbles we had been blowing at the weaknesses started to show. Modern electronics and other advances make it less necessary as well.

about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-facts/decade-of-facts-and-figures.htm

That one you are completely wrong on, prior to that the USPS was having some of it's best years. Once the bubble popped it had a domino affect on everything, real estate, vehicle sales, banking. Everyone trimmed their advertising budget, which in turn hurt the Post Office.

This is why I don't want the government involved with business; it's just bad and politicians will always take advantage of it.

agreed

Nothing wrong with making money if you're providing goods and valuable services. Just not through special perks.

It would be basically legalized insider trading.

When are we heading to Europe? I'm thinking Sweden, Latvia, Denmark, or something similar.

I go with all of the above.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Cool. I am using SF girls at the moment.

Yea, I'm still going to do more. I used to be able to see who was using what, but I can't with the new layout. I was taking some time to do some drawing, but I still have a few more backgrounds that I want to do. I like these much better than the previous ones although those were good too.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

r4e
Not knowing the whole situation I can't comment on what is going on in those Post Offices. But it isn't really fair to label an entire organization as having a bad attitude because of a few random people.

It's a common theme with government entities. The service at a place like the DMV is going to be much worse because of the attitude of the people there. They know that you're going to be there no matter what, so there's no competition to do a good job and be satisfactory. It's really difficult to be fired from a government type job as well compared to a private job so in their mind it's like you're inconveniencing them. That attitude wouldn't get as far in the private sector where people would just go elsewhere.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

I have to disagree. If 3 companies are paid to accomplish a job by a set date, and only one company gets it done (all the while helping out the 2 that failed); I don't see how the company that succeeded would be labeled as having the worst service.

In that one instance perhaps, but when you look at it overall, the service is much worse at the USPS, the wait time, the attitude, the fact that they're bleeding red ink, etc. The others are better overall.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Of course people will use that as an example, the 2 companies that compete with the USPS really only deal in package delivery. There is nothing else to use as an example. The holidays are the bread and butter for package delivery.

Well what else can they use when the government forces a monopoly against them and prevents competition which as always results in higher prices and worse services? They deliver packages year round and in modern technology the orders spike at the end of the year by a huge margin at the last second. They all should be better prepared for that.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Yes, Amazon has begun trying it out in the UK. I don't see how that would work here, possibly in urban areas. But not across the US as a whole.

There's only one way to find out. I don't see the reason to doubt the private market when they do all kinds of services here just fine. It's just like the government says that the private sector can't provide healthcare cheap when it was already doing it before they stepped in.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Financially, all of that is due to Congress. Rather than fix the problem of the pre-funding Congress is doing what it does best, nothing.

The government is the one in control of it, so I blame them overall, but it isn't like that's the only problem in the post office. They've become less and less efficient over the years and just don't adjust well to change.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Receiving your packages slower can be quite a few things, but I can say that it is not across the whole US. There is a huge push for package delivery. The USPS has gone to 7 day delivery till after Christmas in some areas. I don't know if your area is one of them, but that is something that Fed-Ex and UPS has refused to do.

Well I just mean in general; the updates are slow: if it isn't 2 day delivery it takes longer than the other carriers unless it's smartpost or something. I don't get my mail until much later. USPS I get it quickly with frequent updates and guaranteed pickup. It's much better.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Then more people need to be hired.

They've had cutbacks because the Post Office is hurting. Probably explains the 50% increase in Postal Box costs.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

What is the price of a box at UPS or Fed-Ex?

Depends on the size and volume.
Unless you mean the delivery boxes. The UPS one is about $60 or so, but you get more efficiency and it doubles as a street address so you can send *anything* there. That's a huge difference.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

The cutback in deliveries was during the 50's or 60's, so it isn't really relevant to the discussion at hand. The cutback in hours hurts service, which is what the Post Office should focus on.

That's my point. They can't serve as well as they used to because they're less efficient.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

No, they have to because the USPS is losing money because Congress is imposing a $5.5 billion dollar retirement tax on them.

Yea but they're bleeding billions of red ink every year. No private business could do this for long and stay afloat, who's paying to keep them afloat? Are they getting the money out of thin air? Somebody has to pay for it and it's going to be paid by us either through direct taxes or via inflation, which the government lies about.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

I see this is where we are not agreeing. I don't know where you see a higher cost, so I will ask again. What would the price of a first class stamp be with competition?

That's where the market comes in and decides. I'm not a central planner. If the post office can't do it without spilling red ink, then it's not cheaper when the prices are in other places. People in government like to look at the ticket price and not the other prices that come with the inefficiencies in government services.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

There is competition for package delivery, and I already outlined how the USPS has to help the other 2 companies deliver their packages. There is no competition for letters because no other company would want to have to provide universal coverage for the whole US. The same thing happening in the UK would happen here, any new company would cherry pick the highly desirable urban areas while foregoing the less desirable rural areas.

The USPS has a deal with the other companies where they are compensated to deliver their packages and Fedex and UPS with certain services like smartpost drop them off there.
If nobody is willing to do it, then why have a monopoly? Because they don't want competition and it's just another thing for the government to control. The private sector would have to raise prices in the far away areas like they do with other deliveries and lower costs in urban areas, which makes perfect sense, because now the urban areas are subsidizing the rural areas.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Congress dictated the CPI for raising prices in order to keep prices artificially low to help out their friends like the Koch Brothers.

The Koch Brothers are free market types who are anti large government and are painted as bad guys by big government and their cronies there.
The government lies about inflation for a ton of reasons. It's convenient for any government to print or inflate lots of money. They don't want the average dumb citizen to know they're actually doing it because people wouldn't like it. So they come up with ways to lie about it and hide it, when it is really a hidden cost and tax on everyone. The poor who have the least money suffer because higher prices means they can't buy the things they once were able to or have to take a cut in living standards and that's if they decide to simply not work and live off of the rest of us.
People are dumb and want something for nothing. The government promises things they can't afford (we're trillions in debt) and they fund it by monetizing it. This also helps certain industries who leverage a lot of debt because inflation robs wealth from savers and gives it to debtors, it also affects nominal prices so they can look much richer on paper if they work in assets. They also have low interest rates to people aren't encouraged to save and they can bid up prices on things like houses, which actually makes things *less* affordable. The last thing inflation does is keep prices low. Quite the opposite.

Inflation is also how they plan to pay off the hugely overpaid government workers in a variety of areas.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

First Class letters are not losing money for the Post Office, unless you mean the supplement for the people in Alaska that live in remote villages. But that comes out to a pittance compared to the cost of Congress.

The post office is losing money all around because it's bleeding red ink, that's why they need the monopoly to stay afloat. They're largely just subsidized by junk mail because in all honesty first class letters are largely unneeded with the advent of email and other cheap ways to communicate and pay bills. On top of that higher gas prices are hurting them as well.
People like me have to pay more to also subsidize those who live in other areas, the money has to come from somewhere. Then you have other government regulations and all of the benefits that go to workers who are overpaid.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Agreed. Now that gas is under 3 bucks will the companies pass along the savings to it's customers?

Not with the cost of inflation going up. I got hit with a 50% markup in box costs, the other businesses haven't done that.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

The companies already charge by weight. I am saying that they are charging by size or volume.

More volume=less packages they can deliver on a truck.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Again, the taxpayers aren't getting screwed over. The USPS doesn't get any taxpayer money. If they want to pay more based on the size of their package they can go right to UPS or Fed-Ex.

How is the post office staying afloat when its bleeding so much red ink? The cost of inefficiency with the post office is very expensive. They're broke now and you're saying they need the monopoly to function, but if they were so effective they wouldn't need it.
How come the electronics industry has cheap products without a monopoly.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

I would point to the UK again. Royal Mail, after the privatization, was still not allowed to compete on an even field. They are still forced to provide universal coverage to all of the UK, while the competition is allowed to cherry pick the highly densely populated areas. If Royal Mail is allowed to fail, then the rural areas might be left with no postal service.

That's not a free market then. A free market is free of government regulation. They could easily figure out how to deliver mail in those areas like they deliver packages. Or they just use the internet. Less junk mail.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

What ridiculous costs? Providing a livable wage is ridiculous? What do you think would be the appropriate wage?

The appropriate wage would be based on the market. I'm not a central planner. It would be based on what they could realistically afford to pay coupled with the performance of their workers. Government workers are already very overpaid compared to private sector workers with more benefits and VERY lax working conditions where it's hard for them to get fired, that's why they like it there. Meanwhile people in the private sector have to fund them.
People who want to earn more money need to improve their skills or be more efficient not just demand more at gunpoint. These higher barriers of entry only make it so people who need a job can't get them because it's too expensive to hire them while others who would be better suited in another market are doing these sorts of jobs because they're lucrative.
America has an odd definition of livable, even people who don't do anything live quite well compared to others who work very hard in many instances. If the company is going broke on 70% labor costs then yes they're overpaid. No private sector could come close to paying those prices without sinking.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

How much does Congress or the President pay for their Health Care? What about retirement? Congress "works" for about a quarter of the year and gets nothing accomplished.

Don't get me started on politicians. They're the worst of the worst. We should have term limits and it's far too lucrative to be a politician. They provide nothing of value and live off of the others. They just keep padding their own nest egg at the expense of the tax payers. The scary part is it's better to pay Obama to keep going on expensive vacations than it is to have him in office destroying everything.
Republican or Democrat, I don't care. That's supposed to be a civil service and not some damn life pension for a few years of "work".
But hey socialism is expensive. The highest per capita income is in... you guessed it, Washington DC.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Because the people in power make the rules, and when things go wrong they point the fingers at everyone else. They gave themselves some pretty good benefits that can't be taken away.

It's great to be in charge. You and I agree here. They shouldn't be getting *any* of that. Our leaders in the past were so much better before they were democratically elected. They were people who volunteered their time to what was good for the country, and then went back home. They didn't just sit in politics for life passing out laws while living in a bubble immune to all of it.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

I am not so sure unionizing is a bad thing. What makes it so bad? People are banding together to try and make things better for themselves.

Workers have a right to associate, but they shouldn't get special perks and hold business owners to extortion at gunpoint. They shouldn't be able to monopolize labor, just like businesses can't collaborate to raise prices. It leads to less efficiency and higher costs, and it helps nobody but the overpaid union thugs. Just ask Detroit, the steel mills, and hostess. These people want to make things better by gunpoint and not by being more productive.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

I am not sure what you mean. What isn't the same? Take away Congress 2006 law and the USPS can pay its workers what was promised.

As long as they can stay afloat without government monopolies and interference I'm fine. If they have a monopoly they are going to be regulated. Hell every other business is.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Agreed. But this all stems from Congress doing. Why penalize the Post Office for something that Congress has caused?

It's not all the congress. The USPS is in trouble because it hasn't adapted to current times.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

The Post Office doesn't receive tax payer money. So I don't know why you are attempting to paint a picture of the Post Office being a financial drain on tax payers money. Schools, yes. Farms, yes. Banks that took tax payer money, yes. Post Office, no.

You seem to believe that just because they aren't directly "taxed" they aren't being subsidized by us. The lack of efficiency and higher costs by a monopoly *is* a tax on the private sector. If they don't need the monopoly then get rid of it and let them compete. Not to mention all of the inflation and other things that helps keep them afloat.
Who is going to bail the Post Office out of its billions, what about all of the unfunded liabilities? They aren't going to make all of that back.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Just look at the UK. The Post Office is already operating with one hand tied behind its back. If there were competition then the Post Office would just close down, which would eliminate delivery to rural areas.

The UK market isn't like the US market. By that measure I could point to other areas where the service is even more terrible. They have to close down because they can't be competitive and keep their costs down. This statement contradicts itself. If it was operating so well it wouldn't mind the competition. The cost of mail to rural areas would go up (which it should) and the price to urban areas would go down (which it should). With email and the like it's largely useless much like the newspaper and much of it is junk mail anyways.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Yes they do, and I hope that both Fed-Ex and UPS learned from their mistakes last year. Amazon signed a few contracts with the USPS, I think, because of their blunders.

The USPS had some issues too, just not as big as they did. They had a huge surge on their orders at the last minute. If other competition wants to come in and do it better, they should.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

No one thinks that the Post Office should be this way.

They don't say it, but people don't ever want to fix the area where they have government backstops. When teachers say that schools should be adjusted, they then refuse all of the adjustments because it means sacrifices at their end, which they don't want.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

1. Congress needs to remove the $5.5 Billion burden.
2. The USPS needs to adjust it's pricing on the "junk mail"

They have to deliver so much junk mail because it's largely unprofitable to deliver a lot of letters anyways with modern technology. The USPS is losing more money than just ht e5 billion.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Those two items right there solve everything. Do only one and things would be manageable.

They need to lose their monopoly on first class mail and mailboxes, they also need to be responsible for their own costs with no perks. Then they could do what they want.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

If you live in an urban area, then you could keep things as they are. Rural areas would be stuck with just the Post Office. To cut costs the Post Office would have to have centralized delivery. So while you would be able to get your junk mail delivered to you, some little old lady, way out west, would have to drive to get her medicine that used to be delivered to her door.

The urban areas would get mail cheaper and rural areas would have to pay more to reflect the costs of the extra gas to get there. That's completely reasonable. People who live in rural areas have overall cheaper costs of living, why should they get subsidized mail to. I don't care about junk mail, and they deliver packages to rural areas now so it won't be an issue.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

First, no other company wants to do what the Post Office does. Not to the scale that they do it anyways.

Not in an inefficient manner no. They'll do it in a way that's profitable.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

The USPS was already found to be the most efficient postal delivery system in 2012. There is already a network in place of over 450k people. A letter can go from NY to Hawaii for .49, and would be able to show a profit if it weren't for Congress. I will ask again, what would the price of that same letter be with the other companies?

Based on whose study? If they're so efficient why are they losing so much money? Yes they are government run, but that's the point. That isn't the real cost of delivering that mail and they would lose money in the private sector if it weren't for a monopoly and the fact that it's largely junk mail. That .49 doesn't reflect the real cost of delivering that mail.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

I agree with the thought, but not the amount that they were forced to do.

But everything they touch is inefficient. It's for a variety of reasons but it's still inefficient. The people who benefit from the system don't want to cut it but the truth is our country is broke and we can't afford welfare anymore. The illusion in productivity is still welfare whether it's protection from foreign or local competition or just government jobs in general. Our country has trillions of debt and that's because we waste so much on nonsense. Socialism is expensive and leads to disaster.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

That one you are completely wrong on, prior to that the USPS was having some of it's best years. Once the bubble popped it had a domino affect on everything, real estate, vehicle sales, banking. Everyone trimmed their advertising budget, which in turn hurt the Post Office.

Well they weren't as bad as they are now, but they weren't exactly great. Also yes businesses have to cut costs in a free market, government entities can still be inefficient and overpay their workers. It helps to advertise *more* in a bad economy so you can get more business (just in a more affordable manner), but some businesses do cut advertising in certain ways.
The problem is they haven't grown with the times. Email, higher costs, more competition are just a few of the reasons they're going broke. Government entities just don't want to cut costs.

Nov 30, 2014 3:22:22 GMT -5 magicattack said:

It would be basically legalized insider trading.

Don't want that. I want competition and not more marriage between government and business.

But yea we have to show those girls a good time.

[magicattack]

Nov 30, 2014 8:16:11 GMT -5 The Big Daddy C-Master said:

It's a common theme with government entities. The service at a place like the DMV is going to be much worse because of the attitude of the people there. They know that you're going to be there no matter what, so there's no competition to do a good job and be satisfactory. It's really difficult to be fired from a government type job as well compared to a private job so in their mind it's like you're inconveniencing them. That attitude wouldn't get as far in the private sector where people would just go elsewhere.

Your experiences don't reflect the Postal Service as a whole.


about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2013/pr13_020.htm

As of 2012, they were ranked number 4 as most trusted company, and first in government agencies. If everyone that worked there had the carefree attitude that you say they have then there ranking wouldn't have been so high.

In that one instance perhaps, but when you look at it overall, the service is much worse at the USPS, the wait time, the attitude, the fact that they're bleeding red ink, etc. The others are better overall.

Because the USPS has an oversight committee that is forcing a $5.5 billion dollar payment on them. Fed-Ex and UPS do not have that hindrance forced on them.

Well what else can they use when the government forces a monopoly against them and prevents competition which as always results in higher prices and worse services? They deliver packages year round and in modern technology the orders spike at the end of the year by a huge margin at the last second. They all should be better prepared for that.

Again, what would the price of a first class stamp be if there were competition? If the price would be lower, what would it drop to?

There's only one way to find out. I don't see the reason to doubt the private market when they do all kinds of services here just fine. It's just like the government says that the private sector can't provide healthcare cheap when it was already doing it before they stepped in.

The size of the US is a factor against it working. It would make no financial sense for Amazon to pay someone to drive 20-30 miles to deliver one small package to a customer in a remote part of the US. Then drive 15 miles after that to drop off another. It makes far more sense to drop them in one centralized location and let a third party deliver the items to customers.

The government is the one in control of it, so I blame them overall, but it isn't like that's the only problem in the post office. They've become less and less efficient over the years and just don't adjust well to change.

Congress is in control, but how have they become less efficient? You keep stating that they are losing money, they are less efficient, the price is too high. I would just like to know based on what? Has any company said that they could deliver mail to everyone in the US for a lower price? At a quicker pace? And while paying $5.5 Billion to congress?

Well I just mean in general; the updates are slow: if it isn't 2 day delivery it takes longer than the other carriers unless it's smartpost or something. I don't get my mail until much later. USPS I get it quickly with frequent updates and guaranteed pickup. It's much better.

It could just be your Post Office, unfortunately every business has people that ruin it for everyone.

They've had cutbacks because the Post Office is hurting. Probably explains the 50% increase in Postal Box costs.

The USPS is a service, and should be ran like one. Self funding, so as not to put any further hardship on taxpayers. But that isn't what Congress seems to want.

Depends on the size and volume.
Unless you mean the delivery boxes. The UPS one is about $60 or so, but you get more efficiency and it doubles as a street address so you can send *anything* there. That's a huge difference.

Post Office has implemented a similar program to receive deliveries from Fed Ex and UPS. I don't think it is in all locations yet though. I never understood why they didn't do this already. The Post Office will take in UPS packages for them, but not take packages for customers having a PO box.

That's my point. They can't serve as well as they used to because they're less efficient.

They would be more efficient, no? The routes are far longer then they were in the 50's and 60's with far more mail and far more delivery points. While having an almost equal number of employees.

Yea but they're bleeding billions of red ink every year. No private business could do this for long and stay afloat, who's paying to keep them afloat? Are they getting the money out of thin air? Somebody has to pay for it and it's going to be paid by us either through direct taxes or via inflation, which the government lies about.

You are basing your assumptions on the post office based on skewered accounting. They are losing money, on paper, do to the $5.5 billion pre-funding. They are losing money because they are forced to make monetary payments for employees that aren't even born yet. If you want to compare apples to oranges, that is fine. But if we force the same requirements on Fedex and UPS, neither of them would show a profit. FedEx made about 1.5 billion last year, and UPS about 4.3 billion. In an equal competitive world, both of those companies would be in a similar boat as the USPS, no? The last 5 years neither company netted even close to 5.5 billion.

Without the pre-funding the Post Office would have made a little over $1 billion this past year. There is no need for a tax payer bailout, the people that continually preach that are just trying to incite fear mongering. Take away the pre-funding requirement, and the USPS would be close to being on an even playing field.

That's where the market comes in and decides. I'm not a central planner. If the post office can't do it without spilling red ink, then it's not cheaper when the prices are in other places. People in government like to look at the ticket price and not the other prices that come with the inefficiencies in government services.

You may not be a central planner, but you keep stating that the USPS employees are overpaid. So you must have a basis for that, right? What is it based on?

So do you think that every company should be forced to pre-fund it's retirement responsibilities for the next 75 years in a ten year time frame? That way every company can be on an equal playing field.

The USPS has a deal with the other companies where they are compensated to deliver their packages and Fedex and UPS with certain services like smartpost drop them off there.
If nobody is willing to do it, then why have a monopoly? Because they don't want competition and it's just another thing for the government to control. The private sector would have to raise prices in the far away areas like they do with other deliveries and lower costs in urban areas, which makes perfect sense, because now the urban areas are subsidizing the rural areas.

There is no monopoly on package delivery. UPS and Fed-Ex are free to deliver to whatever remote location they want. But like the Amazon reference I made earlier, it makes no sense to pay a driver to drive 20 miles way out of their way to deliver 1 package and then drive another 15 miles to deliver another. It's a much better business decision to farm those items out to a competitor already going there, no? If it didn't make sense then wouldn't Fed-Ex and UPS just deliver it themselves? There must be a reason that even they don't deliver all of their own packages.

The Koch Brothers are free market types who are anti large government and are painted as bad guys by big government and their cronies there.
The government lies about inflation for a ton of reasons. It's convenient for any government to print or inflate lots of money. They don't want the average dumb citizen to know they're actually doing it because people wouldn't like it. So they come up with ways to lie about it and hide it, when it is really a hidden cost and tax on everyone. The poor who have the least money suffer because higher prices means they can't buy the things they once were able to or have to take a cut in living standards and that's if they decide to simply not work and live off of the rest of us.
People are dumb and want something for nothing. The government promises things they can't afford (we're trillions in debt) and they fund it by monetizing it. This also helps certain industries who leverage a lot of debt because inflation robs wealth from savers and gives it to debtors, it also affects nominal prices so they can look much richer on paper if they work in assets. They also have low interest rates to people aren't encouraged to save and they can bid up prices on things like houses, which actually makes things *less* affordable. The last thing inflation does is keep prices low. Quite the opposite.

Inflation is also how they plan to pay off the hugely overpaid government workers in a variety of areas.

The Koch brothers are only concerned with their own agendas. I don't see why someone that doesn't agree with them has to be labeled as dumb. Are the Koch Brothers for or against a minimum wage increase? How about global warming? The Koch Brothers interests and philanthropy only go as far as their financial interests allow them.

The post office is losing money all around because it's bleeding red ink, that's why they need the monopoly to stay afloat. They're largely just subsidized by junk mail because in all honesty first class letters are largely unneeded with the advent of email and other cheap ways to communicate and pay bills. On top of that higher gas prices are hurting them as well.
People like me have to pay more to also subsidize those who live in other areas, the money has to come from somewhere. Then you have other government regulations and all of the benefits that go to workers who are overpaid.

Again, you say that you are subsidizing those who live in other areas. That is true. If the monopoly were lifted and competition for first class letters were allowed, what would the new price be that you would have to pay? Do you think a competitor can do the job for less than .49 a letter?

Not with the cost of inflation going up. I got hit with a 50% markup in box costs, the other businesses haven't done that.

The USPS didn't add an increase for gas prices either, but other businesses did.

More volume=less packages they can deliver on a truck.

Right, but the USPS isn't charging by volume. The other companies are.

You are trying to justify one companies price increase by explaining at as a need to do business and competition sets prices. But when the USPS does it, you assume the company must be inefficient and the workers are overpaid. Based on past performance and pay, for similar yet not identical jobs, the assumptions just don't make sense.

How is the post office staying afloat when its bleeding so much red ink? The cost of inefficiency with the post office is very expensive. They're broke now and you're saying they need the monopoly to function, but if they were so effective they wouldn't need it.
How come the electronics industry has cheap products without a monopoly

How is the 5.5 Billion pre-funding a sign on inefficiency? They don't need the monopoly to function, see the package delivery industry, and I didn't write that. Please show me where I did. The monopoly is in place to provide a universal service to everyone in the US.

That's not a free market then. A free market is free of government regulation. They could easily figure out how to deliver mail in those areas like they deliver packages. Or they just use the internet. Less junk mail.

Agreed. So is your solution then to not have delivery in rural locations, because it is far too expensive? Or to start charging the people that live in rural locations a "tax" because they live there so that they can receive mail delivery?

The appropriate wage would be based on the market. I'm not a central planner. It would be based on what they could realistically afford to pay coupled with the performance of their workers. Government workers are already very overpaid compared to private sector workers with more benefits and VERY lax working conditions where it's hard for them to get fired, that's why they like it there. Meanwhile people in the private sector have to fund them.

You continually say that the workers are overpaid, based on what? There must be a number somewhere that shows what they should be paid and it would be lower than what they are actually paid. You are writing it for a reason, correct? You must believe it to be true, so where is the opinion coming from? How are you coming to that conclusion?

Again, the Post Office is not funded by tax money. People in the private sector can sleep easier at night knowing this.

People who want to earn more money need to improve their skills or be more efficient not just demand more at gunpoint.

Who is doing that? Postal Unions can't strike, its against the law. The contracts are negotiated, and if an agreement isn't reached then it is sent to binding arbitration. That one was way out there.

These higher barriers of entry only make it so people who need a job can't get them because it's too expensive to hire them while others who would be better suited in another market are doing these sorts of jobs because they're lucrative.
America has an odd definition of livable, even people who don't do anything live quite well compared to others who work very hard in many instances. If the company is going broke on 70% labor costs then yes they're overpaid. No private sector could come close to paying those prices without sinking.

The Post Office isn't allowed to operate on a profit.

under Title 39, Section 101.1 of the United States Code which states, in part:

(a) The United States Postal Service shall be operated as a basic and fundamental service provided to the people by the Government of the United States, authorized by the Constitution, created by Act of Congress, and supported by the people. The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all communities. The costs of establishing and maintaining the Postal Service shall not be apportioned to impair the overall value of such service to the people.
Under paragraph (d) of Title 39, Section 101.1, "Postal rates shall be established to apportion the costs of all postal operations to all users of the mail on a fair and equitable basis."

So again, apples and oranges. Congress tells them that they can't make a profit, so obviously employee wages are going to be high. Take away any profit that the USPS competitors make, and compare them fairly.

You are trying to make a claim that the Post Office is losing money on it's own which is far from the truth.

Don't get me started on politicians. They're the worst of the worst. We should have term limits and it's far too lucrative to be a politician. They provide nothing of value and live off of the others. They just keep padding their own nest egg at the expense of the tax payers. The scary part is it's better to pay Obama to keep going on expensive vacations than it is to have him in office destroying everything.
Republican or Democrat, I don't care. That's supposed to be a civil service and not some damn life pension for a few years of "work".
But hey socialism is expensive. The highest per capita income is in... you guessed it, Washington DC.

But they are government workers, and they have it far better that any USPS employee.

It's great to be in charge. You and I agree here. They shouldn't be getting *any* of that. Our leaders in the past were so much better before they were democratically elected. They were people who volunteered their time to what was good for the country, and then went back home. They didn't just sit in politics for life passing out laws while living in a bubble immune to all of it.

agreed

Workers have a right to associate, but they shouldn't get special perks and hold business owners to extortion at gunpoint. They shouldn't be able to monopolize labor, just like businesses can't collaborate to raise prices. It leads to less efficiency and higher costs, and it helps nobody but the overpaid union thugs. Just ask Detroit, the steel mills, and hostess. These people want to make things better by gunpoint and not by being more productive.

Again, negotiations are done and if no contract can be agreed on then it goes to binding arbitration. There is no strong arming done.
Businesses can't collaborate to raise prices? Are you saying that there are no instances of Oligopoly in the US right now?

As long as they can stay afloat without government monopolies and interference I'm fine. If they have a monopoly they are going to be regulated. Hell every other business is.

No other business has to pay $5.5 Billion in pre-funding. If there is another company feel free to name it. Otherwise no, no other business is.

It's not all the congress. The USPS is in trouble because it hasn't adapted to current times.

So the $5.5 billion isn't what is putting the Post Office in the red? What other company has to prefund 75 years into the future in a 10 year time span?

It looks to me if the pre-funding were to be lifted then the Post Office would be showing a profit. Are you seeing different financial numbers for the Post Office?

You seem to believe that just because they aren't directly "taxed" they aren't being subsidized by us. The lack of efficiency and higher costs by a monopoly *is* a tax on the private sector. If they don't need the monopoly then get rid of it and let them compete. Not to mention all of the inflation and other things that helps keep them afloat.

You seem to believe that there is some hidden cost past on the tax payers that no one but you can see. I am asking you to show me where the money is coming from. You are making the claim that there is a cost to the tax payer. You wrote "The lack of efficiency and higher costs by a monopoly *is* a tax on the private sector." What are the higher costs on the private sector? Is there a hidden tax that we are all paying? Is it on our pay stub, or when we buy a product? Is there a lower price that could be paid rather than .49 to send a letter across the US? I am asking you to please show me what you are claiming.

Who is going to bail the Post Office out of its billions, what about all of the unfunded liabilities? They aren't going to make all of that back.

Hopefully the Post Office is allowed to use it's own money that it has overpaid into the 2 retirement funds. Wouldn't that be the prudent thing to do? The Post Office should be able to use money that it has earned to keep business going rather than Congress using it to pay for other government expenses. Isn't that what a regular company do?

The UK market isn't like the US market. By that measure I could point to other areas where the service is even more terrible. They have to close down because they can't be competitive and keep their costs down. This statement contradicts itself. If it was operating so well it wouldn't mind the competition. The cost of mail to rural areas would go up (which it should) and the price to urban areas would go down (which it should). With email and the like it's largely useless much like the newspaper and much of it is junk mail anyways.

Please do point to other areas where the service is terrible. Please make it something that affects the Post Office as a whole, and not just a local problem. There are problem employees in every company, UPS and FedEx included. The Post Office doesn't employ them all.

The USPS had some issues too, just not as big as they did. They had a huge surge on their orders at the last minute. If other competition wants to come in and do it better, they should.

They should.

They don't say it, but people don't ever want to fix the area where they have government backstops. When teachers say that schools should be adjusted, they then refuse all of the adjustments because it means sacrifices at their end, which they don't want.

No one at the Post Office, that I know of, wants Congress to continually try to take $5.5 Billion every year. Congress is the one against ending that.

They have to deliver so much junk mail because it's largely unprofitable to deliver a lot of letters anyways with modern technology. The USPS is losing more money than just ht e5 billion.

You have that backwards. The junk mail is the unprofitable part, First Class was supporting the low pricing of junk mail. Every time the Post Office attempts to raise prices on junk mail, the companies that send out junk mail rally for congress to put a halt to it. Of course the Post Office can lose more than $5 Billion. The Post Office is "supposed" to be self funding, while making no profit. Some years will show a loss, and then prices rise followed by a few years of profit to counteract the previous loss. That is what the Post Office is supposed to do to keep itself self funded and neutral. But the $5.5 Billion dollar negative every year is causing the Post Office to never reach a profit. 

They need to lose their monopoly on first class mail and mailboxes, they also need to be responsible for their own costs with no perks. Then they could do what they want.

That is all on Congress. Congress is handicapping the Post Office.

The urban areas would get mail cheaper and rural areas would have to pay more to reflect the costs of the extra gas to get there. That's completely reasonable. People who live in rural areas have overall cheaper costs of living, why should they get subsidized mail to. I don't care about junk mail, and they deliver packages to rural areas now so it won't be an issue.

For the most part in rural areas, the USPS handles delivering FedEx and UPS parcels.

www.minyanville.com/business-news/editors-pick/articles/postal-service-usps-post-office-post/8/3/2012/id/42951

Some things from that article-

"For FedEx and UPS, the costs are lower to deliver in urban areas, and higher in rural ones," Del Polito says. "For the Postal Service, that cost structure is the exact opposite. So FedEx and UPS use the Postal Service for 'last-mile' delivery in many areas where it would cost them too much to deliver that mail -- they prepare it for re-entry via the Postal Service which then walks it out for final delivery." (To put a number on this, Alan Robinson determined in 2011 that "30.4% of FedEx Ground shipments are delivered by the United States Postal Service.")

and

In fact, a UPS Spokesman, Norman Black, stated, "We believe that the government plays a role in terms of ensuring that every mailbox is reached every day …. That is not a responsibility that UPS would want."

So 30% of FedEx ground deliveries are delivered by the USPS, so the rural area would be an issue.

And UPS wouldn't want to deliver mail anyways.

Not in an inefficient manner no. They'll do it in a way that's profitable.

Then it wouldn't be done to the same scale. If they forego delivering to the rural locations, it isn't the same.

Based on whose study? If they're so efficient why are they losing so much money? Yes they are government run, but that's the point. That isn't the real cost of delivering that mail and they would lose money in the private sector if it weren't for a monopoly and the fact that it's largely junk mail. That .49 doesn't reflect the real cost of delivering that mail.

money.cnn.com/2012/02/06/news/economy/postal_service/

postalnews.com/blog/2014/06/02/usps-year-to-date-profit-from-operations-reaches-1-4-billion/

Again, are you saying that if the $5.5 billion pre-funding were lifted that the USPS wouldn't be profitable? I would just like to see where you are acquiring that info. As well as what the actual cost of delivering a letter really is, and what the private companies would charge.

But everything they touch is inefficient. It's for a variety of reasons but it's still inefficient.

Why? How? Is it simply because it's run by the government? If there is more please elaborate. You seem to be saying there is more that is inefficient, but not pointing at any specific examples.

What would a competition for first class mail bring? How would competition do it better and for a lower cost? .49 is obviously too much, because you continually bring up the cost aspect.

The people who benefit from the system don't want to cut it but the truth is our country is broke and we can't afford welfare anymore. The illusion in productivity is still welfare whether it's protection from foreign or local competition or just government jobs in general. Our country has trillions of debt and that's because we waste so much on nonsense. Socialism is expensive and leads to disaster.

I agree. If everyone were to pay their fair share than things would be much better off. From Welfare to Social Security.

Well they weren't as bad as they are now, but they weren't exactly great. Also yes businesses have to cut costs in a free market, government entities can still be inefficient and overpay their workers. It helps to advertise *more* in a bad economy so you can get more business (just in a more affordable manner), but some businesses do cut advertising in certain ways.
The problem is they haven't grown with the times. Email, higher costs, more competition are just a few of the reasons they're going broke. Government entities just don't want to cut costs.

usgovinfo.about.com/od/consumerawareness/a/Postal-Service-Loses-By-Year.htm

The 3 years prior to the law in 2006 saw profits of 3.9B, 3.1B, 1.4B. Not too shabby.

What more should have the Post Office done besides lower starting wages, consolidation, raising prices and attrition? The $5.5 Billion still causes the Post Office to be in the red, what else should be done?

Don't want that. I want competition and not more marriage between government and business.

But yea we have to show those girls a good time.

I would like that as well, but Congress has their hands in the Post Office cookie jar.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

We've known each other a long time, I have no problem debating you or anything. Just making sure you weren't taking it personal or anything (I've had some people get sensitive when I disagree). If it's bothering you we can always talk about something else. If we can stay civil it's all cool.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Your experiences don't reflect the Postal Service as a whole.


about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2013/pr13_020.htm

As of 2012, they were ranked number 4 as most trusted company, and first in government agencies. If everyone that worked there had the carefree attitude that you say they have then there ranking wouldn't have been so high.

Dude people complain about the post office as much as they complain about the DMV. Of course the post office says the post office is well liked. I doubt many would use it if they had other options and there wasn't a monopoly. They just put up with it.
www.yelp.com/biz/us-post-office-chicago-28
www.yelp.com/biz/usps-hawthorne
www.yelp.com/biz/us-post-office-brooklyn-11

It's a joke to imply that people love the post office and see it as having great service. It's more like the dinosaur that won't die.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Because the USPS has an oversight committee that is forcing a $5.5 billion dollar payment on them. Fed-Ex and UPS do not have that hindrance forced on them.

Well you complain about this aspect of government, while you want to benefit from the monopoly. Other private businesses get regulated to death without the benefit of such a monopoly. You can't have it both ways.

investorplace.com/2013/02/usps-government-run-businesses-cant-compete/

They don't just lose money from that, and why shouldn't they fund their own retirement pensions while private companies have to do it and pay taxes? Who should pay for those expensive and lush benefits? Granted the government does it in an inefficient way, but it *is* government.

It just shows that the government can't run anything properly. They simply waste money. For tons of reasons.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Again, what would the price of a first class stamp be if there were competition? If the price would be lower, what would it drop to?

Again, I'm not a central planner. People in urban areas would pay a lot less and people in rural areas would have to pay more and rely on other means to get information. The system that's used now might not even be used in private competition.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

The size of the US is a factor against it working. It would make no financial sense for Amazon to pay someone to drive 20-30 miles to deliver one small package to a customer in a remote part of the US. Then drive 15 miles after that to drop off another. It makes far more sense to drop them in one centralized location and let a third party deliver the items to customers.

Why can't they build a centralized location in those areas and charge more? They can find a way to deliver the mail if the private sector can innovate technology to do all manners of things while feeding and clothing the nation.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Congress is in control, but how have they become less efficient? You keep stating that they are losing money, they are less efficient, the price is too high. I would just like to know based on what? Has any company said that they could deliver mail to everyone in the US for a lower price? At a quicker pace? And while paying $5.5 Billion to congress?

about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2013/pr13_087.htm
www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa047.html
www.topgunfp.com/us-post-office-to-run-7-billion-deficit-in-2009/
I've already mentioned the ways they were declining but you brush them off. You say this isn't relevant for that reason or another. They used to deliver twice a day but started having a budget crisis and had to cut back. They are billions in the red now. Who's going to bail them out since they have a monopoly and can't go out of business? That's right the private sector through wealth transfers or inflation. The workers make much more for that skill of labor than they would make in the private sector as well.
The prices for the stamps are "low" but the monopoly prevents competition and leads to less efficiency but you continue to ignore this.
Not my fault government imposes dumb regulations, but that's part of the deal.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

It could just be your Post Office, unfortunately every business has people that ruin it for everyone.

The post office itself said that the USPS was hurting and they had to make cuts, which is why the service had declined over the years. No surprise either.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

The USPS is a service, and should be ran like one. Self funding, so as not to put any further hardship on taxpayers. But that isn't what Congress seems to want.

They shouldn't have a monopoly. If they keep the monopoly they get the other aspects of regulation to. It's not fair for them to get the protection they get anyways and not have to deal with anything else when private businesses are regulated to the bone all of the time.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Post Office has implemented a similar program to receive deliveries from Fed Ex and UPS. I don't think it is in all locations yet though. I never understood why they didn't do this already. The Post Office will take in UPS packages for them, but not take packages for customers having a PO box.

Your guess is as good as mine. I like the benefit of having a street address though.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

They would be more efficient, no? The routes are far longer then they were in the 50's and 60's with far more mail and far more delivery points. While having an almost equal number of employees.

Yea but you also have better technology which cut down on the dependence for traditional first class mail SIGNIFICANTLY. They weren't more efficient, they simply couldn't afford to keep delivering mail 2x a day so they cut it out.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

You are basing your assumptions on the post office based on skewered accounting. They are losing money, on paper, do to the $5.5 billion pre-funding. They are losing money because they are forced to make monetary payments for employees that aren't even born yet. If you want to compare apples to oranges, that is fine. But if we force the same requirements on Fedex and UPS, neither of them would show a profit. FedEx made about 1.5 billion last year, and UPS about 4.3 billion. In an equal competitive world, both of those companies would be in a similar boat as the USPS, no? The last 5 years neither company netted even close to 5.5 billion.

They're also banned from competing. It's easy to say that the post office does so well with a government monopoly. Without it, the post office would be crushed, simple as.
That's the bane of government run entities. It doesn't matter why they're running losses, they're running losses. Which is what government entities do. The postal service isn't just losing money because of government regulations, their costs have gone up and they deliver less mail and have more obligations than they used to as well. The Congress is only one part of it. They have to pay pensions and all sorts of other things that are driving them down.
The post office ran a 16 BILLION dollar deficit in a year! No company could do that and stay afloat. That's absurd. 100's of billions in unfunded liabilities? The government is stealing from us.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Without the pre-funding the Post Office would have made a little over $1 billion this past year. There is no need for a tax payer bailout, the people that continually preach that are just trying to incite fear mongering. Take away the pre-funding requirement, and the USPS would be close to being on an even playing field.

Fear mongering? That's what every government entity says when the truth is there. They said the same thing about Detroit not actually failing. They said it was all a hoax. Who's going to pay for the enormous unfunded liabilities? What about the $16 billion they ran up in a year?
The post office doesn't pay taxes in the way that private companies do? They have a government backstop so they can never actually fail. They are unionized too which is the worst combination.

www.businessinsider.com/us-postal-service-congress-2011-9

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

You may not be a central planner, but you keep stating that the USPS employees are overpaid. So you must have a basis for that, right? What is it based on?

The fact that no private agency could spend 70% or more in labor costs and also run up $100's of billions in unfunded liabilities.
It's pretty obvious that without the government unionized part they'd make a lot less.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

So do you think that every company should be forced to pre-fund it's retirement responsibilities for the next 75 years in a ten year time frame? That way every company can be on an equal playing field.

Not every company has a monopoly with a government backstop and on top of that is protected from competition. You can't have one part and not have the other.
I'd prefer them be run as a free business as I already stated, but not a monopoly and no regulations.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

There is no monopoly on package delivery. UPS and Fed-Ex are free to deliver to whatever remote location they want. But like the Amazon reference I made earlier, it makes no sense to pay a driver to drive 20 miles way out of their way to deliver 1 package and then drive another 15 miles to deliver another. It's a much better business decision to farm those items out to a competitor already going there, no? If it didn't make sense then wouldn't Fed-Ex and UPS just deliver it themselves? There must be a reason that even they don't deliver all of their own packages.

No sense in wasting all of their money when the post office is already taking it. But the UPS does fine in package delivery. They do deliver in a lot of areas, but the Post office benefits from delivering the mail that way as well. It's a win-win for both. I receive mail from all carriers and sometimes they just deliver it there anyways.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

The Koch brothers are only concerned with their own agendas. I don't see why someone that doesn't agree with them has to be labeled as dumb. Are the Koch Brothers for or against a minimum wage increase? How about global warming? The Koch Brothers interests and philanthropy only go as far as their financial interests allow them.

I said the average voter was dumb and thought they could get something for nothing when they can't. Do you understand how quantitative easing and inflation works? The government is in trillions in debt and can't afford everything. They can't just steal from the rich to pay for it all so they inflate and lie about it. It's ancient Rome all over again.
Everybody has their own interests at heart, everybody. The ones who say they don't are the biggest thieves and liars around. The thing in a free market is people fulfill their self interests in a productive way by working and creating jobs and not by using government force to fulfill it or theft. Like politicians and poverty pimps don't have their own interests at heart? Government workers who are overpaid and living on the dole and elect politicians to give them more raises don't have their own interests? Even the socialist FDR didn't think that unions should be able to work in government. You think that welfare thieves don't have their own self interests at heart when they steal from the rest of us?
Socialist politicians just like to demagogue the Koch Brothers and paint them as villains because they don't like to play ball with them and believe in less government , while these politicians sit back and buddy buddy with other businesses that benefit them. If they are making money by being productive I have no problem with it and they deserve it.
By the way making jobs is better than just giving money away, but charity is better than welfare. People do a lot of "good" deeds so others will get off of their back and not give them a hard time. People always resent someone who has more than them and they want to steal it. Government was supposed to protect our rights but they take them away.

The minimum wage is a terrible law that just keeps people out of work. That's an open and shut case there. The higher something costs the less of it you buy. Just like anything else, the worker is the cost of doing labor. Minimum wage laws were passed in the 30's to keep black labor out by white unionized workers because blacks were willing to work cheap. Making it so people are unemployed because it's illegal for them to work voluntarily makes no sense, especially when politicians and liberal types have no problem with the various unpaid interns they use. Washington has probably more unpaid interns than anybody outside of perhaps the entertainment industry (which is also socialist).

The problem is that explaining this to the masses is difficult because they don't understand anything being brainwashed in government schools. It's much easier to preach the "feel good" message of "give people free stuff" when it doesn't actually work because people just want to steal from others anyways and be overpaid.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Again, you say that you are subsidizing those who live in other areas. That is true. If the monopoly were lifted and competition for first class letters were allowed, what would the new price be that you would have to pay? Do you think a competitor can do the job for less than .49 a letter?

You asked this before and I answered it. Closer areas would pay more and other areas would pay less. The post office can't do it because they're billions in debt.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

The USPS didn't add an increase for gas prices either, but other businesses did.

They all add prices in one way or another. Let's not be naive. Inflation costs also factor into things as well. They're trying to sell forever stamps now because they're doing so badly. This is supposed to be a way for consumers to hedge against inflation. The problem is when the rates eventually go up they'll have to deliver it for free.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Right, but the USPS isn't charging by volume. The other companies are.

Delivering more mail costs more money so they have to implement it in one way or another. Postal service costs have gone up steadily over the years. A business just can't do it for free.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

You are trying to justify one companies price increase by explaining at as a need to do business and competition sets prices. But when the USPS does it, you assume the company must be inefficient and the workers are overpaid. Based on past performance and pay, for similar yet not identical jobs, the assumptions just don't make sense.

Not really, I think free market price increases are fine. Higher prices and worst services is what you get from the government. Those companies don't have a monopoly and protection from competition so if you don't like it you can always go elsewhere. You can't do that with government entities which is the big difference.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

How is the 5.5 Billion pre-funding a sign on inefficiency? They don't need the monopoly to function, see the package delivery industry, and I didn't write that. Please show me where I did. The monopoly is in place to provide a universal service to everyone in the US.

You did say that if the monopoly went away they would have to shut down or close and nobody would deliver mail. If they don't need t he monopoly than don't have it.

Monopolies don't do anything efficiently when government prevents competition, there's just no way. Why not have the government take over everything ala communism? It doesn't work.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Agreed. So is your solution then to not have delivery in rural locations, because it is far too expensive? Or to start charging the people that live in rural locations a "tax" because they live there so that they can receive mail delivery?

The price would have to go up, but the efficiency would make it cheaper overall for everyone in the long run since they won't be in so much debt doing it. That's the point.

Not to mention 1st class mail is largely negated by the internet and modern technology.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

You continually say that the workers are overpaid, based on what? There must be a number somewhere that shows what they should be paid and it would be lower than what they are actually paid. You are writing it for a reason, correct? You must believe it to be true, so where is the opinion coming from? How are you coming to that conclusion?

I've already answered this. Nobody thinks they're overpaid. We even have teachers saying they're underpaid for the crappy work they do. They wouldn't be able to do that crappy work if it were privatized.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Again, the Post Office is not funded by tax money. People in the private sector can sleep easier at night knowing this.

Who's going to bail them out since they can't fail and are good at running up multi billions of debt in a year including a $16B debt which is far more than the 5.5B you suggest?
We're all paying for it in one way or another.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Who is doing that? Postal Unions can't strike, its against the law. The contracts are negotiated, and if an agreement isn't reached then it is sent to binding arbitration. That one was way out there.

No but unions and government unions (like schools) have a vested interest in electing politicians who give them more stuff. I don't like them negotiating this way because I have to pay for it.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

The Post Office isn't allowed to operate on a profit.

under Title 39, Section 101.1 of the United States Code which states, in part:

(a) The United States Postal Service shall be operated as a basic and fundamental service provided to the people by the Government of the United States, authorized by the Constitution, created by Act of Congress, and supported by the people. The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all communities. The costs of establishing and maintaining the Postal Service shall not be apportioned to impair the overall value of such service to the people.
Under paragraph (d) of Title 39, Section 101.1, "Postal rates shall be established to apportion the costs of all postal operations to all users of the mail on a fair and equitable basis."

So again, apples and oranges. Congress tells them that they can't make a profit, so obviously employee wages are going to be high. Take away any profit that the USPS competitors make, and compare them fairly.

That's the reason they're allowed to be highly paid and inefficient, they have no real profit model like other businesses. Other businesses simply can't afford those insane labor costs. It's just a waste. If they had to properly invest and save they'd be better off.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

You are trying to make a claim that the Post Office is losing money on it's own which is far from the truth.

The post office has been inefficient for some time, which is to be expected.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

But they are government workers, and they have it far better that any USPS employee.

I never said that was a good thing? More of bad is still bad. Less bad isn't good because it's less of it.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Again, negotiations are done and if no contract can be agreed on then it goes to binding arbitration. There is no strong arming done.
Businesses can't collaborate to raise prices? Are you saying that there are no instances of Oligopoly in the US right now?

Price fixing is illegal for businesses and is currently only legal for workers. Efficient businesses produce lower prices, not higher prices. If it's overpriced people won't pay and they go out of business.
Government workers get around this by getting politicians in who will give them what they want at the expense of others. At the end someone has to pay for it.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

No other business has to pay $5.5 Billion in pre-funding. If there is another company feel free to name it. Otherwise no, no other business is.


So the $5.5 billion isn't what is putting the Post Office in the red? What other company has to prefund 75 years into the future in a 10 year time span?

It looks to me if the pre-funding were to be lifted then the Post Office would be showing a profit. Are you seeing different financial numbers for the Post Office?

1. Postal Services are protected from competition.
2. Postal Services have a government backstop. They *can not* fail. Other businesses can. That's a huge difference you are ignoring.
3. What profit? They ran up $16 billion in a year and they have well over $100 billion in unfunded liabilities. No private business gets this.

All companies have to pay their own obligations *while* paying taxes, which the Post Office doesn't have to do. Either way it's proof of more government run failure.

The post office had that pension formula 40 years ago. The difference is that the USPS will get their pension even if they don't pay for it. Even if the taxpayer has to pay for it. The taxpayer gets no such benefit. Only government workers.

www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/06/postal-pension-refund-is-a-disguised-taxpayer-bailout

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

You seem to believe that there is some hidden cost past on the tax payers that no one but you can see. I am asking you to show me where the money is coming from. You are making the claim that there is a cost to the tax payer. You wrote "The lack of efficiency and higher costs by a monopoly *is* a tax on the private sector." What are the higher costs on the private sector? Is there a hidden tax that we are all paying? Is it on our pay stub, or when we buy a product? Is there a lower price that could be paid rather than .49 to send a letter across the US? I am asking you to please show me what you are claiming.

So you think government run monopolies lead to lower prices and higher efficiency?
Again you keep bringing up this 49 cents number the postal service is charging while being billions in the debt. The post office can't fail and will have to be bailed out soon.

You pay through worse service, you pay through mail delivered less frequently. Those are all hidden costs that aren't reflected directly. 50% increases in box fees. Who's paying for this? Who's paying for the people in rural areas to get their mail? Is this money coming out of the sky?

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Hopefully the Post Office is allowed to use it's own money that it has overpaid into the 2 retirement funds. Wouldn't that be the prudent thing to do? The Post Office should be able to use money that it has earned to keep business going rather than Congress using it to pay for other government expenses. Isn't that what a regular company do?

That's my point, give them a profit motive and take away the monopoly. You don't want to do that. And even if they were privatized, they wouldn't survive this tremendous debt. Any other business would have failed ages ago.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Please do point to other areas where the service is terrible. Please make it something that affects the Post Office as a whole, and not just a local problem. There are problem employees in every company, UPS and FedEx included. The Post Office doesn't employ them all.


No one at the Post Office, that I know of, wants Congress to continually try to take $5.5 Billion every year. Congress is the one against ending that.

This was already pointed out before. They get the job done but they are not as energetic and motivated to get the job done as a private business has to. They have to *earn* their business. The post office is like the DMV. We're all an inconvenience as far as they're concerned.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

You have that backwards. The junk mail is the unprofitable part, First Class was supporting the low pricing of junk mail. Every time the Post Office attempts to raise prices on junk mail, the companies that send out junk mail rally for congress to put a halt to it. Of course the Post Office can lose more than $5 Billion. The Post Office is "supposed" to be self funding, while making no profit. Some years will show a loss, and then prices rise followed by a few years of profit to counteract the previous loss. That is what the Post Office is supposed to do to keep itself self funded and neutral. But the $5.5 Billion dollar negative every year is causing the Post Office to never reach a profit. 

stateimpact.npr.org/new-hampshire/2011/09/27/how-junk-mail-is-helping-to-prop-up-the-postal-service/

Keep in mind advertisers have to pay permit fees and the mail is pretty much ready for delivery so they pay less per mail but it's easier on them. Most of their mail in junk mail, I'd say it matters a lot.

They're being paid to deliver us largely junk. Not much they deliver 1st class that the internet couldn't do anyways.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

That is all on Congress. Congress is handicapping the Post Office.

Government waste is government waste. It's not the only reason either. They reached their $15B borrowing limit in a year as well, where did that go?

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

For the most part in rural areas, the USPS handles delivering FedEx and UPS parcels.

www.minyanville.com/business-news/editors-pick/articles/postal-service-usps-post-office-post/8/3/2012/id/42951

I have a house in the rural area and I get mail form all 3 carriers. This is a house way in the boondocks too. You are right that they do have a deal going on where they deliver their mail to the post office. I know they do because I order stuff constantly and I already said that.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Some things from that article-

"For FedEx and UPS, the costs are lower to deliver in urban areas, and higher in rural ones," Del Polito says. "For the Postal Service, that cost structure is the exact opposite. So FedEx and UPS use the Postal Service for 'last-mile' delivery in many areas where it would cost them too much to deliver that mail -- they prepare it for re-entry via the Postal Service which then walks it out for final delivery." (To put a number on this, Alan Robinson determined in 2011 that "30.4% of FedEx Ground shipments are delivered by the United States Postal Service.")

and

In fact, a UPS Spokesman, Norman Black, stated, "We believe that the government plays a role in terms of ensuring that every mailbox is reached every day …. That is not a responsibility that UPS would want."

So 30% of FedEx ground deliveries are delivered by the USPS, so the rural area would be an issue.

And UPS wouldn't want to deliver mail anyways.

Even if nobody wanted to do it, a business would want to make money in an untapped market and they would find a way to do it. Afterwards you'd have competition getting a part of the pie just like anything else. They're not going to lose money doing it like the post office does, for whatever the reason.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Then it wouldn't be done to the same scale. If they forego delivering to the rural locations, it isn't the same.

money.cnn.com/2012/02/06/news/economy/postal_service/

postalnews.com/blog/2014/06/02/usps-year-to-date-profit-from-operations-reaches-1-4-billion/

This has already been covered.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Again, are you saying that if the $5.5 billion pre-funding were lifted that the USPS wouldn't be profitable? I would just like to see where you are acquiring that info. As well as what the actual cost of delivering a letter really is, and what the private companies would charge.

Do you have numbers on what it would cost? Nobody has exact numbers in a privately run entity. My point is that government run things are horribly done and they always fail. This is just another example.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

Why? How? Is it simply because it's run by the government? If there is more please elaborate. You seem to be saying there is more that is inefficient, but not pointing at any specific examples.

What does the government run properly? Too much corruption, greed, and politics. Exactly why I don't want them taking over healthcare.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

What would a competition for first class mail bring? How would competition do it better and for a lower cost? .49 is obviously too much, because you continually bring up the cost aspect.

You keep bringing up the cost of mail delivery. I don't even have a need for first class mail. I can do everything online. My point is the huge debt it's running up. *You* keep bringing up the mail aspect of it.

I want it run as a free business without government controlling it and screwing it up like they've done with other quasi or full government entities.

Germany privatized its postal service and it works very well.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

I agree. If everyone were to pay their fair share than things would be much better off. From Welfare to Social Security.

We agree there.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

usgovinfo.about.com/od/consumerawareness/a/Postal-Service-Loses-By-Year.htm

The 3 years prior to the law in 2006 saw profits of 3.9B, 3.1B, 1.4B. Not too shabby.

www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-11/us-postal-service-over-47-billion-losses-past-decade-and-counting-44-billion-capital

$47B in ten years is terrible though.

They've lost money 6 out of the past 10 years with a whopping $16B in 2012.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

What more should have the Post Office done besides lower starting wages, consolidation, raising prices and attrition? The $5.5 Billion still causes the Post Office to be in the red, what else should be done?

I already said it should be run as a free business with no government monopolies or any obligations to anybody but itself but nobody in the post office wants that.

The post office should have been cutting back when people relied more on electronics to get things done and they don't talk about the waste that these government agencies engage in. It isn't all just the congress.
The unions are fleecing it alive and now it's dying.

They've had to cut workers and everything which makes service worse and you said it's just my office but it's not.

Nov 30, 2014 16:00:41 GMT -5 magicattack said:

I would like that as well, but Congress has their hands in the Post Office cookie jar.

They have their hands in my pocket too. This country is really headed towards disaster and it's why I plan on moving out of the Us in a few years.

[zerosd]

Btw, on the subject of monopolies:
There exists what is known as natural monopolies.

Stuff like... well, I work with the train industry. If you have a train line into a town, you have a monopoly on train travel there. Someone trying to build a new line to compete is generally speaking, economically moronic, it involves trying to spend a huge amount of money to even get to the level where one can start to compete when all the local users already have their businesses set up with the existing system. Thus, competing rail networks do not happen. It's simply too dumb to happen.


The British privatized their railroads a few years back, and artificially tried to induce competition by making multiple train service companies, rail maintenance companies, etc..

Accidents went up and performance went down. See, it simply split up what could be operated as a whole system, into groups who's priorities were smaller and more profit-based.

Several decades ago, the US had a bunch of failing rail companies in the north-east. Failing as in "one derailment an hour on average from a single railroad," bad. And yet, no new railroads could compete because, well, as above, when you have the rail lines in a region that's it. The government stepped in, put them under a government-run banner called 'Conrail,' fixed things up, made the area successful again, and eventually re-privatized it once it was booming again. Nowadays, it's not quite as well-run as it was under Conrail, though not the abject failure it was.


Not only do non-government monopolies happen, but sometimes they're inevitable, and trying to force them to act like they're not can really mess things up!


Another area is Health Care: Everyone uses health care anyway. Now, there can be competition between doctors, which exists regardless of who owns what, but you've also got stuff like competition between insurance companies which serves... well, no particular useful purpose, because they're competing over who can cover the most people and whether or not 100% or 10% of people are covered, they'll still use the exact same hospitals, only it costs the hospitals more if they're not covered. Which doesn't help anyone- not the doctors or the patients or the quality.


Like, pre-Obamacare, would you like to know how much the US spent on tax money per person in the US for health care?

*Twice* as much as the next highest country. Meaning, we were paying more per American, when tons of americans didn't have much health care. And that is *just* the tax money. They paid half as much taxes in it to get total coverage and *no bills*. And they have better actual performance to boot.

Heck, health care research in the US has slowed down in it's rate since the government got it's hand out of it because health care research companies aim for what it hopes will be profitable rather than the more effective free-wielding research. In many important areas like cancer there's no difference, but fighting and curing lesser known, less famous stuff? It helps for your researchers to go in whatever direction the research takes them and not be under narrow direction.

Basically, we're paying for the privilege of saying we have competing health insurance companies, and we're paying through the nose for it. Who wants that?



Oh yea, and speaking of America, do you know what state has the best health care numbers and lowest cost? Hawaii. Where they have had a universal system in place for over *thirty years*. It even works in the US! Massachusetts and Romneycare was simply the second example that was also quite successful.



Ultimately, doing stuff is doing stuff, no matter who does it, and some specific tasks are better with competition, while others it just gets in the way because natural factors make competition no more than a money sink. A country, well, it *is* a business. It uses the same money and the same people, you just need to know what it's good for and what it's not.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Meant to get to this too.

Feb 8, 2015 0:48:17 GMT -5 zerosd said:

Btw, on the subject of monopolies:
There exists what is known as natural monopolies.
Stuff like... well, I work with the train industry. If you have a train line into a town, you have a monopoly on train travel there. Someone trying to build a new line to compete is generally speaking, economically moronic, it involves trying to spend a huge amount of money to even get to the level where one can start to compete when all the local users already have their businesses set up with the existing system. Thus, competing rail networks do not happen. It's simply too dumb to happen.
The British privatized their railroads a few years back, and artificially tried to induce competition by making multiple train service companies, rail maintenance companies, etc..
Accidents went up and performance went down. See, it simply split up what could be operated as a whole system, into groups who's priorities were smaller and more profit-based.

Natural dominance in a market is fine as long as there is no force preventing others from competing. Many large business have come and gone that people thought were unstoppable in the past because they simply couldn't keep up with times or technologies, or because they became unionized or were drowned with government regulation. If a company is producing a good product at a low price and is beating out the competitors then leave it as is. Competition for the sake of it is no good, and a government monopoly damn sure isn't.

You don't force competition, it just happens.

Feb 8, 2015 0:48:17 GMT -5 zerosd said:

Several decades ago, the US had a bunch of failing rail companies in the north-east. Failing as in "one derailment an hour on average from a single railroad," bad. And yet, no new railroads could compete because, well, as above, when you have the rail lines in a region that's it. The government stepped in, put them under a government-run banner called 'Conrail,' fixed things up, made the area successful again, and eventually re-privatized it once it was booming again. Nowadays, it's not quite as well-run as it was under Conrail, though not the abject failure it was.
Not only do non-government monopolies happen, but sometimes they're inevitable, and trying to force them to act like they're not can really mess things up!

The government single handedly ruined the railroad system prematurely and to make room for the highway system. I don't want bureaucrats touching anything because it just leads to waste and people trying to buy votes and crony kickbacks.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/13/AR2011021302203.html

Did you know that some of these trains cost absurds amount of money to run? To the tune of multitudes of millions per mile?! I'm sure it's not just the train itself, it's paying all of the overpaid government workers, waste, and other bureaucracy.

Feb 8, 2015 0:48:17 GMT -5 zerosd said:

Another area is Health Care: Everyone uses health care anyway. Now, there can be competition between doctors, which exists regardless of who owns what, but you've also got stuff like competition between insurance companies which serves... well, no particular useful purpose, because they're competing over who can cover the most people and whether or not 100% or 10% of people are covered, they'll still use the exact same hospitals, only it costs the hospitals more if they're not covered. Which doesn't help anyone- not the doctors or the patients or the quality.
Like, pre-Obamacare, would you like to know how much the US spent on tax money per person in the US for health care?
*Twice* as much as the next highest country. Meaning, we were paying more per American, when tons of americans didn't have much health care. And that is *just* the tax money. They paid half as much taxes in it to get total coverage and *no bills*. And they have better actual performance to boot.

Everybody eats food and uses clothing too and we don't need the government there.
Saying "everybody uses it" is a misnomer. Young men like myself pretty much never go to the doctor while women and old people are constantly going and racking up costs. Those people should have to pay more because they use it more. Not be subsidized by me when I'm not going. It's nothing but glorified welfare. There's a reason insurance has restrictions and limits, it's to make the cost competitive for everyone else who's using it. And if you can get insurance *after* the fact, why even get it?
Obamacare ruined healthcare even further and raised costs, while terminating people's policy. They tried to force business owners to give it to employees if they had over a certain amount of people working 30+ hours. Do you know what they did? They cut the hours.
Government force is never a replacement for freedom because people will always embrace the moral hazard, no different than the welfare system.
And going from something bad to something else bad is not good. Our health care wasn't good before because it was a 3rd party payer system which separated people from the cost, giving them no incentive to shop around. If all of someone's car costs were "insured" they would skyrocket too.

Feb 8, 2015 0:48:17 GMT -5 zerosd said:

Heck, health care research in the US has slowed down in it's rate since the government got it's hand out of it because health care research companies aim for what it hopes will be profitable rather than the more effective free-wielding research. In many important areas like cancer there's no difference, but fighting and curing lesser known, less famous stuff? It helps for your researchers to go in whatever direction the research takes them and not be under narrow direction.

When did the government take it's hand out of the health care system? The government slows down the system by making a bunch of arbitrary barriers that people can't surpass. If someone wants to make a cure to a less known ailment they can't because the FDA makes it very expensive to get it passed onto the market when it should just be on the market to decide how efficient it is. Big companies love this because the little guy doesn't get in the way.
The government has no profit and loss motive, it does not care. Profit motives are good because people need to manage the limited resources properly. Wasting resources means they go broke. The government does nothing *but* waste money and provide poor service in everything it touches. Why are we in such a tremendous amount of debt? Government efficiency?

Feb 8, 2015 0:48:17 GMT -5 zerosd said:

Basically, we're paying for the privilege of saying we have competing health insurance companies, and we're paying through the nose for it. Who wants that?

Insurance should be voluntary and for drastic very expensive situations and then this wouldn't be a problem. Now you're forced to pay for it and pay through the nose for it.
Funny thing that things not covered through insurance like plastic surgery and eye laser surgery go down in costs and get more efficient while things covered by insurance are more and more expensive to the average person why is that?
Why is it that people in the past could have a doctor visit their house and they had very cheap insurance? Health care wasn't expensive until the government got involved (like they did in school and housing).

Feb 8, 2015 0:48:17 GMT -5 zerosd said:

Oh yea, and speaking of America, do you know what state has the best health care numbers and lowest cost? Hawaii. Where they have had a universal system in place for over *thirty years*. It even works in the US! Massachusetts and Romneycare was simply the second example that was also quite successful.

I'd rather have states run their own program because that's constitutional. The federal government shouldn't be involved in healthcare anyways and forcing people to buy it. That way people can leave if they don't like it. Something bad doesn't beat something better and none of those rates are better than the free market system, nor is the service. We had lots of pro bono work in the past that just isn't done anymore.

Feb 8, 2015 0:48:17 GMT -5 zerosd said:

Ultimately, doing stuff is doing stuff, no matter who does it, and some specific tasks are better with competition, while others it just gets in the way because natural factors make competition no more than a money sink. A country, well, it *is* a business. It uses the same money and the same people, you just need to know what it's good for and what it's not.

Doing stuff intelligently and with as few resources as possible is the best way to do it. A business does not run by central planning it has to be good or lose to competition. Therefore it has to keep its costs down. The government passing dumb laws by fiat to appeal to masses it not how to run a business. If a boss let employees have their way they'd be paid a lot of money and barely show up. That's not how it works.

If it worked so well the Soviet Union would have worked. Socialism and Communism have been tried again and again and they fail miserably every time, just like it is now.