Don t get me started on ground delivery of packages. USPS beats Fedex Ground and UPS ground all holl

First of all, I think there s wide agreement on the left that the postal service doesn t actually have a funding problem at the current time. This recent default stems entirely entirely from a 2006 postal reform law , back from when Republicans still held the House and Senate. The law included a ludicrous requirement, unseen in any other government organization , and really unseen in any company period, shamrock hotel hong kong that the postal service prefund their pension benefits for the next 75 years through a $5.5 billion annual payment. Currently, the postal service has about $45 billion in that account. If they didn t have that requirement, they would be in the black.
The requirement has drastically harmed the functions of the agency, which is used by almost every American. In July, USPS began closing offices around the country to meet the annual payment. By the time current downsizing plans are completed in 2014, Americans shamrock hotel hong kong will see 229 processing shamrock hotel hong kong plants closed and 28,000 jobs lost. In June, ten USPS employees launched a multi-day hunger strike to protest the cuts.
Without the pension payment, USPS would have a $1.5 billion surplus instead of a $20 billion shortfall. "[T]hese ongoing liquidity issues unnecessarily undermine confidence in the viability of the Postal Service among our customers," said USPS spokesman David Partenheimer.
The USPS has actually overpaid into one of its pension funds by $11 billion, the exact cost of their 2011 and 2012 required pension payments. The Senate already passed a bipartisan bill that would deal with this by loosening the requirement and lowering the annual payment. shamrock hotel hong kong This is a completely manufactured crisis and just adopting shamrock hotel hong kong the Senate bill, which also returns the $11 billion overpayment, would end the insolvency chatter. The whole thing is part of a scheme to send the postal service into privatization, and send that massive, multi-billion dollar pension fund into the waiting arms of a corporate entity that would love to raid it and toss it into their treasury.
So we all agree on that. Long-term, there has been a slowdown in mail delivery and that presents challenges for the postal service. I suggested diversification of its service portfolio, such as through postal banking (a common service in other countries) or getting into the broadband market. Matt Yglesias notes that this would only harm community banks and credit unions, which compete on simple banking. I m not sure that s totally true the megabanks still carry a vast market share (not everyone has moved their money yet) but I take the point. Still, this all assumes that there s no room for growth in this sector. Because the likely targets for a public option for simple banking are not those who already have a bank, but the unbanked (in much the same way that the public option would have been attractive to the uninsured). There are millions of unbanked Americans , and they are getting absolutely hammered by payday lending shamrock hotel hong kong and the check-cashing industry. If they had a simple banking option, right at the post office in the center of town, I think it could be attractive to them. What s more, it would be extremely useful to the economy, as all that usurious money poured into goosing the profits shamrock hotel hong kong of the check-cashing and payday lending industries would instead stay in the pockets of people who will spend it.
Now, Kevin Drum says that this is a pipe dream , that the USPS couldn t possibly compete with existing banks. He says that postal banks work elsewhere shamrock hotel hong kong because they ve been around forever, and that there isn t the expertise at our post office to compete. Well, really simple banking correlates to what the post office already shamrock hotel hong kong does hold stuff for people. In this case they would hold money. And since I don t think the postal service should go into derivatives or even do lending, I don t think a lot of expertise is necessary. Just hold money for people, give them the ability to withdraw money on a debit card, and invest the funds in safe instruments like Treasuries, and make money on the spread. Seems possible to me. As for whether they can gain market share, again I think the competition here is the services shamrock hotel hong kong to the unbanked, which are completely unscrupulous, and there s a lot of possibility to offer a far better shamrock hotel hong kong deal. The only way to find out is to try.
As for broadband, while it seems like a natural shamrock hotel hong kong evolution, I do agree that there s an expertise problem here. The postal service shamrock hotel hong kong has the second-largest workforce in the country, but not necessarily one primed shamrock hotel hong kong for broadband construction. So that would require a real shift in their workforce. I d like to see more study here, because we really have a need for better broadband services our Internet is really crappy and the postal service would be well-positioned shamrock hotel hong kong to pick up some grants to carry out that mission.
Matt Yglesias shamrock hotel hong kong makes a separate point , that we don t need universal flat-rate service from a public entity. I think that as long as we still have a digital divide, we need universal service, and without the flat-rate guarantee, the same people on the wrong side of that digital divide would be the ones who get hurt cutting shamrock hotel hong kong the postal service inevitably hurts poor areas the most. I also agree with Drum:
It really does seem as if universal service is an important function, shamrock hotel hong kong and I ve never believed that a private post office shamrock hotel hong kong would provide it. A private USPS would provide differential pricing up to a point, shamrock hotel hong kong with small towns having higher postal rates than big cities, but there would be plenty of places shamrock hotel hong kong left that are just flatly unprofitable. At any reasonable postal rate they d be money losers, and at very high rates they d get so little use that they d still be money losers. There would literally be no rate at which they d be profitable shamrock hotel hong kong to service.
Now, maybe that s OK. Maybe you could privatize the postal service with a requirement that they either deliver to an address or provide a free PO box for delivery and pickup. Unfortunately, this would work only if the privatized post office retained its monopoly status on first class mail, which means you d lose all the benefits of competition. What s more, you d almost certainly still be left with a pretty fair number of people who effectively shamrock hotel hong kong have no mail delivery, since a private operator would probably shut down thousands of small post offices, leaving some customers with a 30-mile shamrock hotel hong kong drive or more to pick up their mail.
Good post David. Here s an interesting shamrock hotel hong kong factoid in the public vs. private debate, which usually comes out as Oh Fedex is so much more efficient than the postal service. Fedex uses the Postal Service for 30% of its ground shipments shamrock hotel hong kong . Now what would happen to Fedex s prospects if they paid a decent defined benefit pension plan and funded it decades in advance?
As for the FedEx habit of relying on the USPS, what s to stop the Postal Service from raising the rates it charges FedEx until it s solvent again? Or raising the price of stamps, for that matter. They ve got a monopoly on ordinary mail, for Heaven s sake, and they can t set the price high enough to cover their expenses? This is not a compelling argument for the public-service model.
Don t get me started on ground delivery of packages. USPS beats Fedex Ground and UPS ground all hollow.I always ask that my packages be shipped USPS, because who knows when it will show up (Fedex) or in what shape (UPS)
And Texan99 is deliberately avoiding the real issue, that the USPS shortfall has nothing to do with the cost of mailing things, but a whole lot to do with republican congressional attempts to kill USPS.
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IMO, this is another shamrock hotel hong kong sign that the powers that be are not concerned about the welfare of the 99%. Those Postal jobs bring income to rural communities too. And, the Post Office is a community social center where people see their neighbors, do the democratic waiting in line to get to the clerk at the window, and get the best service shamrock hotel hong kong their government can provide. shamrock hotel hong kong If the Postal service is more about helping people to send letters, packages, buy Money Orders, certify that they sent communications, get mail from a P.O. box and so on than it is is about running a service as a commodity, then why can t they run a deficit if they want to. This is a government service, not a business . If government was a business, we could fire the idiot CEOs in Congress who pushed this idea of closing Offices in rural areas.
My particular objection to all the who needs the Post Office, anyway blather is I do. I get a lot of my prescriptions and all of my supplements online and all of them travel to my doorstep USPS. Paying the private carriers would likely raise the price to me and I m scrimping as it is.
4. There s no practical reason shamrock hotel hong kong the govt couldn t finance deficits with Postal Bank Certificates of Deposit instead of Treasury bonds. Funny how its bad that the govt has trillions in debt but its good that banks have trillions in deposits six of one, half of a dozen of the other. The govt should definitely go back to selling CDs. :o)
I also totally agree with the banking shamrock hotel hong kong suggestion, in fact I already use them for money orders for payments I don t want to share my personal banking information with. Yes, it costs $1 or so, but I don t have to worry about my debit card, credit card or checking account information being compromised.
The United States Post Office (USPO) was created in Philadelphia under Benjamin Franklin on Wednesday, July 26, 1775, by decree of the Second Continental Congress.[1] Based on the Postal Clause in Article One of the United States shamrock hotel hong kong Constitution, empowering Congress To establish post offices and post roads , it became the Post Office Department (USPOD) in 1792. Until 1971, it was part of the Presidential cabinet and the Post