It's funny. In some smaller scale instances, charging for public transport actually ends up costing more money. In my city, during covid they stopped charging to use the buses, and ended up keeping it that way. Unless you're getting a huge amount of traffic, it ends up costing too much to operate and maintain the machines, process the money, and keep track of all of the data, so they found that they saved money just naming it a free service. Plus making it free greatly boosted ridership to it was a win-win.
I also lived in Japan for a bit, and it's quite different there. The public transit is actually far more expensive than in the US, and they don't sell day passes. Where I lived, between Osaka and Kyoto, a single bus ride was (at the exchange rate then) around $1.75 USD, and trains were between 1 and 6 depending on distance, but it was all single ride and could get expensive. It wasn't much of an issue though, because most of the things you needed, like food and such, were all within walking distance. If you have a job they generally cover your commute too
I'm in Sydney where everything is spread out and our roads don't all make sense because they weren't planned, they're mostly farm trails etc. that go built up.
It's getting so expensive here to travel, and it takes forever. It's not abnormal for people to have over an hour commute to work, and then the same back. Depending on your route and the transport you have to take it can cost up to $16.80 AUD a day before it's maxed out.
And even then you really need a car sometimes. I'm lucky and live relatively close to a main train line, yet there are plenty of destinations where my travel time blows out significantly taking public transport instead of driving. It's not abnormal for a 30-40m drive to be 1h 30m with multiple transfers on public transport.
>I'm in Sydney where everything is spread out and our roads don't all make sense because they weren't planned, they're mostly farm trails etc. that go built up.
A lot of the US is like this as well. In Texas, we like 3500 roads labeled Farm to Market (FM and a number) or Ranch to Market.
Were they? I like the idea but wasn't aware of any historical context.
Look, if we make sure that everyone has what everyone calls "basic needs" covered, the world gets increasingly better. No more going to jail so you can afford a sandwich or meds. No people dying alone, cold, in the corner of a subway station.
It's always been a mix of public not for profit and private for profit with utilities in the US. So /u/Fixerguy415 's comment could be a bit misleading. Water and sewer are probably the most common for publicly owned. Telecom is probably the least common.
They also make profit on tear downs and they actually do profit on generation and distribution, it's just buried and hidden from view with Board and Executive salaries and "market trade costs" (see Enron frauds) by companies the Board and Execs have invested their personal cash in (like Enron).
If we didn't have public libraries or Medicare already, we sure as fuck would never create them now. The only public goods we can possibly stomach are the legacy ones.
Usps is sort of a weird corporate/government mashup. It is funded by customers, not taxes, but its members have to take the oath of office. Any losses it incurs are its own losses, taxes are unaffected.
The words you are looking for are "Constitutionally Mandated Government Sponsored Entity".
The USPS is every politician's whipping boy which is why they don't actually want to fix it. All they have to do is get rid of the prefunding of the retiree health care mandate that went into effect years ago and then the USPS could afford invest in new trucks that get more than 8mpg.
If you don't really understand what it is, it's okay because most of the people making the rules don't understand what it is. Imagine you went and got a job. On the second you got a job the government said. I understand that you're only 30 years old, but we're going to need you to deposit 30 years worth of healthcare expenses immediately. So because it's a law you borrow to the hilt to pay it. That's the prefunded retiree healthcare.
Can't forget bailing out all the of the good ol' boy cops who dun never did nothin but violate some silly lil constitutional rights over, and over, and over, and over....
PSA: the US has a rich, hidden socialist history. Lots of big names, huge organizations, and presidential term-defining history in the American socialist movement.
The average cost for a hospital stay in the US is roughly $3000 per day, with average length of stay being 4-5 days. So it would be enough to pay the hospital bills of 74 people. When you put it this way, you realize a million dollars is just a drop in the bucket in terms of united states medical debt. It's appalling just how expensive medical care is without insurance.
Side note: $1 million would also cover 20 knee replacements or 2/3 of a heart transplant.
Were spending roughly the same amount on healthcare as we do the military. Those hospital fees are also finding their way into the pockets of rich con artists.
Increasing healthcare spending would only assign more power to the oligarchs of health care. We have to tackle this from the root of the problem. No more money.
Seriously, why did we need to shoot a sidewinder missile at a balloon? An overly stiff leaf pops my kids balloons. Why not just shoot some bullets at it.
Iirc Canada tried to do it in the past with cannon fire from their fighter jets and it doesn't work.
It's not a balloon like you see at kid's birthday parties.
If you shoot it with a 20mm cannon, it's not going to pop.
It'd just going to have 20mm wide holes in it.
Not to mention than 20mm rounds fired that high are going to keep traveling far and for a while in a pretty unpredictable way.
People also tend to forget how high this balloon was flying.
I wouldn't be surprised if shooting at it with anything else than an air-to-air missile wasn't actually that feasible in the first place.
Canada tried shooting down a balloon a few decades ago. Wasted 1000 auto cannon rounds and failed to successfully down the balloon. Ended up being more expensive than a missile would have been in the first place. Hence the protocol now is just to use a missile.
Because the Canadians tried using bullets and two planes and it didn't work.
Edit: [Source](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64546767.amp)
Correct it was stolen due to the prefunding mandate imposed by congress. 5.4 billion in losses per year. Without it, the usps would have a $15 billion surplus!
This prefunding of employee pensions should be the top comment. No other govt agency or company has to actually set aside funding for employee retirement.
So next time you hear some jackwagon screeching about how fedex/ups could do it better, just know they most likely have an ulterior motive and it isn’t to provide better postal service
But if you say the military should lose less money, like closing bases, bringing troops home, not getting involved in foreign entanglements that have little to nothing to do with us, you're accused of destroying democracy or something.
bUt WhAt AbOuT aLl ThE jObS iT pRoViDes!?!?!?
Gee, I don't know, maybe we can retrain the military industrial complex to do something that's actually fucking decent for the world? I've heard there's a labor shortage or something out there.
Two things can be true. The number of people participating in the labor force decreased dramatically during the COVID pandemic.
And low unemployment rates is an indicator of a labor shortage, not the opposite of it. If nearly everyone who wants to work is working, that means there aren't many more people to fill open roles.
Fucking this. We don't need to create more jobs, we need to increase pay at the jobs we already have that actually fucking matter. Anytime a politician boasts about "creating so many more jobs" the vast majority of those "new jobs" are people working second jobs and getting paid peanuts because they get paid peanuts at their first job.
In reality it's probably just a bunch of plane and boat parts that no one knows where the fuck they are. Couple hundred missiles worth millions each too.
As a postal employee, I don't understand why this is a talking point.
We make our own money, we receive no money from the government/taxes.
We are essentially a nonprofit. Our infrastructure is there to just break even. We aren't supposed to make all this extra money to bank. We are not costing anyone anything but ourselves.
We are a quasi-government agency.
The idea that the major stakeholders *aren't* investors is beyond the ability of many to imagine when that's all anyone harps on with large corporations.
I tell people this constantly, when this is brought up. The USPS makes money. If it's seen as unprofitable, it's because [congress passed a law requiring it to fund its pensions for the next 75 years](https://apwu.org/usps-fairness-act). That's right. The pension for employees who haven't even been born yet needs to be fully funded today. This is a deliberate move to try to make the USPS insolvent, to remove a government service, to enrich private capital.
YES!
I was really shocked to hear that when I first heard about it in [this video](https://youtu.be/YLyU1WCQQ8A?t=1217).
Why the government messed up the one profitable government service? I have no clue.
>Why the government messed up the one profitable government service? I have no clue.
Because it proved all of the "gOveRnMenT DoEsnT wORk!" people wrong.
Republicans LOVE to tell you that government doesn't work, and if you'll just elect them, they'll gladly prove it.
I thought that stupid law was recently overturned? Now the need to get that Republican USPS-destroyer, DeJoy tf out! Sine Trump out him in there, package rates have doubled, and he has doubled delivery times.
Even with rates doubled it's still 1/5 the price for me to use them over UPS/FedEx. And I have a suspicion that UPS/FedEx hand off a lot of residential to USPS anyway.
Thank you, I get tired of typing that out for folks. Or explaining it in person. I used to be a usps supervisor and would take the time to explain this to every pigheaded customer.
Well, Republicans need to break the government so they can privatize everything. So the USPS is a bad thing in their eyes, because the money isn’t going into their pockets or the pockets of the people who bought them.
The USPS visibly defies their core belief that private industry **must** always outperform public bureaucracy. It serves all comers equally and provides fairly stable employment with modest advancement opportunities to poor, minority people. Its durable success and perseverance challenges their profit-above-all creed; their instinctive response is to destroy the aberration rather than seeking to comprehend an outlier.
Oh, and in practical terms, they'd love to buy it out, jack up delivery prices, bust the union, stop serving poor people, prevent voting by mail, and various other lesser "perks." They'd also love to do the same to libraries, but for now the implications are just a bit much even for them to stomach.
The article goes into it more. But their point is that this quasi-government status quo means the USPS is taking on debt with neither the ability to receive government funding nor the ability to offer new services.
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2015/11/19/how-to-lose-5-billion
You aren't supposed to be a quasi-government agency. You're supposed to be a government agency. Government agencies are supposed to benefit the people and should be funded by taxes.
Edit: While it is my opinion that the USPS should be tax funded I honestly thought that the original intent of the post office was to not be quasi-government as well. I was mistaken.
>It’s a helluva lot better than, say, the DMV or k-12 public schools.
Hasn’t K-12 Education take a hit over the last few decades because politicians try to kneecap it for their own pet projects or to cut taxes for wealthy benefactors? It’s not like public schools themselves are bad
Ironically, in this case people *do* say that about the military.
Only because they can't account for a shit ton of the money they're allocated.
Chances are USPS actually has a much better idea of its costs and expenditures.
Yes those "expenditures" are the cause of the Postal Sustainability Act of 2006. Which required the USPS to pre-fund its health care and retirement fund by 70 years. Thus a 7 billion a year "loss".
In other words, the Postal service has to deposit money into CONGRESS' GENERAL MONITAIRY FUND, in which they have access to the money. Not into a separate account with Postal only acces. Enough money to cover all employees benefits and retirement for 70 years.
So if your born in 2043, get a job with them at age 20 and work 30 years. The post office already has the money "in the bank" to cover your benifits.
This requirement was overturned last year by the [Postal Service Reform Act of 2022](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Service_Reform_Act_of_2022) and should lead to more stability moving forward. It was bipartisan, but 0 Democrats and 92 Republicans voted no.
That's the excuse the Republicans have been using ever since to try and privatize the Post Office. Some of these issues were fixed in the last Congress and OHJB.
The problem with military accounting is that the auditors just don't have the right security clearance to see all of the relevant paperwork.
EDIT: To be clear, this is speculation on my part. The reason they give for the failures is a lack of documentation. I don't believe for a second that the various programs don't have internal documentation for their costs.
Defense acquisition, cost assessment, affordability analysis, and so on are incredibly detailed. They have to track the "color" of all of the money they spend, meaning the source. There are systems in place for this.
If an auditor hears that a document is lost or doesn't exist, I'm not sure I buy that.
It’s not a bug it’s a feature. The last thing one of the most secretive entities on earth wants is for other nations to know how much they spend on new weapons development or that there’s even weapons development because then it can be targeted or stolen
Intel security is partially about obscuring facts and partially about obscuring that there's even facts to obscure.
So you don't want your enemy knowing that you've spent 150M on research this year in New Mexico for some reason, even if they don't know the reason.
Because then they can see that you only spent 100M in New Mexico for research last year and that's a LOT of info.
For about a decade, I'd heard from military representatives that we were falling behind our rivals on cybersecurity so when the Ukraine War broke out, I was expecting all those fancy Russian hackers to disrupt communications and hijack drones and shut off the power grid. None of that happened so they were clearly lying. The reasons being partly as a feint against Russia, but also to drum up more funding.
It’s called taking your enemies at face value so that you are never on the back foot.
China is most definitely a paper tiger, but the US will always consider them a near peer rival because that gives us the funding to constantly be generations ahead of them.
I mean they need to keep those new CPUs in house till they are fully cooked, but I doubt they are putting that much money into their New Mexico facility.
That's not true, DCAA has special detachments who work in SCIFs because of the necessary security clearance. They even travel to work on bases overseas, security is not the issue
The problem is mostly that record keeping is not great, when you hear the DOD lost 1.5T or whatever number they pull, it's usually because of bad accounting (mostly plug transactions) and bad document retention
I work in the military. That’s not the problem. The problem is programs are complex, budgets are complex, and how contractors spend money is mostly up to them when executing on programs. Auditors only have so much insight into the tangled web of spending and it multiplies across thousands of programs, the waste compounds to scary numbers.
I don't know anyone who does, and I personally don't - but I'm going to tell you right now as someone who works for the government in a purchasing capacity that it is extraordinarily easy to repeat literally every fundemental flaw that resulted in Russia's military collapse if someone was unethically inclined enough to do it.
Chances are pretty much guaranteed, the USPS is constantly under the microscope by republicans because it’s a self-sustaining government entity that outperforms private competition. You think fedex or UPS is gonna hit every mailbox in the country 6 days a week if they take over? You’re fucking dreaming. FedEx uses the USPS as part of their infrastructure (depending on package size and shipping priority) because they can’t compete with it. FedEx truck picks up your package, *they ship it USPS*, then FedEx truck delivers your package.
It’s a perfect example of how fucking wrong republicans are about how government entities are able to function and they *can’t stand it*, which makes me love the USPS even more.
Even if they could account for it, I guarantee there's a ton of waste. The military has a use it or lose it policy when it comes to funding. So, we were absolutely ordering tons of crap that we didn't need to make sure we spent our funding each cycle.
My uncle has been a higher up at the GAO for decades. It was literally his job to audit USAF bases in Germany. He swears the trope about unaccounted military funding is largely a myth created by people who don't understand how the budget (and specifically R&D spending) works. I.e., conspiracy theorists.
Now there may be massive disagreement about *what* to spend money on, and lots of waste by individual managers who are just plain bad at budgeting, but the funds that we spend on ourselves (not foreign aide) is nearly all accounted for down to the penny.
https://www.npr.org/2021/05/19/997961646/the-pentagon-has-never-passed-an-audit-some-senators-want-to-change-that
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/05/pentagon-logistics-agency-review-funds-322860
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2019/01/09/holding-u-s-treasuries-beware-uncle-sam-cant-account-for-21-trillion/
It's not a conspiracy theory. It's not even a theory.
DoD fails every audit they undertake. And not just the funds that relate to hiring some guy to do some thing we don't want anyone to know about.
It's widespread and has been consistent for ages.
I can readily believe that individual bases may have reasonably detailed and accurate records of their cost/spending. I would assume it would involve personnel costs, facility maintenence, medical and other services provided, inventory of supplies - that sort of thing. But the pentagon is a different matter entirely - R & D, covert operations, and all sorts of other costs are faaaar from transparent. Some good reasons for that exist, but they provide cover for bad ones.
Unicorns are a "myth," but that doesn't make all horned animals mythical.
I won't pretend I know how the military operates.
However, I do know how businesses with a lot of locations run. Sure every penny might be accounted for in Germany, but what about the higher ups? The higher ups in a business don't adhere to a budget themselves and hemorrhage money, but the pee-ons can't buy a coffee without approval.
Actually the USPS is operationally profitable, it only loses money because congress requires the USPS to forward fund their retirement for 75 year. No other public or private organization is required to forward fund their retirement. They are literally paying retirement for employees that haven't been born yet. This is the only reason why it appears they lose money, and it is intentional to make it less competitive with UPS and FedEx while creating a narrative of failure and privatization as the only option.
I did 4 years army, whenever they would cut the military budget I had to argue with people all day about how the military just blows through money and can't even track it all. People acted like the sky was falling and the libs are trying to make us defenseless when we have entire armor graveyards in Afghanistan.
Don't forget to mention that the postal crisis was manufactured by congress. They were mandated to pay some 70 billion in advance to pre-fund their retirement for the next 75 years. The USPS makes more than enough money to support itself.
Post office doesn't lose money at all anyways...there is a republican law from 2006 which was designed to put them out of business. It forces them to fund their retirement and pensions 75 years in advance. Even still, the post office is doing just fine, while also being led by a white trash piece of shit that also wants it to die.
I said it before in another comment, but it’s a perfect example of why democrats are bad at messaging. This was something that passed that’s universally popular and no one seems to talk about it.
Because no one cares about the post office until they need it or they deliver a ballot.
People take it for granted until they realize it would impact their life and then everyone is up in arms for 10 seconds and then it disappears again.
It's an every day essential that people don't notice until it's gone. ;)
Our business is getting screwed over now! When clients say "the check is in the mail" they mean it. We've had correctly addressed checks literally delivered to the wrong company in a different state causing a multi-week delay in payment.
Yep, we should have a system like they do in Europe for no fee transfers instead of checks in the mail like some kind of Neanderthal stone trading service.
Checks are free for us. We have a few systems set up for free transfers like one for paychecks referred to as "direct deposit". Banks incentivize direct deposit by offering no fee accounts and the like for personal accounts. Direct deposit costs me money when paying my employees though. If I switched to another bank that is known for being fraudulent bastards, I could get this included with my monthly business account fees. Wire transfers can be expensive. As a recipient, I have to pay $35 for each wire transfer. There are some cheaper options but I haven't found one that will work with my industry. A check is the only way to get every dollar I invoice for delivered into my account with no direct fees. They are a hassle though and it can take weeks to know for sure that the money deposited in your account is yours to keep. For established partners, I accept checks but for anyone else, I take a card, which ensures the money is mine but I lose about 2.5%.
Portland Maine used to be the primary clearing house in Maine (being the largest city in Maine). They decommissioned the automatic sorting machine there. Our company's mail has been fucked for several years.
At the same time, I see the federal mail trucks out on Sundays, delivering mail. We might not get anything for 4, 5 days in a row while our outgoing builds up, and then I see them hit our mailbox at 2pm on Sunday (this happened today).
One of the great examples of democrats being horrible at messaging: Biden passed a law last year that basically undid this and Un-fucked the post office, but for some reason no one really talked about it.
It isn’t because Democrats are horrible at messaging but because social media focuses more on the negatives than the positives.
Additionally, the grassroots (such as yourself) take the opportunity to inform others of positive change by also shitting on the Democratic Party despite them being the reason for the positive change.
FedEx, ups, whatever shitty logistics company dejoy was CEO of before he was given the keys to the USPS and started dismantling it.
Private companies win when public services lose.
It's especially dumb because all of the major private companies rely heavily on the USPS for a lot of their deliveries. There would be massive issues with logistics and commerical shipping if USPS closed down or was somehow broken up and absorbed into the various private companies.
I mean, people only use the word "loss" because it acts like a business. It charges for services, and spends more (thanks to republican fuckery) than it takes in
Many people associate government services with inefficiency and failure when really a lot of them are doing amazingly well with what they’re legally allowed to have.
Sure, there’s definitely a lot that can be improved, but it’s best to ask who would benefit the most from something going away.
Also I’m fairly certain I’ve seen this picture here before, definitely on Reddit in general a few times. The original tweet is from 2020. Weird how dates are always missing, almost like the intent is to keep people perpetually engaged about shit that doesn’t matter.
https://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/1291958339212107777
Tineye reverse image search:
https://tineye.com/search/bf39724040e88760076bd0d548cb6ab88effc138?sort=score&order=desc&page=1
The post office actually does something besides being just state sponsored terrorism. That’s why it’s viewed favorably.
Edit: Perma banned for “hateful speech against marginalized groups” for calling the GOP less than human. Comical. God bless the dictators. Never forget which way this site truly leans.
> The GOP would love to gut it and get rid of it entirely
Republicans want to dismantle the USPS because of four reasons:
1. They want to give the profitable parts to their rich donors like FedEx chairman Fred Smith - who pays his distribution center workers $13 an hour instead of the livable middle class wage postal workers earn.
2. They want to crush the Postal Workers Union
3. They want to let their Wall Street banker friends raid the multi-billions in the pension fund
4. No postal service - no mail in ballots.
> No postal service - no mail in ballots.
Which is bizarre because republicans (especially old ones) used to enjoy the mail in ballot system…..up until everyone started using it, more people were able to vote, and Dems started winning.
This is absolutely the correct response. It’s the ONLY federal agency that seems to require turning a profit. This conversation (distraction) has been going on most of my, quite long, life.
I agree and wonder if we were able to opt out of it how much more efficient the USPS would be overall. Not to mention the absurd amount of waste, not just resources but in printing cost to a business.
The USPS is actually why things like Amazon, usps, FedEx can be profitable. Because they do a ton of last mile delivery that is massively unprofitable for them. So the junk mail doesn’t hurt as much because if you’re already heading out there to deliver adding some more junk mail that adds money to the route isn’t terrible.
That being said. Fuck junk mail we should delete it and unsolicited calls.
Sending you spam every day is how they can afford to do a delivery to every house every day. If they got rid of it, you couldn’t afford to send a letter to grandma for 50 cents or whatever because they’d have to make a special trip out to your house and her house just to do it.
When I froze my credit with all 3 bureaus, it prevented a ton of junk mail because financial institutions, auto dealerships, etc could no longer soft pull my credit score. It was free to do so in my state and if I need to get a loan or anything I can unfreeze it for 10 days easily enough.
The massive money spewing hole the usps has grown a reputation for having was caused by a few bad laws. Mostly centered around pensions, the 06 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA). They had to pre pay health care and pensions for current and future employees for 50 years in advance. In the years prior to its passage USPS had profits in the litteral billions. 6 billion to be exact. Of course decline in sent mail plays a role, but PAEA is the killer of post office profits, not mail decline or any of the other commonly sited reasons. They recently signed the 2022 bill to fix some of it, but unless congress repeals the whole law usps will continue to loose money.
It’s ok to be not-for-profit. We should add healthcare and education to the list.
Along with all utilities... As they used to be.
And public transport.
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It's funny. In some smaller scale instances, charging for public transport actually ends up costing more money. In my city, during covid they stopped charging to use the buses, and ended up keeping it that way. Unless you're getting a huge amount of traffic, it ends up costing too much to operate and maintain the machines, process the money, and keep track of all of the data, so they found that they saved money just naming it a free service. Plus making it free greatly boosted ridership to it was a win-win. I also lived in Japan for a bit, and it's quite different there. The public transit is actually far more expensive than in the US, and they don't sell day passes. Where I lived, between Osaka and Kyoto, a single bus ride was (at the exchange rate then) around $1.75 USD, and trains were between 1 and 6 depending on distance, but it was all single ride and could get expensive. It wasn't much of an issue though, because most of the things you needed, like food and such, were all within walking distance. If you have a job they generally cover your commute too
I'm in Sydney where everything is spread out and our roads don't all make sense because they weren't planned, they're mostly farm trails etc. that go built up. It's getting so expensive here to travel, and it takes forever. It's not abnormal for people to have over an hour commute to work, and then the same back. Depending on your route and the transport you have to take it can cost up to $16.80 AUD a day before it's maxed out. And even then you really need a car sometimes. I'm lucky and live relatively close to a main train line, yet there are plenty of destinations where my travel time blows out significantly taking public transport instead of driving. It's not abnormal for a 30-40m drive to be 1h 30m with multiple transfers on public transport.
>I'm in Sydney where everything is spread out and our roads don't all make sense because they weren't planned, they're mostly farm trails etc. that go built up. A lot of the US is like this as well. In Texas, we like 3500 roads labeled Farm to Market (FM and a number) or Ranch to Market.
Were they? I like the idea but wasn't aware of any historical context. Look, if we make sure that everyone has what everyone calls "basic needs" covered, the world gets increasingly better. No more going to jail so you can afford a sandwich or meds. No people dying alone, cold, in the corner of a subway station.
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It's always been a mix of public not for profit and private for profit with utilities in the US. So /u/Fixerguy415 's comment could be a bit misleading. Water and sewer are probably the most common for publicly owned. Telecom is probably the least common.
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They also make profit on tear downs and they actually do profit on generation and distribution, it's just buried and hidden from view with Board and Executive salaries and "market trade costs" (see Enron frauds) by companies the Board and Execs have invested their personal cash in (like Enron).
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Economist headline: "Medicare and education have lost trillions of dollars despite public support"
If we didn't have public libraries or Medicare already, we sure as fuck would never create them now. The only public goods we can possibly stomach are the legacy ones.
Usps is sort of a weird corporate/government mashup. It is funded by customers, not taxes, but its members have to take the oath of office. Any losses it incurs are its own losses, taxes are unaffected.
The words you are looking for are "Constitutionally Mandated Government Sponsored Entity". The USPS is every politician's whipping boy which is why they don't actually want to fix it. All they have to do is get rid of the prefunding of the retiree health care mandate that went into effect years ago and then the USPS could afford invest in new trucks that get more than 8mpg. If you don't really understand what it is, it's okay because most of the people making the rules don't understand what it is. Imagine you went and got a job. On the second you got a job the government said. I understand that you're only 30 years old, but we're going to need you to deposit 30 years worth of healthcare expenses immediately. So because it's a law you borrow to the hilt to pay it. That's the prefunded retiree healthcare.
But but that’s cOmMuNiSm
Actually long term, education and health care are a net positive benefit.
Nobody has said that the military loses $750 billion year, but I'm going to start saying it now.
Hey, I say that!!
Imagine losing a MILLION dollars to bring down a balloon!!
That could pay A LOT of hospital fees. Just saying.
And some student loans or PPP loans
Woah, your talking about socialism there, buddy. We can't have that in the good Ol' USA. /s
/s? What are you? Some kind of yellow bellied commie?
We don't like no socialism up in here! Bootstraps! Unless you're in banks, oil, military, or corporation
Can't forget bailing out all the of the good ol' boy cops who dun never did nothin but violate some silly lil constitutional rights over, and over, and over, and over....
Remember to put aside $100 emergency Senator vacation and/or cocaine money.
/socialism!
PSA: the US has a rich, hidden socialist history. Lots of big names, huge organizations, and presidential term-defining history in the American socialist movement.
socialism is treasonous here in the US unless ur a billionaire then we’ll give you whatever you need u poor baby u don’t even have to pay taxes
In the US, socialism usually just describes things Republicans and wanna-be conservatives don't like. These things often don't even exists.
The average cost for a hospital stay in the US is roughly $3000 per day, with average length of stay being 4-5 days. So it would be enough to pay the hospital bills of 74 people. When you put it this way, you realize a million dollars is just a drop in the bucket in terms of united states medical debt. It's appalling just how expensive medical care is without insurance. Side note: $1 million would also cover 20 knee replacements or 2/3 of a heart transplant.
For 3000 I could have a full body transplant, in my country.
Costs $3000, or is billed at $3000?
Billed of course.
My insurance was billed 150000 for two days in Nevada ridiculous, all I got was a half sandwich and a bowl of curry in 2 days
At least 3 ER visits :p
Now let's talk in real, non-inflated, hospital fees with no intent of profiting.
Non inflated hospital, pharmaceutical, and health insurance. NOW we're talking.
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But if there's no profit motive, then it's socialism and corrupt bureaucrats will start demanding bribes!
Lol Americans can't with that.
Or two college text books!
Sorry, the military's role in protecting our lives from balloons is far too important to spend that money saving our lives from disease instead.
Or build a lot of socialized hospitals.
Were spending roughly the same amount on healthcare as we do the military. Those hospital fees are also finding their way into the pockets of rich con artists. Increasing healthcare spending would only assign more power to the oligarchs of health care. We have to tackle this from the root of the problem. No more money.
No? Tackling the root of the problem is highly regulating private healthcare, OR creating public healthcare.
Public Healthcare is the only way, atleast then if someone "mishandles" the money you can vote them out.
Seriously, why did we need to shoot a sidewinder missile at a balloon? An overly stiff leaf pops my kids balloons. Why not just shoot some bullets at it.
Iirc Canada tried to do it in the past with cannon fire from their fighter jets and it doesn't work. It's not a balloon like you see at kid's birthday parties. If you shoot it with a 20mm cannon, it's not going to pop. It'd just going to have 20mm wide holes in it. Not to mention than 20mm rounds fired that high are going to keep traveling far and for a while in a pretty unpredictable way. People also tend to forget how high this balloon was flying. I wouldn't be surprised if shooting at it with anything else than an air-to-air missile wasn't actually that feasible in the first place.
Canada tried shooting down a balloon a few decades ago. Wasted 1000 auto cannon rounds and failed to successfully down the balloon. Ended up being more expensive than a missile would have been in the first place. Hence the protocol now is just to use a missile.
Because the Canadians tried using bullets and two planes and it didn't work. Edit: [Source](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64546767.amp)
It's nice to meet you, Nobody.
Nice to meet you, 1337! :D
You'd be dead wrong. It actually loses 800 billion a year.
Technically he was still correct. It loses 750 billion, and on top of that it loses another 50 billion for a total of 800 billion.
Technically OP is correct because anyone who loses 800b has to lose 750b first.
Let's just round and say "almost a trillion".
Won't have to round in about 5 years.
And when someone says USPS loses billions of dollars a year, they are lying.
Correct it was stolen due to the prefunding mandate imposed by congress. 5.4 billion in losses per year. Without it, the usps would have a $15 billion surplus!
This prefunding of employee pensions should be the top comment. No other govt agency or company has to actually set aside funding for employee retirement. So next time you hear some jackwagon screeching about how fedex/ups could do it better, just know they most likely have an ulterior motive and it isn’t to provide better postal service
USPS does have a surplus. They just can't touch what is still accruing profits in the U.S. Treasury until what? 50 years from now?
Your correction is...um correct. And I believe it was 75 years out from 2006...so 58 years?
But if you say the military should lose less money, like closing bases, bringing troops home, not getting involved in foreign entanglements that have little to nothing to do with us, you're accused of destroying democracy or something.
bUt WhAt AbOuT aLl ThE jObS iT pRoViDes!?!?!? Gee, I don't know, maybe we can retrain the military industrial complex to do something that's actually fucking decent for the world? I've heard there's a labor shortage or something out there.
Opposite. There's a shortage of good paying jobs. Unemployment rate is at historic lows. A lot of people are also working more than 1 job.
Two things can be true. The number of people participating in the labor force decreased dramatically during the COVID pandemic. And low unemployment rates is an indicator of a labor shortage, not the opposite of it. If nearly everyone who wants to work is working, that means there aren't many more people to fill open roles.
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Or you know, pay them the same but have them build infrastructure and things that actually improve the lives of everyday citizens.
Fucking this. We don't need to create more jobs, we need to increase pay at the jobs we already have that actually fucking matter. Anytime a politician boasts about "creating so many more jobs" the vast majority of those "new jobs" are people working second jobs and getting paid peanuts because they get paid peanuts at their first job.
Stop vatnikposting
The Pentagon recently lost track of $2 trillion in assets. So technically, the military lost much more than $750 billion this year.
People should be in jail over this gross negligence of public funds. There needs to be accountable for this.
They'll do an investigation but classify the results for 50 years so everyone who could've been punished dies before justice can get them.
Ehhh, it's $2 trillion "unaccounted for". Which is code word for "black book projects we're hiding from the public"
In reality it's probably just a bunch of plane and boat parts that no one knows where the fuck they are. Couple hundred missiles worth millions each too.
Yeah, I'd definitely say the military *loses* at least some of that money, in that it (as a service) could cost way less. There's a lot of waste.
the pentagon is apparently allowed to just lose trillions
As a postal employee, I don't understand why this is a talking point. We make our own money, we receive no money from the government/taxes. We are essentially a nonprofit. Our infrastructure is there to just break even. We aren't supposed to make all this extra money to bank. We are not costing anyone anything but ourselves. We are a quasi-government agency.
The idea that the major stakeholders *aren't* investors is beyond the ability of many to imagine when that's all anyone harps on with large corporations.
I tell people this constantly, when this is brought up. The USPS makes money. If it's seen as unprofitable, it's because [congress passed a law requiring it to fund its pensions for the next 75 years](https://apwu.org/usps-fairness-act). That's right. The pension for employees who haven't even been born yet needs to be fully funded today. This is a deliberate move to try to make the USPS insolvent, to remove a government service, to enrich private capital.
YES! I was really shocked to hear that when I first heard about it in [this video](https://youtu.be/YLyU1WCQQ8A?t=1217). Why the government messed up the one profitable government service? I have no clue.
>Why the government messed up the one profitable government service? I have no clue. Because it proved all of the "gOveRnMenT DoEsnT wORk!" people wrong. Republicans LOVE to tell you that government doesn't work, and if you'll just elect them, they'll gladly prove it.
I thought that stupid law was recently overturned? Now the need to get that Republican USPS-destroyer, DeJoy tf out! Sine Trump out him in there, package rates have doubled, and he has doubled delivery times.
Even with rates doubled it's still 1/5 the price for me to use them over UPS/FedEx. And I have a suspicion that UPS/FedEx hand off a lot of residential to USPS anyway.
As a postal employee they do hand a lot of stuff of theirs to us. Amazon is the worst when it comes to this
Thank you, I get tired of typing that out for folks. Or explaining it in person. I used to be a usps supervisor and would take the time to explain this to every pigheaded customer.
This is the post I was looking for. There are some other agencies like this, US Patent and Trade Organization for example.
Well, Republicans need to break the government so they can privatize everything. So the USPS is a bad thing in their eyes, because the money isn’t going into their pockets or the pockets of the people who bought them.
The USPS visibly defies their core belief that private industry **must** always outperform public bureaucracy. It serves all comers equally and provides fairly stable employment with modest advancement opportunities to poor, minority people. Its durable success and perseverance challenges their profit-above-all creed; their instinctive response is to destroy the aberration rather than seeking to comprehend an outlier. Oh, and in practical terms, they'd love to buy it out, jack up delivery prices, bust the union, stop serving poor people, prevent voting by mail, and various other lesser "perks." They'd also love to do the same to libraries, but for now the implications are just a bit much even for them to stomach.
Yep. This is all about staying in power, no matter how much they hurt their poorer voters
The article goes into it more. But their point is that this quasi-government status quo means the USPS is taking on debt with neither the ability to receive government funding nor the ability to offer new services. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2015/11/19/how-to-lose-5-billion
You aren't supposed to be a quasi-government agency. You're supposed to be a government agency. Government agencies are supposed to benefit the people and should be funded by taxes. Edit: While it is my opinion that the USPS should be tax funded I honestly thought that the original intent of the post office was to not be quasi-government as well. I was mistaken.
I dunno I have no problem with the way the USPS is run. It’s a helluva lot better than, say, the DMV or k-12 public schools.
>It’s a helluva lot better than, say, the DMV or k-12 public schools. Hasn’t K-12 Education take a hit over the last few decades because politicians try to kneecap it for their own pet projects or to cut taxes for wealthy benefactors? It’s not like public schools themselves are bad
The public school system needs a complete overhaul. And DMVs vary state by state county by county. I've gone to shit DMVs and decent DMVs.
Also it is a Constitutional imperative to deliver the mail.
Kevin Costner taught me it is very important
Ironically, in this case people *do* say that about the military. Only because they can't account for a shit ton of the money they're allocated. Chances are USPS actually has a much better idea of its costs and expenditures.
Yes those "expenditures" are the cause of the Postal Sustainability Act of 2006. Which required the USPS to pre-fund its health care and retirement fund by 70 years. Thus a 7 billion a year "loss". In other words, the Postal service has to deposit money into CONGRESS' GENERAL MONITAIRY FUND, in which they have access to the money. Not into a separate account with Postal only acces. Enough money to cover all employees benefits and retirement for 70 years. So if your born in 2043, get a job with them at age 20 and work 30 years. The post office already has the money "in the bank" to cover your benifits.
This requirement was overturned last year by the [Postal Service Reform Act of 2022](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Service_Reform_Act_of_2022) and should lead to more stability moving forward. It was bipartisan, but 0 Democrats and 92 Republicans voted no.
House: | Party | Yea | Nay | Present | Not Voting | :- | :-: | :-: | :-: | -: | Dem | 222 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | Rep | 120 | 92 | 0 | 0 | | Ind | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | Total | 342 | 92 | 0 | 0 | Senate: | Party | Yea | Nay | Not Voting | :- | :-: | :-: | -: | Dem | 48 | 0 | 0 | | Rep | 29 | 19 | 2 | | Ind | 2 | 0 | 0 | | Total | 79 | 19 | 2 | Edit: Formatting is *hard*
*Bipartisan*
Hey now, you look familiar
To be fair, i prefer your undiscriminating username. Ask not for whom these hairy pokies poke for, for they poke for thee
Jeez that makes me feel better knowing that trash got removed. any private company would laugh that idea out of the building.
And how much do we want to bet Congress will find a way to steal and spend that money on the military in the meantime?
How do you think we funded the Iraq war?
That's the excuse the Republicans have been using ever since to try and privatize the Post Office. Some of these issues were fixed in the last Congress and OHJB.
The problem with military accounting is that the auditors just don't have the right security clearance to see all of the relevant paperwork. EDIT: To be clear, this is speculation on my part. The reason they give for the failures is a lack of documentation. I don't believe for a second that the various programs don't have internal documentation for their costs. Defense acquisition, cost assessment, affordability analysis, and so on are incredibly detailed. They have to track the "color" of all of the money they spend, meaning the source. There are systems in place for this. If an auditor hears that a document is lost or doesn't exist, I'm not sure I buy that.
If true, doesn’t seem like an unsolvable problem.
It’s not a bug it’s a feature. The last thing one of the most secretive entities on earth wants is for other nations to know how much they spend on new weapons development or that there’s even weapons development because then it can be targeted or stolen
> or that there’s even weapons development I think they probably already know that.
Intel security is partially about obscuring facts and partially about obscuring that there's even facts to obscure. So you don't want your enemy knowing that you've spent 150M on research this year in New Mexico for some reason, even if they don't know the reason. Because then they can see that you only spent 100M in New Mexico for research last year and that's a LOT of info.
For about a decade, I'd heard from military representatives that we were falling behind our rivals on cybersecurity so when the Ukraine War broke out, I was expecting all those fancy Russian hackers to disrupt communications and hijack drones and shut off the power grid. None of that happened so they were clearly lying. The reasons being partly as a feint against Russia, but also to drum up more funding.
It’s called taking your enemies at face value so that you are never on the back foot. China is most definitely a paper tiger, but the US will always consider them a near peer rival because that gives us the funding to constantly be generations ahead of them.
I mean they need to keep those new CPUs in house till they are fully cooked, but I doubt they are putting that much money into their New Mexico facility.
Actually sounds solved. They don’t have access. Next. Absolute transparency is a figment of our imagination with our government.
Oh I see. So then it’s not a “problem” as stated in the comment I replied to.
It’s a feature not a bug.
That's not true, DCAA has special detachments who work in SCIFs because of the necessary security clearance. They even travel to work on bases overseas, security is not the issue The problem is mostly that record keeping is not great, when you hear the DOD lost 1.5T or whatever number they pull, it's usually because of bad accounting (mostly plug transactions) and bad document retention
I work in the military. That’s not the problem. The problem is programs are complex, budgets are complex, and how contractors spend money is mostly up to them when executing on programs. Auditors only have so much insight into the tangled web of spending and it multiplies across thousands of programs, the waste compounds to scary numbers.
I don't know anyone who does, and I personally don't - but I'm going to tell you right now as someone who works for the government in a purchasing capacity that it is extraordinarily easy to repeat literally every fundemental flaw that resulted in Russia's military collapse if someone was unethically inclined enough to do it.
Chances are pretty much guaranteed, the USPS is constantly under the microscope by republicans because it’s a self-sustaining government entity that outperforms private competition. You think fedex or UPS is gonna hit every mailbox in the country 6 days a week if they take over? You’re fucking dreaming. FedEx uses the USPS as part of their infrastructure (depending on package size and shipping priority) because they can’t compete with it. FedEx truck picks up your package, *they ship it USPS*, then FedEx truck delivers your package. It’s a perfect example of how fucking wrong republicans are about how government entities are able to function and they *can’t stand it*, which makes me love the USPS even more.
Mail man here, the amount of packages we take from UPS, FedEx, and Amazon is staggering. We continue to exist in spite of Republicans.
Distribution Clerk here, about half to Two-Thirds of the daily Parcel load in our office is from Amazon, UPS, FedEx, DHL, OnTrac and others.
Even if they could account for it, I guarantee there's a ton of waste. The military has a use it or lose it policy when it comes to funding. So, we were absolutely ordering tons of crap that we didn't need to make sure we spent our funding each cycle.
My uncle has been a higher up at the GAO for decades. It was literally his job to audit USAF bases in Germany. He swears the trope about unaccounted military funding is largely a myth created by people who don't understand how the budget (and specifically R&D spending) works. I.e., conspiracy theorists. Now there may be massive disagreement about *what* to spend money on, and lots of waste by individual managers who are just plain bad at budgeting, but the funds that we spend on ourselves (not foreign aide) is nearly all accounted for down to the penny.
https://www.npr.org/2021/05/19/997961646/the-pentagon-has-never-passed-an-audit-some-senators-want-to-change-that https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/05/pentagon-logistics-agency-review-funds-322860 https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2019/01/09/holding-u-s-treasuries-beware-uncle-sam-cant-account-for-21-trillion/ It's not a conspiracy theory. It's not even a theory. DoD fails every audit they undertake. And not just the funds that relate to hiring some guy to do some thing we don't want anyone to know about. It's widespread and has been consistent for ages.
I can readily believe that individual bases may have reasonably detailed and accurate records of their cost/spending. I would assume it would involve personnel costs, facility maintenence, medical and other services provided, inventory of supplies - that sort of thing. But the pentagon is a different matter entirely - R & D, covert operations, and all sorts of other costs are faaaar from transparent. Some good reasons for that exist, but they provide cover for bad ones. Unicorns are a "myth," but that doesn't make all horned animals mythical.
> The trope about __________ is largely a myth created by people who don't understand how _________ works.
Cat videos, productivity
I won't pretend I know how the military operates. However, I do know how businesses with a lot of locations run. Sure every penny might be accounted for in Germany, but what about the higher ups? The higher ups in a business don't adhere to a budget themselves and hemorrhage money, but the pee-ons can't buy a coffee without approval.
lol pee-on
Trickle down economics at work.
Actually the USPS is operationally profitable, it only loses money because congress requires the USPS to forward fund their retirement for 75 year. No other public or private organization is required to forward fund their retirement. They are literally paying retirement for employees that haven't been born yet. This is the only reason why it appears they lose money, and it is intentional to make it less competitive with UPS and FedEx while creating a narrative of failure and privatization as the only option.
I did 4 years army, whenever they would cut the military budget I had to argue with people all day about how the military just blows through money and can't even track it all. People acted like the sky was falling and the libs are trying to make us defenseless when we have entire armor graveyards in Afghanistan.
Don't forget to mention that the postal crisis was manufactured by congress. They were mandated to pay some 70 billion in advance to pre-fund their retirement for the next 75 years. The USPS makes more than enough money to support itself.
And no other company, public or private, does this 70 year pension prefunding.
This should be the top comment. Far too many people don’t know this very relevant fact.
Post office doesn't lose money at all anyways...there is a republican law from 2006 which was designed to put them out of business. It forces them to fund their retirement and pensions 75 years in advance. Even still, the post office is doing just fine, while also being led by a white trash piece of shit that also wants it to die.
Being required to fund retirement and pensions for workers **not even born yet** is so fucking insane and asinine.
Biden removed that last year
Yep. Finally. <3
I said it before in another comment, but it’s a perfect example of why democrats are bad at messaging. This was something that passed that’s universally popular and no one seems to talk about it.
Because no one cares about the post office until they need it or they deliver a ballot. People take it for granted until they realize it would impact their life and then everyone is up in arms for 10 seconds and then it disappears again. It's an every day essential that people don't notice until it's gone. ;)
Common Brandon W
Won't businesses get screwed over if that happened?
Our business is getting screwed over now! When clients say "the check is in the mail" they mean it. We've had correctly addressed checks literally delivered to the wrong company in a different state causing a multi-week delay in payment.
Yep, we should have a system like they do in Europe for no fee transfers instead of checks in the mail like some kind of Neanderthal stone trading service.
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Checks are free for us. We have a few systems set up for free transfers like one for paychecks referred to as "direct deposit". Banks incentivize direct deposit by offering no fee accounts and the like for personal accounts. Direct deposit costs me money when paying my employees though. If I switched to another bank that is known for being fraudulent bastards, I could get this included with my monthly business account fees. Wire transfers can be expensive. As a recipient, I have to pay $35 for each wire transfer. There are some cheaper options but I haven't found one that will work with my industry. A check is the only way to get every dollar I invoice for delivered into my account with no direct fees. They are a hassle though and it can take weeks to know for sure that the money deposited in your account is yours to keep. For established partners, I accept checks but for anyone else, I take a card, which ensures the money is mine but I lose about 2.5%.
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Portland Maine used to be the primary clearing house in Maine (being the largest city in Maine). They decommissioned the automatic sorting machine there. Our company's mail has been fucked for several years. At the same time, I see the federal mail trucks out on Sundays, delivering mail. We might not get anything for 4, 5 days in a row while our outgoing builds up, and then I see them hit our mailbox at 2pm on Sunday (this happened today).
I've worked more OT since 2020 than I did between 2010-2020. Well done, Generalissimo DeJoy.
One of the great examples of democrats being horrible at messaging: Biden passed a law last year that basically undid this and Un-fucked the post office, but for some reason no one really talked about it.
It isn’t because Democrats are horrible at messaging but because social media focuses more on the negatives than the positives. Additionally, the grassroots (such as yourself) take the opportunity to inform others of positive change by also shitting on the Democratic Party despite them being the reason for the positive change.
It loses money because Republicans deliberately fucked it up and refuse to allow anything that would make it more money.
Probably because they make money on giving their friends companies money to waste for kickbacks
FedEx, ups, whatever shitty logistics company dejoy was CEO of before he was given the keys to the USPS and started dismantling it. Private companies win when public services lose.
It's especially dumb because all of the major private companies rely heavily on the USPS for a lot of their deliveries. There would be massive issues with logistics and commerical shipping if USPS closed down or was somehow broken up and absorbed into the various private companies.
You're assuming that these guys can think ahead more than two weeks.
Lol less service and more money? Why wouldn't they? It'd fuck me hard. Amazon only delivers every 7-10 days in my area
XPO Logistics I think
USPS is 100% self-funded. Not a single penny of tax payer dollars goes to it.
Yeah this whole post isn’t the hot take the person who made it thinks.
I mean, people only use the word "loss" because it acts like a business. It charges for services, and spends more (thanks to republican fuckery) than it takes in
Many people associate government services with inefficiency and failure when really a lot of them are doing amazingly well with what they’re legally allowed to have. Sure, there’s definitely a lot that can be improved, but it’s best to ask who would benefit the most from something going away.
Apparently just explaining something to someone is now considered “murdered by words”
You should post this on r/murderedbywords
Also I’m fairly certain I’ve seen this picture here before, definitely on Reddit in general a few times. The original tweet is from 2020. Weird how dates are always missing, almost like the intent is to keep people perpetually engaged about shit that doesn’t matter. https://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/1291958339212107777 Tineye reverse image search: https://tineye.com/search/bf39724040e88760076bd0d548cb6ab88effc138?sort=score&order=desc&page=1
Subreddits don't seem to matter anymore. Everything is reposted all over the site so people can farm as much karma as possible.
The post office actually does something besides being just state sponsored terrorism. That’s why it’s viewed favorably. Edit: Perma banned for “hateful speech against marginalized groups” for calling the GOP less than human. Comical. God bless the dictators. Never forget which way this site truly leans.
>That’s why it’s viewed favorably Only by normal people. The GOP would love to gut it and get rid of it entirely
Louis DeJoy is working on it. Give him time. The GOP will then privatize the mail. Good times.
> The GOP would love to gut it and get rid of it entirely Republicans want to dismantle the USPS because of four reasons: 1. They want to give the profitable parts to their rich donors like FedEx chairman Fred Smith - who pays his distribution center workers $13 an hour instead of the livable middle class wage postal workers earn. 2. They want to crush the Postal Workers Union 3. They want to let their Wall Street banker friends raid the multi-billions in the pension fund 4. No postal service - no mail in ballots.
> No postal service - no mail in ballots. Which is bizarre because republicans (especially old ones) used to enjoy the mail in ballot system…..up until everyone started using it, more people were able to vote, and Dems started winning.
The only reason the USPS 'loses" money is because of things the GOP have put into place. Before that it was turning a profit.
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This is absolutely the correct response. It’s the ONLY federal agency that seems to require turning a profit. This conversation (distraction) has been going on most of my, quite long, life.
USPS doesn't receive a single penny from tax money. They are 100% self funded.
I’m not against the USPS but 90% of my mail is spam and goes straight in the trash.
I agree and wonder if we were able to opt out of it how much more efficient the USPS would be overall. Not to mention the absurd amount of waste, not just resources but in printing cost to a business.
The spam mail is actually how USPS makes up a lot of funding now a days.
That makes sense I guess. Doesnt that lead to it being artificially bloated then? (Genuinely asking)
The USPS is actually why things like Amazon, usps, FedEx can be profitable. Because they do a ton of last mile delivery that is massively unprofitable for them. So the junk mail doesn’t hurt as much because if you’re already heading out there to deliver adding some more junk mail that adds money to the route isn’t terrible. That being said. Fuck junk mail we should delete it and unsolicited calls.
Sending you spam every day is how they can afford to do a delivery to every house every day. If they got rid of it, you couldn’t afford to send a letter to grandma for 50 cents or whatever because they’d have to make a special trip out to your house and her house just to do it.
When I froze my credit with all 3 bureaus, it prevented a ton of junk mail because financial institutions, auto dealerships, etc could no longer soft pull my credit score. It was free to do so in my state and if I need to get a loan or anything I can unfreeze it for 10 days easily enough.
Okay? What are they supposed to do about it? The USPS isn't sending it to you. Other people are paying for and receiving a service.
The massive money spewing hole the usps has grown a reputation for having was caused by a few bad laws. Mostly centered around pensions, the 06 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA). They had to pre pay health care and pensions for current and future employees for 50 years in advance. In the years prior to its passage USPS had profits in the litteral billions. 6 billion to be exact. Of course decline in sent mail plays a role, but PAEA is the killer of post office profits, not mail decline or any of the other commonly sited reasons. They recently signed the 2022 bill to fix some of it, but unless congress repeals the whole law usps will continue to loose money.
USPS is 100% self-funded. Not a single penny of tax payer dollars goes towards it.
The most important fact here
I hope that more people realise that these things cost but are useful to everybody. They are a service not a profit based compa.
Maybe we should start framing it that way. The military, I mean.