We want delivery to every address, but certainly there is a problem when ~50% of what's being delivered is junk mail[1]
If the government mandates USPS to perform deliveries for a price that is below cost, these deliveries should be partly funded by the taxpayer. They should not be forced to subsidise these deliveries by delivering spam mail.
Let's say I am a Gray Actor, Company X, who sells great products but I want to make money on digital signups. I add this unchecked box to my order form: "By checking this box, you agree to be contacted by our partners with promotions." - can checking this box apply promotions to the mail address you entered on my shipping form? - can I sell the rights to send you mail promotions after you check this box? - how long can I send you promotions? - how hard can I make it for you to "unsubscribe" (phone, written by mail, difficult to navigate website)? - you demand proof from a partner that you did indeed check this box after I send you a promotion. What do I need to supply? - the original subscriber has moved (without my knowledge) and I send generic ads in their name to the new tenant at the old address. Am I still in compliance?
Even if you presuppose "sign up for ads" is the only way to get spam, there are a lot of protections that are still missing.
As well, most ads I get in the mail look like normal mail anyway, and I don't really want the government opening my mail to check if it's spam or not.
I'd much prefer a way to opt out of receiving advertisements wholesale on a per-address basis (not per-person, mind you). While you can "opt out" of receiving ads, it's borderline impossible without giving PID to advertisers!
I would prefer that nobody subsidies the delivery of landfill to my mailbox.
The USPS literally has a service "deliver this flyer to every residential mailbox in this ZIP". It's cheaper per-item than a letter, yes, but the margins on "stuff a bunch of identical objects into N boxes" are much higher than "figure out which of N boxes this 1 unique mailpiece goes to".
This is how it currently works, the USPS gets money for delivering bulk mail.
This seems like a valid idea to look further into.
Part of the plan includes a transition to a model "that delivers mail fewer days per week and to more central locations (not door delivery) [which] would operate at substantially lower costs."
The plan notes "USPS already has over $100 billion in unfunded liabilities, a substantial capital investment backlog, has posted losses for over a decade, and has no clear path to profitability without reform."
Except the primary reason the USPS has posted losses for over a decade is that, in 2006, Congress passed a law requiring the USPS to pre-fund retiree health benefits (supported by both sides of the aisle I should add) unlike any other Government agency or private industry competitor.
It really isn't hard to understand, the USPS is not playing by a fair set of rules and is losing as a result.
But the administration said they wouldn't sign anything that included emergency funding for the USPS. That doesn't prove what the administration's motives are, but they certainly seem hostile towards the USPS.
Simply put, the use of the Postal Service has dropped a lot but the number of employees retired or eligible to retire has not. In other words, they have so many eligible for full benefit retirements that they were not even trying to service the debt and instead likely to end up defaulting it to the PBGC which would have gutted payments and left retirees in a lurch.
So what would you have?
[0]https://www.cnbc.com/id/45018432
[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2019/05/13/why-aoc-is-mo...
In the more rural parts, mail is very important. Cutting it down to 1/week is terrible.
It seems the exceedingly sensible thing to do would simply be for the government to subsidize delivery to the costliest areas. Unfortunately that would mean taxpayer dollars supporting the USPS and that's an idea that's seemingly untenable to rural communities.
Hopefully a solution can be found in all of this. I certainly can't see one, but I'm hopeful that it'll find a way.
According to the Post Office they aren't delivering packages for next to nothing. They are delivering them for competitive rates and if they increased them they would lose business, revenue, and profit.
Now this could be temporarily different due to COVID-19, but if that's the case then emergency funding would be appropriate.
And to add insult to an injury, the mandatory service such as first class mail is priced below competitive and cemented that way by law. It's as though certain people in US Congress want the USPS to be insolvent, and ultimately nationalized / tax funded.
The USPS needs to be preserved, it's essential. The stimulus wasn't the place to do it.
Why would anyone go on record to say they're going to let a key infrastructure service fail? No one would do that. We can only speculate on what their intentions are, but it's reasonable to say a lack of evidence is not necessarily evidence they won't let it fail.
The USPS is a target for a variety of reasons. Think of it as a leveraged buyout target... they have a ton of assets, from information assets to real estate. Carving up the real estate alone would make for a ton of patronage. There are also some extreme positions (which have prominence these days in some circles) that the post office and civil service is a manifestation of big, Federal government exerting too much influence over local affairs.
I know that privatisation of Royal Mail here in the UK was terrible for the average user as prices went up significantly.
This is a completely false statement. Private shipping companies do not do what USPS does, and in fact private shipping companies often partly use USPS. See for example FedEx SmartPost [1].
Private shipping companies have the exact same problem that all private companies have: they only have the incentive for profit. That means that people that are not profitable will receive no service from them. For private shipping companies, that means people in rural areas will either be completely unable to get mail, or will need to pay ridiculous prices for mail (think >$20 for a letter).
The only reason Amazon and other online retailers offer free shipping in the entire US is because USPS is mandated by law to subsidize shipping to expensive rural areas. No other private shipping company can or will do this because it goes entirely against the motive of profit.
If USPS is out of the picture that means people in rural areas will not be able to receive mail anymore or will need to pay ridiculous rates for delivery and mail. The benefit of that is that people in cities might pay a few cents less on postage. Emphasis on might. The more likely reality is that shipping costs will go up for everyone and the profits made by only servicing people in cities will be privatized. A great win for the CEO of FedEx, but a loss for all other citizens of the US.
> Tax breaks. The Post Office is exempt from state and local property and real estate taxes, along with other burdens like tolls, vehicle registration fees, and parking tickets. These exemptions save the USPS $2.18 billion per year.
> Cheap borrowing. [...] It currently borrows the legal limit of $15.2 billion at a rate of 1.2%. Without this access, it would be paying somewhere between $415 million and $490 million per year more in interest.
> Finally, Shapiro points out that the USPS pays its workers salaries and benefits far above the rates paid to similar workers in the private sector.
From the article; it's not a /literal/ taxpayer-funded subsidy.
Also, since that link is paywalled: https://web.archive.org/web/20200411145708/https://fortune.c...
I believe you may wish to re-read your own link. What he said is correct. What you stated is patently incorrect.
The above quote is from your own article and states that is a 3rd party estimation and not-at-all a tax donation that the American populace pays for, which is what you also stated.
As ezrast says below, the real goal is a "reliable communications network", which I agree with wholeheartedly. In the 18th century, that was spelled "Post Offices and Post Roads". They couldn't have anticipated email. Must we interpret the Constitution's requirement so literally?
Maybe "post offices and post roads" could mean "internet service". We're seeing public school taught over the internet today, due to COVID-19, so I think it's fair to call the internet an essential service. That's how I receive 99% of my communications. Does even rural Montana really find it more valuable to send pieces of paper than internet packets?
Let's stop printing 100 million advertisements every day just to drive them across the country and throw them away somewhere else. Instead, let's use the office to provide internet access to everyone. I think that would be exactly in line with the spirit of the Constitution.
USPS lost $9 billion in 2019[1], so roughly $30 per American. Anyone who pays even one bill per month via mail would pay at least 4x that much at current private rates. I'm not inclined to believe privatization would bring those rates down much for rural areas.
Sure, if we assume we've implemented UBI and eradicated poverty or something then those prices aren't a big deal. But even then, what have we gained by privatizing? Private industries that provides critical services are either massively subsidized (agriculture, transportation - indirectly via roads) or massively unpopular and frequently monopolistic (telecommunications, health insurance). Even if a talented CEO could squeeze a few percentage points of efficiency out of this industry, it would come at the cost of misaligning incentives in perpetuity, and the government would still be responsible for keeping the industry afloat whenever the economy goes bad.
Or we could let them charge a few extra cents for postage, let them operate 5 days/week instead of 6, charge the wealthiest Americans a couple extra tax dollars each, and keep consistent service available at dirt-cheap prices for everyone everywhere.
[1] https://about.usps.com/what/financials/annual-reports/fy2019...
2. The USPS is the only organization in US History that was mandated by Congress to fully fund its pension for 75 years into the future (i.e. potentially for employees that are _yet to be BORN_).
Details like that are what make the USPS a ripe target.
However, the problem isn’t that the USPS is required to recognize the cost of these benefits, the problem is no other governments are required to. There’s a reason only taxpayer funded entities offer retiree healthcare benefits, and that’s because it’s a ludicrously costly benefit to give if you don’t have the power to tax.
The same applies to defined benefit pensions. If anything, all other entities promising defined benefit and retiree healthcare benefits should be subject to the same laws. Maybe then, politicians and current taxpayers wouldn’t be able to steal from future taxpayers for today’s labor costs.
https://www.truthorfiction.com/is-usps-losing-money-because-...
https://www.cato.org/publications/tax-budget-bulletin/privat...
They certainly could if it weren't for laws preventing them from delivering to people's mailboxes.
Apparently it's literally illegal for anyone but USPS to put something in your mailbox https://blog.oup.com/2017/07/mailboxes-us-mail/.
You asked what laws stopped them delivering mail to rural locations. You can't deliver mail anywhere, rural or otherwise, if you can't use the mailbox when you get there. That's the law you were asking about.
> Also the reference is what looks to be on some persons blog post.
Yes the blog explains the context around the law. Is this one better if you want to appeal to authority https://about.usps.com/news/state-releases/tx/2010/tx_2010_0...?
Is there an argument to be made that a privatized version could run better? Not unless it gets to leverage people’s need of their mail next to its own greedy need for profit.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2002/07/08/02-1690...
[1] https://informeddelivery.usps.com/box/pages/intro/start.acti...
Not everyone can live in cities, is my only argument for you. My work, and the work of those I serve, relies on my existing in a rural area. Food comes from somewhere. I know it sounds hand wavy and dismissive, but that's the truth for me, and my area.
Without some amount of cooperation and working together, who would want to live out here where there is nothing? Then who grows the food?
Would you be for a grocery store tax that kept groceries the same price everywhere? Irregardless of shipping and land costs?
It costs a lot to run internet connectivity all over the place, if the town wanted to pay to run the cables it could, or a non-profit could, there's a wide variety of solutions. My guess is that it's just not worth the cost/maintenance for the few people that need it vs the other options. Internet may need to cost 1k per month if only a few people are using it and the cables need to be run a long distance.
Proper prices are the only way we can proper figure out how to allocate resources. If we stopped subsidizing remote farmland, maybe farmland near cities would be more viable.
I don't set the prices of the commodities I sell. Those are set at a national/international level and make their way to the local grain elevator. For that to happen, it would, essentially, be a tax on your food to subsidize me living here to make the food.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&query=jakeogh%20mail&t...
I get the utility of certified mail and associated services, but I don't really understand why we need first-class/marketing mail service in the 21st century.
I agree it was important infrastructure 250 years ago.
a) The government can compel private companies to do any of these things at any time whether they want to or not.
b) The government can do these things by itself.
c) None of these things are possible.
Or, imagine a state election that includes a ballot question about raising taxes on large corporations, and the only company that can deliver and collect ballots is Amazon. Can you think of any problems this could cause?
At heart, though, my beef with USPS stems from my hatred of spam. They're a service I interact with multiple times weekly... when I move their garbage from my mailbox to my trashcan. When 95% of my interactions with them are negative, it's hard for me to understand how some people can like them.
Only here we already have the centralized payment system in the form of taxes, but it turns out when you use that to subsidize USPS operations everyone still complains.
And those without internet access can go to public libraries or even get free public wifi in many cities. Even some homeless shelters provide wifi now, which is much easier for them than providing mail service. Technically, I think those without a permanent address can register to still receive mail at a post office, but that seems more difficult to manage and more limiting than finding internet access.
Gotta disagree. You aren't required to have stable housing to have a stable mailing address. The USPS provides services to all.
https://faq.usps.com/s/article/Is-there-mail-service-for-the...
Many of the justifications I've come across of why mail is essential seem to center around transmission of information being essential, and I 100% agree with that. But these days important information does not need to be transmitted by mail. The fact that many important services are still tied to hard-copies of paper - like mailing checks, mailing bills, mailing a warning when a bill has been missed, etc. causes some completely unnecessary problems. It's easier to keep a phone number or email address active for many years, but an address for a large percentage of the population is temporary. I've seen the argument made that not everybody has internet access, and that this is an equality issue that physical mail is still necessary for less privileged people. But many poor people are more likely to have a cell phone than have stable housing with a stable mailing address. And public libraries provide internet access for those who don't have it otherwise.
Also, and this part is arguably a first world problem but it's still a big annoyance, the junk mail that props up USPS is completely out of control. How is an essential government service entirely ad-supported like USPS is? That seems crazy. Imagine if the fire department made you watch some ads after they put out your fire.
I'm not arguing for getting rid of the USPS now, we do seem to need vote by mail at least for a while longer until we have a better, sufficiently secure alternative. I just think all these arguments about how essential it is to the fabric of modern society are bit outdated.
Edit: anyone who is downvoting me care to comment on what I'm wrong about?
Working with low-income folks daily, this is not true in total. We have to check phone numbers and e-mail addresses every time we interact with our clients, because they cycle through them almost monthly. Physical addresses tend to change annually.
>And public libraries provide internet access for those who don't have it otherwise.
There is no public library with internet access within 100 miles of my current address.
>How is an essential government service entirely ad-supported like USPS is?
They're not entirely ad supported?
>I just think all these arguments about how essential it is to the fabric of modern society are bit outdated.
And this is my take - your view is of a young, middle- to upper-middle-class person with no problems accessing the modern world today. For poor people, for rural people, the mail is essential. I receive all of my bills via mail, because the internet is so bad here. My bank does not offer bill-payment, and I don't want to link my bank account to a third party site, outside of using my bank to auto bill pay, if that's even an option.
And this is just my take, but this last sentence really weakens the rest of your argument. Your view seems to be that of someone who's uncomfortable with modern technology. At some point, we'll need to accept that being uncomfortable with the status quo of antiquated, painfully slow, inefficient non-tech solutions is just as valid of a viewpoint as being uncomfortable with technology.
I come from a place in rural upstate NY where broadband is only available to about 75% of the population, the legacy POTS system is being allowed to fail, and cellular service is available to about 50%. Should my former neighbors be cut off from functioning in modern society because they can't get mail?
Today, I own a home and have to pay property taxes and garbage bills. Should my ability to keep my home be contingent on my phone service? What if my phone carrier screw up and ports my number without my permission? What if I screw up, don't update my credit card and have service suspended?
The other alternative, public libraries, are also being starved of funding in many areas.
USPS may deserve to decline or evolve. But killing it in the middle of a crisis for stupid political reasons is not a strategy.
> Should my ability to keep my home be contingent on my phone service?
No, ideally not just on phone service. But on something digital that is free and doesn't require any effort to keep it live over an extended period of time (perhaps email). This kind of thing is exactly my point though, should your ability to participate in society be contingent on living in one place for a prolonged period of time? When I was younger I knew a lot of people that would bum around for a while, travel, crash on friends couches, etc. I remember multiple friends who had a relatively small bill get sent to collections and ruin their credit for the next 7 years because the service had an old address on file. It seems crazy to me that this can happen, that you'd just be sent a few pieces of paper of which it can never be verified that you've actually received them, and no one ever needs to make an effort to call or email you, and then that ruins your credit. And these people were relatively well off and overall pretty responsible in the scheme of things, I can only imagine this type of thing must also screw over chronically poor people all the time.
> killing it in the middle of a crisis for stupid political reasons is not a strategy
100% agree with that, I've just wondered a for a long time why so many official things still done primarily through mail. In my opinion it's worth at least having a public discussion about why things are even still done this way, and therefore whether we still actually need the USPS. But it seems that even on this tech website most people don't agree.
I do appreciate your comment, ultimately it seems like these arguments fall along a very stark a rural/urban divide. I'm so used to living in cities that it's just ingrained in my mind that housing and something like a physical address is a premium and scarce resource and anything digital can be much more freely available and unconstrained. It's hard to even fathom that in some people's reality it is the opposite (and even after reading your arguments, I'm still skeptical to what extent that is the case).
Easy. Two reasons: universal service and no standard ID.
If you aren't homeless, you always have a physical address that can be delivered to. A physical address is a piece of the earth than can be proven to exist or not exist, and even audited by various means. "Virtual" services like phones and internet are not universal for many types of people. For a professional, access to the internet or mobile phone is very reliable. For many others, you are one missed payment or reload away from losing that number forever.
No standard ID is the other thing. There's no root of trust for humans, and no good way to link you to who you are. Biometrics are only available for limited use cases (mostly criminal), and almost all forms of "trust" (in the identity sense) are tied to physical locations or events. Your driver's license or passport (if you have them) is linked to the record of your birth, marriage (if your name changes), your place of residence, and one or more bills or other business records.
The system as it is has many flaws, but you can't fix it without a strategy. Getting rid of a service like the mail or monetizing it in a way that spikes the costs undermines many expected parts of life for almost no benefit.
Private citizens and businesses need to get physical things from point A to point B regardless of where point A and B are in the country. It should be self evident that the infrastructure needed to do that is critical. As for whether or not the USPS is the best way to do that, there's been some constitutional arguments and debate that's taken place over the last 250 years.
> How is an essential government service entirely ad-supported like USPS is?
Because Republicans hate taxes and unions, and the USPS is one of the largest public sector unions that they can't get rid of (due to aforementioned Constitutional requirements) so they force the USPS to over-fund themselves without taxes.
>Imagine if the fire department made you watch some ads after they put out your fire.
Imagine if Congress told fire departments across the country that they weren't allowed to take tax dollars to fund themselves.