Ah yes, one of the few government services that actually sort of works. Can't have that.
this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2024
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Jesus fucking christ, i'm not making shit up here. The USPS delivery times are literal trash compared to all competitors. I sent certified mail this year that got fucking lost. I used to WORK for the USPS, back at the start of the phasing out of union positions and the great expansion of "contract" roles. The USPS is absolutely critical to maintain, but it has a ton of problems. The solution to keep it "self funded" thus far has been to cut back wages for employees, cut back future funding of retirement funds, and to drop services into the ground. Pile on the downvotes but it's true no matter if you like it or not.
being self funded but working at a deficit means that to maintain solvency you must spend less, which thus far means doing what I have said above, full stop.
Privitizing the USPS is the wrong answer, that'll just enrich dumpy's contacts as yet another thing sold off for political capital. It's OK to subsidize services for the public good. Isn't that the entire fucking point of being progressive? doing things for the public good, not for some private interest? If not, I guess i'm no longer progressive.
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Private companies have been out-competing the USPS for a long time.
Given that UPS and Amazon Delivery Services handle almost all the lucrative consumer package shipment industry just helps keep USPS prices higher. The post office has degraded service wise significantly in the past 20 years. Before Amazon it was very, very fast, even during christmas time.
The USPS has reacted by slowly phasing out the union roles and pensions and replacing them with shitty temp workers who make next to no money and rarely even get sick time let alone vacations. The compensation is so bad now that only the bottom of the barrel end up working for the post office below the executive rung.___
Bullshit....The Republican Congress raided USPS coffers then demanded they fund retirement for all employees now to cover 75 years.
The right ruined it and then DeJoy is rotting it from the inside, all while blaming something else.
It's a service not meant to make tons of profits like a private company only worried about next quarter.
Last point, the ONLY reason UPS, FedEx could be perceived as out competing is because like ISPs they refuse to service the inconvenience rural customers. USPS has to service these folks.
We better not fuck up the post office so some fucking arrogant billionaire can buy up all the prime real estate to benefit themselves at the expense of us.
The post office is already fucked. Don't think i'm on the side of privatizing it though just because I called out it's problems.
The USPS needs a subsidy and that can come from tacking on fees to the private alternatives or by making it so labor rights are strong enough that abusing "contract" labor isn't economical. It's too useful of a service.
That being said... paper mail can largely be replaced with email and packages are mostly a business enterprise in terms of volume. We probably need some serious innovation to be considered for a 21st century post office. Imagine if we had USPS email and they sold advertising in place of google to support the funding of the physical service. I'm not saying this is the best way, i'm just calling out hypothetical. The people who know the industry better will have way better suggestions than I do.
Today the USPS does do advertising, whenever you do a change of address you're given a packet of bullshit (as an example.) At least if it was digital it would be less paper in a dump somewhere.
USPS delivers everywhere. Private companies don't.
There are so many reasons why certain services should be publicly funded, like the USPS, education or public transit, power generation or even high speed internet.
When everyone needs it we really ought to find a way that is efficient for everybody to have it. Infrastructure enables the economy which feeds into the public services - it's a win/win economically even if it seems very expensive to setup and maintain.
USPS isn't even publicly funded. It operates on fees for its services only.
It's been operating at a loss for 15 years. Times are changing, we need to innovate with the times. Email eliminates most need for paper mail and private competition is undercutting the usps by not paying benefits (mostly looking at amazon's bullshit.)
I'm in no way suggesting we should privatize it though. That's just giving someone who is a connection of dumpy a pile of cash and removing a critical service from rural/remote citizens. Shitty services undercutting it by robbing labor should have the rug pulled out so that fucking over employees isn't profitable.
operating at a loss for 15 years.
every social service operates at a loss. they don't exist to "make money," they're there to provide a service to the community--they cost money. same as public highways. public libraries. the military.
it's honestly fucking asinine that this rhetoric of "OMG the USPS is losing money!" has been amplified to the degree that it has
also, i would argue that any kind of drop in usage for paper mail over time has been more than made up for by shipping for online retail shopping
I'd argue that amazon has stolen all the growth from shipping that could have propped up the USPS, but hey, that's just me.
I don't think something can be self funded and operate at a loss. I think for the former to work you can't have the latter and vice versa.
The USPS can keep cutting services into the ground to stay afloat but eventually they'll just collapse unless publicly funded. I think that's ok, the service is too critical not to subsidize to a reasonable service level, it needs to be subsidized for the public good.
Private companies have been out-competing the USPS for a long time.
Private companies don't have to prefund 70 years of retirement for their workers. It's not competition. Republicans have been trying to kill the USPS for decades.
That's wrong for the reasons others have stated, but also what do you think happens to prices once USPS is gone? They will absolutely skyrocket.