Posted on 12/14/2024 9:24:43 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
President-elect Donald Trump has expressed a keen interest in privatizing the U.S. Postal Service in recent weeks, three people with knowledge of the matter said, a move that could shake up consumer shipping and business supply chains and push hundreds of thousands of federal workers out of the government.
Trump has discussed his desire to overhaul the Postal Service at his Mar-a-Lago estate with Howard Lutnick, his pick for commerce secretary and the co-chair of his presidential transition, the people said. Earlier this month, Trump also convened a group of transition officials to ask for their views on privatizing the agency, one of the people said.
Told of the mail agency’s annual financial losses, Trump said the government should not subsidize the organization, the people said. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations.
Trump’s specific plans for overhauling the Postal Service were not immediately clear. But he feuded with the nation’s mail carrier as president in 2019, trying to force it to hand over key functions — including rate-setting, personnel decisions, labor relations and managing relationships with its largest clients — to the Treasury Department.
“The government is slow, slow, slow — decades slow on adopting new ways of doing things, and there’s a lot of [other] carrier services that became legal in the ’70s that are doing things so much better with increased volumes and reduced costs,” said Casey Mulligan, who served as a top economist in the first Trump administration. “We didn’t finish the job in the first term, but we should finish it now.”
The postal system is older than the nation itself, founded in 1775 with Benjamin Franklin as its chief, revitalized with free rural delivery at the start of the 20th century, then transformed into a financially self-sustaining agency...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Just how did they do this? They are tasked with delivering the mail. That is what they did. If those receiving it decided to ignore postmarks or lack of info on an envelope that is on them.
I agree.
“required departments mandated by the constitution”
That would seem to make this a non starter. I’ll bet with a little creative thinking they can privatize much of the operation. The rats successfully used covid to ram mail voting through and of course the fraud that came with it. Something needs to be done to mitigate it.
Thanks for pointing this out.
Well that sure would stink.
The “rural carriers” seem to do their jobs efficiently.
As far as I know, they are paid rational amounts of money.
The staffing of post offices is a more complicated matter.
McDonald’s Post Office
Hours
9:30am to 11:15am M-F
2:00pm to 4:30pm M-F
8pm - 9pm M-F
I assume you mean this:
“If there are no bidders, you (or a person or entity authorized by you) would have to pick up your mail at a post office.”
The maximum subsidy rate might be based on the HUD fair market rent rate (to factor in local labor wages), 1 minute/stop, plus travel time at 70% of the speed limits.
Routes would be bid out like the Brits do with bus routes, with a maximum available subsidy.
Maybe they could turn the USPS over to Amtrak, or the DMV.
As a former postal worker Privatizing, the postal service is a great idea.
FIXED IT!
Trump eyes privatizing U.S. GOVERNMENT, citing financial losses
“required departments mandated by the constitution”
“Post-offices and post-roads” are allowed, not required.
Ditto the military. George Washington would be shocked if he saw the Pentagon. The Founding Fathers did not want standing armies.
“Amtrak”
The UK has nationalized tracks and private train operating companies.
If two or more companies run trains on a line, they take daily turns as ‘lead operators’ setting pricing. When I checked years ago, same day fares were expensive, but advanced fares cheap.
Most US railroad tracks are privately owned.
Banks have slow periods as well as restaurants and could function as post offices too.
The Germans privatized their one time government postal monopoly….it is now better known as DHL.
Up for priviatization faster than the USPS should be Amtrak,
Congress should privitize Amtrak on day one, in a manner of one by one selling off each Amtrak line until the process is down to the lines that get no buyers, then the remainder just liquidated.
Most of the lines that are likely to get buyers are the Northest Corridor lines that run between Boston and Washington D.C. They have enough population density along their routes, and demand from that population, to be profitable lines if they were private. A few other Amtrak lines might also be profitable but most cannot make it as privat enterprises. Some state lawmakers will complain that Amtrak lines in their states MUST be subsidized. Let them convince their state governments to take them over if they so desire.
If the USPS is to be subsidized, I would let our three other parcel delivery outfits, Fedex, UPS and Amazon bid for segments of it, bidding for the “Letter Carrier” segments of it. Those thee already have the delivery networks that could most easlily add scale for “Letter Carrier” abilities. Others, totally out of the business would have to create wholesale the networks and operations that already exist in the three delivery systems we have now outside the USPS.
The three bidders would have contract deadlines for assuming the portions of the “Letter Carrier” system they are to take over. Existing USPS employees should be offered positions with the companies assuming its business, but USPS unions and union rules would not move with those employees.
If Payton Manning was a truck
Privatizing U.S. Postal Service, citing financial losses a capital idea and remove their weapons and swat teams they shouldn’t have them in the first place.
Yes, I did.
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