Posted on 09/04/2011 4:49:11 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
The United States Postal Service has long lived on the financial edge, but it has never been as close to the precipice as it is today: the agency is so low on cash that it will not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month and may have to shut down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action to stabilize its finances.
“Our situation is extremely serious,” the postmaster general, Patrick R. Donahoe, said in an interview. “If Congress doesn’t act, we will default.”
In recent weeks, Mr. Donahoe has been pushing a series of painful cost-cutting measures to erase the agency’s deficit, which will reach $9.2 billion this fiscal year. They include eliminating Saturday mail delivery, closing up to 3,700 postal locations and laying off 120,000 workers, nearly one-fifth of the agency’s work force.
The post office’s problems stem from one hard reality: it is getting squeezed on both revenue and costs.
As any computer user knows, the Internet revolution has led to people and businesses sending far less conventional mail.
At the same time, decades of contractual promises made to unionized workers, including no-layoff clauses, are increasing the post office’s costs. Labor represents 80 percent of the agency’s expenses, compared with 53 percent at United Parcel Service and 32 percent at FedEx, its two biggest private competitors. Postal workers also receive more generous health benefits than most other federal employees.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
That is fine i can afford that every week or two on what i mail. i think that is the least of problems.
Not that you'd like it, but their relationship to UPS and FedEx is simply one of "express, baggage and freight". And it doesn't have to be as good as it is now.
SURFACE WORKS WELL in America ~ it's just not fast.
That reminds me of a veteran I knew who worked for the postal service. He could shine his own shoes, one of which was at the end of his artificial leg. He lost the rest of it in Vietnam.
Your typical residential mail recipient doesn’t pay enough in postage to keep track of it.
What a crock!!! You are saying that the government, through the USPS, must subsidize these businesses. Are you sure you are posting on the right blog? These “businesses” need a below market ride for their shipping in order to survive? Well, so far as I am concerned, they need to go under right behind the USPS!!
I don’t shop on line for much but when I do the delivery is almost always USPS—cheaper and just as fast as FedEx or brown.
Had to use USPS to ship my parents urns up north. Package came in damaged( they stamped it damaged), My mother's urn had a chip on it.
Plus, no rent, utilities, etc.
That's a hefty savings Fur Shur.
“A lot of good people, many military veterans, work for the USPS. And unlike some government entities, this organization performs a Constitutional function and does useful work”
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While the above might be true.. A lot of good people and many military veterans work in private industry and make no higher salaries than the postal workers, have no Cadillac health plans, and NO guarantee of not being laid off.
Postal workers ARE NOT more important to the overall economy that anyone else and thus should not be protected from its economic pitfalls.
The Constitutional requirement of the Federal Government to protect the borders is ignored and usurped by it.
So why should we care about any constitutional mandate to deliver mail?
The USPS can either justify its existence by market survival or not.
It apparently can’t.
“So you are getting a good deal that the rest of us are paying for.”
I don’t understand your meaning. Why are you paying yet I am not? We spend thousands of dollars with the post office every year - through business and personally. We use the system and we spend our money to support it.
Wrong, it’s not fair to the rest of the citizens to subsidize their mail delivery. It’s high time that people realized that essentially the world’s governments, large and small are broke. They have promised orders of magnitude more than they can deliver ever hope to deliver. Maybe the people whom you suggest will be damaged by the collapse of the USPS band together and and figure out how to help each other, rather than wait like the “residents”of New Orleans did after Katrina for “help” to arrive. There are big changes coming whether you, or they like it or not. Better get prepared now.
100% of everything they do at a post office can be done through a rural letter carrier.
They don't have to go anywhere at all.
It is interesting that an agency with at least a passing reference in the Constitution (”Establish” Post Offices) is contemplating downsizing, but immense programs like Mediscare (and most definitely Obamacare) with NO Constitutional mandate whatsoever are sacrosanct...
“And what is your problem? The USPS is supported by postage. It does not receive a government subsidy. In fact, the financial problem is because USPS has been subsidizing the US government.
And, pray tell, just how has it been doing that?
Got some details? Maybe I should ask OPM where my 40K is.
To be honest it doesn’t bother me at all that usps contracts with ups and fedex. they must see some benefit in doing so to get their express and priority mail packages to where they need to go.
If it would be about the same time and less cost I wouldn’t mind how they shipped them just as long as they got there.
My earlier point is they go out of their way to say they aren’t government, and say they’re self sustaining, yet have billions of dollars of debt they say if Congress doesn’t fix it for them...it kind of deflates their prior claims. If you run up a 5.5 billion debt and then beg Congress to save you from it, you’re not self sustaining.
take the rest of the federal gub mint to hell with ya.
UPS doesn’t provide UNIVERSAL DELIVERY. They don’t go everywhere.
>Does anyone still use the post office for anything important? Isn’t practically all business communication these days by FEDEX, DHL or the other couriers — or email?<
Sigh, we have said this before...
Unless you do NOT own an Ebay or Amazon sellers account, USPS is the ONLY way to go.
Sacrilege? It’s Fedex and UPS who are the rip-offs. A simple 1 pound box to Europe and Asia/Japan costs more than $40 while USPS Express Mail/priority will only cost with tracking and insurance costs $14. Yes, I know. they are union but their packaging system is the most affordable.
The rest of the mailing stuff, we couldn’t care about, and that I agree with you.
However, if you are military and you get a federal job they screw with your retirement pay so that you don't "double dip".
Servicemen/Servicewomen and their families use USPS to mail parcels back and forth. Not sure whether the other services can mail to APO's. The shipping rates for DHL make it impossible for the military personel to utilize it.
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