You Freepers need to remember that you didn't build the Post Office ... the government built that for you!!
Posted on 08/09/2012 9:34:02 AM PDT by Zakeet
The epic collapse of one of the most bloated government institutions continues at a ridiculous pace. From Bloomberg:
And it gets better:
The punchline:
Of course: why ever stop doing something that is losing tons of OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY. Not like that money is your own.
Finally:
Perhaps it is time to consider a Solyndra-USPS merger: who wouldn't want to see solar powered stamps?
You Freepers need to remember that you didn't build the Post Office ... the government built that for you!!
Damned unions. They’re running ads like crazy. Claiming that they’re being screwed by the feds - when in fact they’re only being forced to fund the absurd obligations they’ve made. Damned unions.
How much do the feds demand other unions fund their liabilities?
Sounds like yet another argument for higher taxes.
But the government will do health care so much better....
And these are the people we want in charge of our healthcare?
Meanwhile, Federal Express is performing solidly in the black and paying dividends. But, to be fair, UPS has issued report where they predicat a cut in full year outlook due to a sagging economy.
With the advent in the internet (FaceBook, Pinterest and email), the demand for letters has dropped significantly. The only "letters" I ever get are bills, or post cards from car dealerships telling me how I need to ditch my dependable car, and incur a tremendous amount of debt and buy a new car.
For national security, we need a Post Office - however the Post Office needs to change their business model. For the past 10 years, letters have ceased to be their primary product - so scale accordingly. Increase the cost of a letter to $1, and focus on packages like the competition is doing. It's simply not practical to process, sort and hand deliver a letter for less than $1.
•U.S. POSTAL SERVICE LOST $5.2 BILLION IN THIRD QUARTER
•POSTAL SERVICE LOSS Q3 COMPARES WITH $3.1 BILLION LOSS YEAR AGO
•POSTAL SERVICE 3Q REVENUE FALLS TO $15.6 BILLION FROM $15.8B
///
so, the revenue has only gone down, zero point two ?
0.2 ? but the losses, have gone UP 2.1 BILLION,
in ONE YEAR?!?
Whether or no, this represents the cost of the Postal Service we have, one of the cheapest and most efficient in the world. The real question is, with the Internet, how much longer will we need a postal service? There are other ways to assure communications that might well cost quite a bit less.
Unfortunately, in December 2008, G.W. Bush advanced $17.8B in taxpayer funds to GM and Chrysler, ahead of an imminent 12/31/2008 bankruptcy filing, because he felt it would be unfair to have Obama enter office with 2 of the Big 3 in bankruptcy on January 20th. Bush's decision meant that GM and Chrysler, and the Obama administration had months to engineer the taxpayer bailout of the two firms, to prepackage Chapter 11's which were inherently unfair to many of the stakeholders.
The USPS is remarkably similar. A large private corporation (USPS), operating under government charter, and with nine yards of restrictive legislation that prevents them from scaling back their cost structures (i.e., labor, branches) to reflect the reality of their declining volume.
This is going to cost the taxpayer a ton of money, and both candidates need to address this in the campaign, before the election.
The argument over prepayment of the retirement obligations is one made in the shadow of a too-big to fail premise that applied in the auto bailout. There is an assumption that we couldn't let the USPS file Chapter 11, but that is as false as the arguments made in the prelude to the auto bailout. I would suggest that we must force the USPS into Chapter 11, in order to get the benefit of breaking leases (to shrink the physical footprint) and labor contracts (to reduce total labor costs) so that it might become a solvent business at a smaller scale.
The post office needs to be released from most of the government restrictions placed on them. The government forces an astronomical liability funding on them yet they can’t raise rates without congressional approval.
The union is a problem but the government itself is the primary problem.
It's not raising the postage rates as much as forbidding the post office from implementing efficiency initiatives. They should be closing sorting centers left and right but they aren't allowed. They should be expanding their business model to selling more products and services but they aren't allowed.
I ship lot’s of stuff every year. I use the USPS pretty much for all of it. I can say without a doubt...I’ve had very, very few problems with the USPS.
Agreed, there are a lot of restrictions placed on the post office that most people never think of.
One local issue is their incredibly inefficient transportation set up. 5 trips per day to 3 post offices within a 5 mile radius when 1 trip in the morning and one in the afternoon would do. The only reason they do it is the small size of the truck they contract to deliver in. They drive 35 miles with one skid of mail to the biggest of 3 post offices then back to lansing for another skid which has mail for the two smaller offices. They make a 3rd trip with a second skid of mail for the big office in the middle of the day. They repeat the morning process in reverse in the afternoons. Morning and afternoon deliveries could be done in 2 trips and 3 if needed.
Personally I would end Saturday delivery and let UPS and FedEx do all the deliveries to the post offices and let the post offices handle local delivery. We share a rural delivery person between 3 post offices. We’re probably far more efficient than most urban post offices. My post office has one full time employee and a part timer who handles a short day on Saturday. Out where I live, UPS and FedEx already deliver most packages to the post office anyway.
So what? There's UPS and FedEx.
No,I do not want to use UPS.
Well you go ahead and pony mp the $5.2 billion in losses every year and you can just keep your precious Postal Service for all I care.
OUCH!!! Now that hurt.
Lighten up Francis. Just stating a fact.
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