It seems like it would have been good for them to mention that the white paper they cite giving the estimate of $79 million dollars lost on delivery of inbound international mail at artificially low treaty prices in 2013 also estimates savings of $136 million on delivery of outbound mail at artificially low treaty prices in 2013 for a net profit of $57 million. Also, it estimates that the inbound rates will increase 13% per year between 2014 and 2017, while the rates the US pays foreign countries will only increase 3% a year over this period.
USPS loses millions each year on local delivery of mail from abroad (2014)
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Re: USPS loses millions each year on local delivery of mail from abroad (2014)
#102> All of this is little comfort to McGrath, who chafes at the thought of the Postal Service helping Chinese merchants poach his customers. “All of us sellers are selling a lot of Chinese goods in America but at least we’re creating jobs, making money, and adding to the economy,” he said. “But when people buy direct from China that’s adding nothing to the American economy.” I understand the seller's frustration - thei…
But the core of the argument is that this isn't pure capitalist economics; the government is essentially subsidizing China's ability to compete in America. It'd be one thing if China could make it and ship it for legitimately cheaper, but abusing a treaty loophole in USPS regulations isn't the same. That's an unfair advantage.
There's also a second argument at play: If China can make a product for $10 cheaper, legitimate shipping included, because they're allowed to abuse their workers and pay them much less, do we trust pure capitalism to properly prioritize the values of the American people? This really is the case of, say, Apple's electronics plants in China.
Re: USPS loses millions each year on local delivery of mail from abroad (2014)
#103> All of this is little comfort to McGrath, who chafes at the thought of the Postal Service helping Chinese merchants poach his customers. “All of us sellers are selling a lot of Chinese goods in America but at least we’re creating jobs, making money, and adding to the economy,” he said. “But when people buy direct from China that’s adding nothing to the American economy.” I understand the seller's frustration - thei…
But the core of the argument is that this isn't pure capitalist economics; the government is essentially subsidizing China's ability to compete in America. It'd be one thing if China could make it and ship it for legitimately cheaper, but abusing a treaty loophole in USPS regulations isn't the same. That's an unfair advantage. There's also a second argument at play: If China can make a product for $10 cheaper, legiti…
I think that second argument is a different case than the one this thread concerns. This isn't about different manufacturing environments - it's about literally the same product being distributed via a middleman or not.
We've always benefited from Chinese labor abuses, and whether an American intermediary is involved doesn't change that.
Re: USPS loses millions each year on local delivery of mail from abroad (2014)
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do some people write the dollar sign after the number? Similarly, why do some people write the percent sign before the number? I initially thought it might be a locale thing (like swapping commas and decimal points), but I've seen a lot of Americans doing it too.
> Why do some people write the dollar sign after the number? For foreigners, that's easy, that's how you write currencies in other languages. For American doing it, I guess it is just a typing artefact. You think "ten dollars", you write "10$", there is no autocorrect for that kind of things so you let is slide.
Could also be a holdover from using cents. I have always seen the cents symbol used after the number so 70¢ is a shorter way to write $0.70
Re: USPS loses millions each year on local delivery of mail from abroad (2014)
#105> All of this is little comfort to McGrath, who chafes at the thought of the Postal Service helping Chinese merchants poach his customers. “All of us sellers are selling a lot of Chinese goods in America but at least we’re creating jobs, making money, and adding to the economy,” he said. “But when people buy direct from China that’s adding nothing to the American economy.” I understand the seller's frustration - thei…
But the core of the argument is that this isn't pure capitalist economics; the government is essentially subsidizing China's ability to compete in America. It'd be one thing if China could make it and ship it for legitimately cheaper, but abusing a treaty loophole in USPS regulations isn't the same. That's an unfair advantage. There's also a second argument at play: If China can make a product for $10 cheaper, legiti…
The loophole isn't unidirectional. It can make the China Post deliver many letters to small villages in China.
The problem is that no one on those villages are interested in paying some small price to receive a thing from America.
Re: USPS loses millions each year on local delivery of mail from abroad (2014)
#106> All of this is little comfort to McGrath, who chafes at the thought of the Postal Service helping Chinese merchants poach his customers. “All of us sellers are selling a lot of Chinese goods in America but at least we’re creating jobs, making money, and adding to the economy,” he said. “But when people buy direct from China that’s adding nothing to the American economy.” I understand the seller's frustration - thei…
But the core of the argument is that this isn't pure capitalist economics; the government is essentially subsidizing China's ability to compete in America. It'd be one thing if China could make it and ship it for legitimately cheaper, but abusing a treaty loophole in USPS regulations isn't the same. That's an unfair advantage. There's also a second argument at play: If China can make a product for $10 cheaper, legiti…
As to your second argument, I'm still not sure why it is legal to buy or own materials in the US created by human rights abuse. Let's take a case of a Chinese good produced by political slaves in prison. By buying or owning that good, a person is financially supporting the abuse that went into creating that good. Same applies for something that is produced for cheaper due to an ability to pollute in ways that aren't legal in the US (or other countries, this argument need not be just for the US).
But there are some digital goods where we do not give this same treatment (namely digital material involving really bad child maltreatment). Regardless of the legality of where the material is produced, owning it in the US is illegal because it couldn't legally be produced in the US and funding such illegal action elsewhere is considered morally wrong enough to ban.
Simply put, I think the core idea should be applied to all financial transactions. If one is buying a good or service that would be illegal in the US due to harm to another human, it should be illegal to buy or own in the US, even if where it is produced is legal. The law should prevent a person from harming another human by shopping around and finding wherever has the least legal protections.
Re: USPS loses millions each year on local delivery of mail from abroad (2014)
#107> All of this is little comfort to McGrath, who chafes at the thought of the Postal Service helping Chinese merchants poach his customers. “All of us sellers are selling a lot of Chinese goods in America but at least we’re creating jobs, making money, and adding to the economy,” he said. “But when people buy direct from China that’s adding nothing to the American economy.” I understand the seller's frustration - thei…
I guess local sellers should try to add value by providing support, warranty and other things on top of the product.
Value Added Resellers (VARs) may work if you've got margin to work with. When I ran my company, I'd get emails and calls from random people that wanted support for a product I sold but never purchased from me. If your margin is 5%-10% on commodity products, then that type of support does not scale. Adding warranty costs money to replace. You get what you pay for and stuff made in China is hit or miss (more miss than hit IMO). So, adding warranty means you have to replace defective parts more often. Again, doesn't scale when you don't have the margin.
Re: USPS loses millions each year on local delivery of mail from abroad (2014)
#108Your competitive advantage is that you can deliver the same product within a more predictable window. Getting something from China by surface can take 7 days to 8 weeks. If you use USPS service domestically, you get quasi-tracking with a shorter delivery window of 1 to 3 days (usually).
Re: USPS loses millions each year on local delivery of mail from abroad (2014)
#109> All of this is little comfort to McGrath, who chafes at the thought of the Postal Service helping Chinese merchants poach his customers. “All of us sellers are selling a lot of Chinese goods in America but at least we’re creating jobs, making money, and adding to the economy,” he said. “But when people buy direct from China that’s adding nothing to the American economy.” I understand the seller's frustration - thei…
>To me it just seems like an unsustainable business model My experience with this isn't quite how you're describing. The Chinese vendors are sort of having their cake and eating it too. They'll often, for example, not be honest about the the shipping time, their return policies, product details, ability to answer product questions, and so forth. Even if the selling platform does something about it, another Chinese se…
>They'll often, for example, not be honest about the the shipping time, their return policies, product details, ability to answer product questions, and so forth.
Not been my experience for shipping time. They usually claim such a large shipping window that it is always delivered within that window.
As for lower quality service, I'm not sure I see the problem. The consumer wants to pay a lower amount, and he gets what he is paying for. There's nothing fundamentally wrong or unethical about it. The same principle will hold in the US too. And frankly, I've had plenty of poor service on eBay from US based sellers.
Re: USPS loses millions each year on local delivery of mail from abroad (2014)
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you figure? The surplus comes from the fact that US buyers don't have to pay a percentage to the intermediary, so they can spend it on other things, like going out to a local restaurant more often.
Forgive my ignorance, but can't it go the other way also? A contrived example... A person has $X that they spend every week at the local town restaurant. They see they can buy a cool new widget from a Chinese vendor (from the article) for $Y. Over the course of the next few weeks, said person spends a little less at the restaurant so as to save up $Y, ultimately purchasing the widget once enough money is saved. In th…
It can, and gets even more complicated when that widget was available locally for $Z and $Y < $Z. Was $Z so much greater than $Y that the person would have never started to save for it? Or did $Y mean they were able to start spending at the restaurant again sooner? How do you calculate the value of the cool new widget once the person has it?