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US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

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241–250 of 380 posts

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Labor laws' is a bad argument, particularly in poor developing nations. If you enforce labor laws in developing countries, the cost of production will be high enough that industry doesn't develop. At that point, the people there have no industry and are much worse off (e.g. a sweatshop is better than subsistence farming). A better argument is 'labor choice'. Individuals need to have the ability to choose their circu…

That rosy picture is totally divorced from the actual historical course of Capitalist development.

On the contrary, it's debunking the rosy picture that developing economies can afford developed-economy levels of worker protection.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#242
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Shanghai and Beijing the average household income is $7,000 a year. If it isn't a developing economy, what would you call it?

I am curious how that translates. Cost of living will be substantially lower, I am not sure by how much but 5 times wouldn't seem unfeasable. That would translate to $35k per year which sounds similar to plenty of European countries, so might buy a reasonably comfortable lifestyle there. Anyone with any more knowledge care to comment on this?

From my armchair--it could be somewhere in between what's considered purchasing power parity and the actual exchange rate, because goods aren't exactly comparable when the entire supply chain is less advanced. You may pay less for a washing machine in a developing country, making your money go farther, but that washing machine may also have a greater chance of electrocuting you due to lower quality control. It's hard to measure quality of life through qualitatively similar goods. Is a jar of tomato sauce from a developed country that's vacuum sealed in a sterilized glass jar the same as a tin can of tomato sauce made under questionable conditions?

Edit: For Shanghai, cost of living is closer to 1:1 to 1:3 from here: https://transferwise.com/gb/blog/cost-of-living-in-china

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#243
post #195
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are self funded except that every year they have another multi-billion dollar loss.

They have a multi-billion dollar loss because the GOP Congress passed legislation requiring them to pre-pay their employee retirement health benefits instead of funding it on a pay-as-you-go basis. Given that the USPS is a government established and run service, thus backed by the USG in terms of its liabilities, the idea that somehow the USPS is "saving" this health benefit money somewhere is ludicrous. It's just as…

Is having the funds to pay for retiree benefits a terrible thing? In CA, most of our pensions for public employees can barely even meet current payments.

I agree about the mess of the social security paper shuffle though

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#244

Not weighing in on if this is a good or bad thing overall, but I did listen to a pretty good NPR podcast a while back that explains a little more about this treaty and how it was affecting businesses in the US. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...

I really liked that podcast as well. If I remember correctly, one take away from the podcast that is relevant to a lot of comments below was that the U.S. used to get a net benefit from the weird international mail system. It was more recently that the import/export by direct mail balance shifted to make it a net loss to the U.S. Though it didn't sound like who the net winners and losers would be was strongly conside…

Yeah, it was a great episode.

Generally speaking, I’m in favor of the US exiting this treaty, it really does seem like a clear distortion of the retail shipping market.

But I think it’s going to worryingly contribute to the dynamic where other nations, with quite a bit of justification in this case, see the US as playing a “heads I win, tails you lose” game with the world.

I also think people are fooling themselves if they think high-wage, low-skill manufacturing jobs are going to come back to the US because of this. Those jobs are gone, and automation is going to keep them from coming back.

This will mainly help highly automated manufacturing shops in the US, and online resellers with warehouses in the US.

Basically, I see this bringing more Amazon warehouse jobs, not many more much-mythologized blue-collar manufacturing jobs.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#245
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not just subsidies, but also how trade routes have been optimized. China, the US and every other country, have non-symmetric mail dispatch systems, optimized for the China->wherever route, with mass dispatch from China branching out to everywhere else. The reverse wherever->China is how much shipments cost over non-optimized routes around the world. Stopping the subsidies won't stop the differences in volume a…

I'm sure I am missing something, but surely every container ship that leaves china with a huge pile of mail has to return again to collect more - can't they just take stuff with them?

Packages are mostly airmail. Nobody will wait two months for the delivery of their cable they bought online.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#246
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not just subsidies, but also how trade routes have been optimized. China, the US and every other country, have non-symmetric mail dispatch systems, optimized for the China->wherever route, with mass dispatch from China branching out to everywhere else. The reverse wherever->China is how much shipments cost over non-optimized routes around the world. Stopping the subsidies won't stop the differences in volume a…

I'm sure I am missing something, but surely every container ship that leaves china with a huge pile of mail has to return again to collect more - can't they just take stuff with them?

I don't know anything specific, but a few things come to mind.

First, it's not necessarily the case that these ships are traveling in direct A → B → A... routes, they could be going from China to the US to South America then back to China, carrying some proportion of finished goods and raw materials along each leg.

Second, having to fill up the containers with something at the origin, and unload all that something at the destination, are both huge logistics efforts to manage. Not at all 'free'.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#247

A friend helped the Wall Street Journal expose the damage this treaty was doing to his small business in the United States as it tried to fend off counterfeiters. https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-subsidy-for-china-is-dumb-... Seems like a win for American innovation if you care about that thing. Seems like China is going to get hurt by this change which is bad for globalization if you are into that thing.

It will hurt everyone, as a basic fact of economics:

1. American innovators buying components from overseas, which include many on HN and in SV, will now have to pay more, reducing their ability to innovate.

2. American consumers will have to pay more.

3. American consumers will have less innovative products, as their ability to get innovative products from other countries will be reduced, and as innovators in both the U.S. (see #1 and #4) and in other countries will be hamstrung.

4. American innovators will face less competition, which is certainly not what leads to innovation; it leads to profit-taking based on market power, not meritocratic competition.

5. Reduced international cooperation and trade will reduce American innovators ability to sell abroad; the U.S. is only 5% of the world's population; the other 95% of the market is elsewhere. Cooperation and trade will not only be reduced as a direct effect, but also as a result of the U.S. appearing to be an unreliable partner, and as a result of other countries responding in kind by pulling out of treaties when they find any problems.

6. As reduced trade hurts economies here and abroad, Americans will pay more, have fewer people to sell to, resulting in lower wages and fewer jobs.

Finally, the greatest American innovation is democracy, the belief that all men are created equal and that's what leads to prosperity. That innovation has resulted in an explosion of peace and liberty unlikely anything the world has ever seen, and it has, as a secondary side effect, brought an explosion of prosperity unlike anything the world has ever seen. The U.S. is now purposefully killing that innovation.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does require having to leave the treaty - if the UPU Congress refuses to reclassify China. The threat to leave, is meant to apply enough pressure to finally get that reclassification accomplished. They've been intentionally dragging their feet on this matter over time and they only meet under normal circumstances every four years (they can of course hold emergency sessions). It's the exact same problem the US has…

I heavily dislike that america just leaves treaties it does not like instead of improving them. Most smaller countries cannot use the same method. If my country for instance were to do thay nobody would ship there any more because the billing system would be too complex and expensive and the market is just too small.

You are of course correct that in general the US for the last 2-3 decades has been at best schizophrenic about multilateral institutions it was originally instrumental in setting up, and at worst actively hostile.

But in this case, my understanding is that the US did attempt to renegotiate the postal treaty recently, rather than abandon it, without much success.

The exit isn’t finalized, so this could be seen as an (admittedly very formal) gambit in the larger overall negotiation process.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#250
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of free trade/globalization is everyone benefiting from the efficiency of each place doing the work it can do most efficiently. Iowa corn and Swiss fine machinery and Arab oil and all sorts of things where one place can do something better and cheaper because of the nature of the place. Poverty (cheap labor) and treaties (cheap postage) shouldn't be the drivers of this efficiency because they aren't caused b…

But the issue here is not the differential in efficiencies. It's China receiving subsidies from the US because it was considered a developing country in 1969. It's not anymore, it's a global superpower now, it can pay its own postage.

No, every few years, there is a reevaluation. Last one was in 2016.
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