141–150 of 160 posts
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I don't get why public infrastructure and services are supposed to make a profit. They are already funded by taxes, why are we supposed to pay them again?
In this case, the USPS is not funded by taxes. It has a nightmarish duality of both getting no public funds and being controlled by congress.
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Seems unsubstantiated. Proof? Would love to learn more here.
It's not some secretive process.[1] [1] https://informeddelivery.usps.com/box/pages/intro/start.acti...
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Responding to the sibling comment: they don't need to make a profit, but they should at least break even. Call it a price, a tax, or whatever, but it's capable of being completely self-contained where those using the service can pay the full cost of operating it.
But what does "break even" even mean in the context of public infrastructure? If you're okay with calling that income a "tax" why doesn't public subsidy through... taxes count as breaking even? Nobody complains that highways don't "break even" but it's not like toll roads pay 100% of road upkeep...
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It's a specific long-term strategy called "Starving the beast", implemented by the conservative wing of the republican party. Control of the US Senate makes it easy to persist policies for a long time. It's a somewhat unusual philosophy where you collect less revenue and borrow to cover the difference to encourage fiscal prudence. The USPS is a target for a variety of reasons. Think of it as a leveraged buyout target…
Do you feel this is a good thing or a bad thing? I know that privatisation of Royal Mail here in the UK was terrible for the average user as prices went up significantly.
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Spoken like a cityfolk. In the more rural parts, mail is very important. Cutting it down to 1/week is terrible.
It's simple to establish that rural delivery has a higher cost to the USPS than city delivery does. As you've pointed out, cutting delivery days to rural citizens also bears a high cost in the view of those with diminished service. It seems the exceedingly sensible thing to do would simply be for the government to subsidize delivery to the costliest areas. Unfortunately that would mean taxpayer dollars supporting the…
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It's an idea that's past it's prime. Weekly delivery is all anyone needs, it's all junk mail anyway
Spoken like a cityfolk. In the more rural parts, mail is very important. Cutting it down to 1/week is terrible.
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That seems fair, unless you want to pay more. Why should someone be subsidizing your housing choice?
I guess the same can be said for roads, water, electricity, and any other utility. And it also points out that the one thing that is for-profit is completely unavailable in any modern form out here - internet and phone. Our options for internet are dial-up (35/mo, no download/upload cap as if that matters) or satellite (75/mo, 15gb up/down cap monthly). Phone has copper home phone options at 60/mo. Cell doesn't work.…
Would you be for a grocery store tax that kept groceries the same price everywhere? Irregardless of shipping and land costs?
It costs a lot to run internet connectivity all over the place, if the town wanted to pay to run the cables it could, or a non-profit could, there's a wide variety of solutions. My guess is that it's just not worth the cost/maintenance for the few people that need it vs the other options. Internet may need to cost 1k per month if only a few people are using it and the cables need to be run a long distance.
Proper prices are the only way we can proper figure out how to allocate resources. If we stopped subsidizing remote farmland, maybe farmland near cities would be more viable.
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Perhaps $10 dollars a letter is what it should cost in rural Montana; why is subsidizing a lifestyle choice the post offices business?
Because a reliable communications network is a public good, and cutting off millions of poor Americans from critical services is a despicable way of remediating whatever vague injustices the USPS is perceived to be committing against taxpayers.
Unrelated to this specific article: The USPS is a crucial part of the US infrastructure. The thought that we could loose it over mail in ballot voting is a sick joke.
This doesn't seem to be a common opinion, but I generally don't understand why USPS is critical infrastructure. Vote by mail is just about the only essential service they provide that I can think of, and that could potentially still be supported in other ways without USPS the other 364 days of the year. Many of the justifications I've come across of why mail is essential seem to center around transmission of informat…
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Why first principles? Create a do-not-mail list. Make up the funding gap with taxes.
I would like to see a fee for unsolicited bulk mail senders to help pay for the service, along with a "do not mail" list. I would prefer that nobody subsidies the delivery of landfill to my mailbox.
This is how it currently works, the USPS gets money for delivering bulk mail.